Just curious to see how and where everyone started out welding. I think it'd be kind of cool to see how everyone welded their first piece as opposed to their current welding abilities.

First thing I welded.
22g 304 stainless 2" squares i made into a cube
machine is a Miller Dialarc 250HF, amperage was around 30 iirc, no filler just fusion
my first few starts blew through the material but by the time I got all of it tacked together I was doing quite well.





this little cube is strong too, at least for the first thing I welded, ever. It stood up to a 1 ton truck without issue.

we also got bored one day and i built a stick figure out of these little squares and made him a pool chair lol. We do random stuff at the shop when we are bored.

so post up, lets see the evolution of peoples skills

 

This is the first ever weld I made with the dc tig



Welding like I was using a mig draging the weld instead of pushing it.

 

First thing I ever welded was actually aluminum on this here plate. I started on AL first, then went to steel. This was done about a year and a half ago.



Just started welding this last night on my first try at an intake manifold.



Edit: Hahaha, it's cool looking at this stuff side by side, I haven't seen the first picture in quite some time. Man, terrible.

 

yea i need more practice on aluminum, we didnt have enough scrap at the shop.

 

My first real aluminum tig weld. was a bit nervous to do it but came out better than i thought. TiAL 50mm flange for a buddies wrx, along with my first chromoly tig on my 01 gsr's roll cage (harness bar)

 

I own a shop and just brought on a welder/fabricator. He taught me how to TIG weld on a piece of scrap metal for about an hour or so. The next day I wanted to build an exhaust for my bike so I picked up a used Yoshimura muffler from a Yamaha R6 off of craigslist and some 2" stainless steel pipe. Used pie-cuts for the bends and welded it up. Spent about a day making this and I think it turned out okay for my first welding project.

Equipment is a Miller Maxstar 350, Miller cooler, Jet belt and disc sander, horizontal bandsaw.

Let me know what you think, thanks!

 

very nice ozziman

 

You people must be prodigies. My FIRST welds looked closer to this:



Then again i didn't have anyone setting up the welder for me.

 

I setup my tig... Its not rocket science lol.

 

You could be absolutely awful at TIG and you wouldn't even come close to it being that bad. That's flux core.