Went all Lynda Barry, found a squiggle (a faucet knob), and a bunch of different finishes and materials to see how the laser welder would fare. It fared rather well, I think. If I’m going to do anything bigger, I need more scrap; I sense an obtainium scavenging in my future.
The laser welder is hooked up and emitting lasers and melting things and welding things (except copper because fuck copper). And burning a hole into the side of The Shed. Oops. All good, clear, etc. Turns out my old argon tank was borked, so I got one of those big ones that a little shorter than me and all was well. Repaired an earlier lamp project, so it's back to a full strength weld. Also learned that the cleaner function on this thing is insane – though I'll still use the flapper disc and angle grinder for larger cleans and the laser for details and those hard-to-reach spaces, as the soap commercials would say. Might do a little metal piece this afternoon to get acquainted with the thing, then see how I'll use it in conjunction with my baby MIG welder. Probably the MIG for initial assembly, and laser for adding details and cleaning up. TBD.
Wee baby welding cart has been modified (see Principle _02) to fit the decidedly not baby laser welder, primarily heavier-duty wheels that aren't held on with pins. Still waiting on the new argon regulator so I can either get an argon flow going from my wee argon canister or upgrade from the wee to a non-wee. While I wait: determine if I can move the welding table to The Shed porch and use metalshack as metal storage (though I’ve given the cart heavy duty wheels, moving a 40-lb laser welder down my little alley path between fence and shed isn’t going to happen). There will be lasers, eventually.
At some point the urge to write again will strike me but first I have to play with my new laser welder.
Made this fun little thing – a palette cleanser between the hex nut madness of metal_0048 and moving on to learning laser welding and the TBD metal_0050 – from two pairs of my grandfathers' pliers (and bolt cutter), with a base thrown together from not-quite heavy enough building materials and barn wood scrap. Planning to build a new one once I find something heavy enough to make it play-withable(new word, fuck it) while in its base in addition to being the same in hand-held mode. Core word in its construction was "delight"; wanted to make something my silver-smithing grandmother might have made on a lark.
Today being one of those post-project massive Shed clean-up days which have become essential rituals - but this one especially so: I'm finally getting the laser welder set up. Or at least figuring out what I need to get to set it up (I think just a thing of 1mm steel wire but 🤷🤷🤷. Also have to set up a thing to mount my little argon tank to the wall which may need to be changed depending on how much argon this Goldfinger device actually uses. Computer monitor sits, wanting me to work at it but these days my happiest creative moments are spent away from screens with a (shielded) faceful of sparks or scribbling with a pencil in a notebook. Rolling with it.