Best of luck with it Hatred, apologies for I had missed your statement for how long you've been welding for, that experience of trial and error and finessing your hand movements will certainly make you confident and precise with a welder; I myself hate them lol, I like Brazing because I can make FIRE! Look forward to seeing the pictures, you should make stainless steel ones (I love the finish on those), could make a business out of this I should think.

The heat and pounding method to flatten them, I like it, SMASH IT TO YOUR WILL!!! - Will you be making a bigger one?

HS!

I've only been welding for 2 years now seeing as I'm 19. I forgot to put that number in there.

Personally I love my arc welder. I can make so much cool stuff with it. And I sate my fire need with blacksmithing. It gets up to 2,800 degrees with coal. 3,000 if I burn coke (a type of processed coal). With those temperatures I can literally burn the metal off. Heat it up to red, orange then yellow. The hotter it is the easier the metal moves.

And I don't think working with stainless steel is worth it. It's very expensive to buy (I don't know a number but I guarantee its more then under a dollar per foot). And then you have to buy specialty stainless steel welding rod, which would also be very expensive. And to top it off stainless steel is very difficult to work with in any regard. And you can't heat it up in the forge or else you burn the finish off, and that is not good to breath.

And yes, I will make a bigger one. One foot pieces to be exact. I'd make it bigger, but that's (obviously) five feet of stock right there. And my steel provider is over an hour away so using that much stock for one item is not something to take lightly.

And I desperately want this to be a small side business, but for some reason people won't buy ANYTHING I make that's bigger then an inch or two. They just want the tiny knickknacks that take a minute to make and are incredibly easy. People won't buy the larger items I make, both welding and blacksmithing. It's quite infuriating honestly. I like challenging myself by making more complex and intricate items, but people don't care enough to buy them.

Yeah, I wasn't even thinking of the heat source. Shows ya how much I know about this.

Good luck with the business! And I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.

I'm no master welder but I've worked iron in my day. I'd recommend drawing a pattern on paper (or scrap wood) with pencil using a protractor and ruler, use this to mark your iron, and cut a sharper angle than you require (this translates to a wider angle when joined). Clamp the pieces down with a slightly wider angle to compensate for drawing together unless your clamps are rock solid. Whole key is to avoid welding the actual tip much though, fill in the middle all you want but you don't want to grind the tips. You can use a grinder and buffer to smooth out the rest of it to your heart's content, it all vanishes once you paint it anyway.

Thanks for the insight Hagen. Those are very good points that I had not considered.

Also, is that you or someone else (a character from a movie perhaps?) in your display pic? That's quite the nice get up there. I wouldn't mind having it myself, very medieval. Speaking of which, I hacked together a few weapons from that era of my own. They're not particularly useful as they are entirely solid steel and extremely heavy, but they get the point across as to what they are. Anyone want me to post a few pics of those?

My avatar is Hans Adalbert von Schlettow portraying, of course, Hagen von Tronje in Fritz Lang's interpretation of Die Nibelungen. I'm not nearly that beautiful, though at least I share a bad eye with the titular character (and a shared sense of loyalty and fatalism).

Feel free to put up whatever ironworking you like. The best I've done is some catwalks for oil rigs, which thoroughly impressed my bossman (he assumed I was just another helper, I proved him wrong in short order) but is nothing to brag about. I'm actually more proud of having worked the rig itself, welding was practically a vacation after that.

I am guessing that your rig never shit all over the Gulf of Mexico either.

Seriously though, what is it like on an oil rig? I have never been on one and cannot honestly think of a reason why I would. However, I have always been curious as to what life was like on a rig.

I was curious, too, after I read you and youtube seemed useful.

I found some slideshows, and this video without commentary.
(If I don't consider chosen background music as a commentary.)

I think I prefer an overland life. Though to be there could be interesting, for a while.

Even though you claim that you're not nearly as beautiful, that avatar still suits you in my opinion sir!

It was a land rig, I've never done offshore work.

Conditions also vary by rig. Some newer ones use fancy shit to break the pipe, but older rigs (like the ones I worked) still use chain wrapped around then yanked by a winch.

I'm not even sure how to describe the experience. When you're going down hole it's not too bad, you swing 60 ft lengths of pipe that could crush you like a bug into position, tighten them down with what amounts to a one ton pipe wrench hanging from chains, lower the pipe and repeat. The derrick hand has the most interesting job here, he stands atop the rig on the catwalk, catching pipe in the crane. When you're coming up hole, it's a little shittier because the pipe is full of hot drilling fluid (a mixture of oil and mud), so every time you break it apart at the base, 60 feet of fluid spills out all over you. Newer rigs have a mudbucket at the base to help with that, ours was clamp on and it wasn't so effective so I pretty much got drenched in piping hot oil based mud every few minutes. Obviously this coats the deck in sludge as well, in fact it's so slippery there are frequently heel blocks welded to the deck to catch your boots on so you can actually hang on while working the tongs.

Occasionally you have to go into the cellar (the pit under the rig where the stack is) and rework things, though sometimes you can get a wrenching crew to come do that for you (I also wrenched for a while).

The best summary of roughnecking is "it puts money in your pocket and meat on your bones."

Wrenching, by the way, is only slightly less hard work and actually has much longer hours. You can get called at 2 am to go out for a job where you won't sleep for 40 hours straight, eat once, and work a hammer that whole time. It's a real bitch, but you can rack up 100+ hour weeks.

I've been trying to upload pictures of some of my other metal creations, but it isn't working. I go to the file up loader, select I file, hit the add file button, and then it usually uploads forever. The file size is only 600 some odd kilobytes so its not over the size limit. And even when I do get the file added, I hit the preview button and it's not there.

Anyone have ideas what's going on?
All help is appreciated.

Thanks

I don't think it will show up in preview but it will be there if you attached it successfully.

Either that or just upload to TinyPic and insert with UBB code.

Hopefully this worked. These are two of the weapons I've made. A flail and a mace. I will post some of my metal artwork in a separate thread if some of You wish.

Ha! Hatred I love that T-Shirt, legendary stuff, where you get it?

It was either spencers or hot topic. Two stores which I used to frequent, but no longer do. They have some sweet shirts though