My dad was a car painter for 40 years. There used to be a lot of dangerous chemicals involved. He would paint cars with just a dust mask and wash his guns in cleaners with no gloves on. He's lucky and still in good health but yeah it can be dangerous. So safety first.

 

Well thanks for people who have been in this trade that taught us all the safety measures. I'm kind of glad it's not 70's.

Tonight was kind of lame but learnt a lot about mig welding techniques, didn't touch a thing though. Next week, 4 hours of practise on the MIG - now that's what I'm looking forward to. I'll have my first mig welded ugly looking piece of sheet metal to show you guys.

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Next week I have my big test. Have to form a panel, weld it to another panel and so on.

As for today, I have my first two MIG welded pieces.


I think I'm in love with stitch welding, luckily that's a big part of my final test.


Have to control my hands a lot more but if you compare this continous weld to the Oxy-Acetylene welding from a couple of weeks ago, You'll see how much I have improved.

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Did my final practical test tonight and kind of messed it up a bit, but nothing too serious - I will still pass. Had to make a hat channel and my channel panel turned out near perfect after a little fine tuning. Then had to weld it to another sheet metal, welding part is in my pocket but I had to do six plug welds and I screwed up on the first two, not because of bad welding job but because I made the hole in the wrong place.

Apart from that the rest went well, I'll pass but I had to submit my piece for marking so no pictures. If I get it back then you'll see what I mean.

Next week we do our final written and the week after we graduate plus some funky tricks of the trade will be taught - Then it's on to Painters class in January.

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Passed my final written test tonight and scored 92% - didn't get my practical piece back yet.

Also got pulled over by a cop rushing for my test and got myself a ticket for the first time ever, two actually, because I couldn't provide my insurance information because I didn't have it in the car. Not ever getting pulled over made me forget that I needed my insurance info in the car. Still, a $60 and a $65 ticket isn't too horrible and one was totally avoidable.

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What was the other ticket for? Was it for not stopping at the stop sign on Ashtombee? The cops sit there all the time I've ssen so many people get stopped. If you show proof of insurance they might drop that one if you go see a Justice of the Peace