Gophers and Cheese

I decided to weld my hollow fender struts myself.  Go big or go home, right?  Again, I have no real welding experience and I own a very cheap welder so give me a break when you scroll down and see my welds. Here's my fine Harbor Freight flux core welder.  You don't have to tell me the Lethal Threat decal makes it classy.  I know it does. I used a magnet to hold the pieces in place and tack welded it. After quite a few passes, here is the result.  Yes, there's a lot of splatter and it's not what I would call a pretty weld, but the two pieces of steel are now one and that's all that matters.  My angle grinder will clean it up later. Here's the second side. One strut done! It actually fits and the holes line up.  Woo hoo! By the time I welded the fourth side piece, I think my welds got better.  The line on the top was my last and I think my best. Just to be clear, I didn't say it was good, only that it was my best. H...

The piece I'm calling the mini-fender has four unnecessary holes.  One big one was used for routing wiring and the other three small ones were for rivets to attach the plastic rear fender extension on stock fenders.  This was to be my first real test with my cheap-ass Harbor Freight flux core welder. I have no real welding experience or training.  I watched the MIG Welding Fundamentals DVD from Lowbrow Customs and played with a few piece of scrap metal.  I also watch a lot of car and motorcycle TV shows where guys are welding if that counts. First I made a plug for the large hole out of 16 gauge steel. Then I decided to start small with the three rivet holes.  I used my hand drill with a Scotch-Brite disc to remove the paint around the welding areas.  Then I clamped it to a thicker piece of steel to act as a backing plate but hopefully be thick enough not to weld to the fender.. It took a few tries to build up material and not burn through the...

I picked up a cheap welder at Harbor Freight last year but never took it out of the box to try it.  It's a flux core wire welder and it plugs into a standard wall outlet.  Well, I finally opened it up so I could try it out on some scrap steel I had lying around.  Up to this point, I have had absolutely zero welding experience and no training. After messing around a little, I tired welding two pieces of 1/8" thick steel together.  I clamped the pieces first. Welds on the one side. Don't worry, I did wear proper protective gear.  I knew that much. Flipped it over. Welds on that side, along with more messing around. I successfully joined two pieces of steel!  It's really ugly, but what do you expect? I have an instructional DVD from Lowbrow Customs that I plan to watch to actually figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.  It'll be cool if I can figure it out.  Obviously I won't be welding any critical parts like a motorcycle frame with t...