spark!

Welding is a skill I picked up last year, and I love it. I've gotten to do quite a bit of steelwork since then, too. I am skilled in both MIG (GMAW) and Stick (MCAW). Here are a few samples of my steel work.

These are a number of steel railings from UMN University Theatre's Spring 2010 production of Shakespeare's "Love's Labor's Lost." There were straight rails, curved rails, stair rails, and the dreaded curved stair rail. The rails were made from 1" and 2" mechanical box tube with 1"x 1/4" steel strap decoration.









The next show in the season, "Execution of Justice," called for three, giant curved walls, and it was set to a friend and me to construct them. The arc of the center wall had a chord of length of nearly 40' - 0". The entire frame was welded out of 1" box tube. Curfing the steel to make the arc would take too much time, so we started by over-bending the box tube with an arc of jig blocks until the tube would bounce back to the desired arc. This was trial and error, but eventually we found the correct sized arc for the over-bending. Then we jigged a section of the wall out and began to churn out sections. In the pictures, the sections of the big wall have been welded together and the facing is being attached.