The fastest and most reliable way to fasten metal parts is electric welding. Anyone can learn to handle it. Having bought a welding machine or an inverter, as well as having spent half a pack of electrodes for practical skills, you can safely try to create metal crafts with your own hands. Installation of structures, repairs in the country, the manufacture of garden equipment and much more from this moment becomes available.
The first metal crafts
Many now have welding. Often the device is purchased in case of construction or repair. Not even necessary for yourself. If there is a need for it, you can call a self-taught neighbor or a familiar specialist welder. After completion of work, the unit is simply idle.
But sooner or later, the moment comes when it is worth deciding and trying to cook something yourself. There is nothing wrong with that; there would be a desire. The main thing at this stage is not to get burned and to catch “bunnies”, and experience comes with practice. If there is a summer cottage or a country house, welding can always be found. With its help, it is possible to solve the problems of land development much faster.
Not always and not everything can be bought at the store. To weld a gate, to build a base for a bench or a table, to “grab” a hook for attaching a rope to an metal pole or an additional support for weaving grapes is a trifle, but it’s kind of inconvenient to call a welder over and over again. So you need to learn the basics and solve everyday problems with your own hands.
Welding Basics
Immediately undertake serious work with responsible connections, of course, is not worth it. You can practice on a piece of unnecessary metal. At the first stage, one should learn to ignite the arc and hold it, while maintaining a constant working gap between the workpiece and the electrode as it burns.
After this, you need to work out the technique of forming a weld, fusing a layer of metal on a flat surface. Then you can proceed to adjust the current for different thicknesses of the welded workpieces. Welding is a technique for joining two metal parts, based on the melting of their surfaces at the joint. In one piece, they are combined by adding a layer of adhesive material of the electrode.
The current is selected in such a way as to ensure melting only the surface layer without the formation of holes. It is better to master the technique on electrodes with a diameter of 2.5-3 mm. They should not be old and necessarily dry, otherwise the first experience will most likely be ineffective, which may discourage learning to create metal crafts.
Welding makes it possible to fix minor, and sometimes serious, flaws in work or installation errors. It is enough to cut the seam of the “tack”, and the parts are disconnected. After stripping the place of unsuccessful welding, the process can be repeated.
Material
Any owner of a country house or owner of a summer house will surely have metal waste in the household. These can be pipe residues after installing a gas pipeline, water supply or heating systems. The real owner usually does not throw out the remains of a steel corner, channel or pieces of reinforcement. You can also find used nails, bolts and nuts.
Such scrap metal very often becomes the material for a new repair or improvement of the old one. Surely there will be obsolete garden tools, chains, old dishes, as well as spare parts from a car, motorcycle or bicycle that have not yet been handed over in the garage or barn.
From all this you can make useful and practical metal crafts. With your own hands, using welding and available improvised metalwork tools, you can fix old garden tools or make new ones from waste, taking into account personal experience, your preferences and economic conditions.
Crafts from metal for a summer residence
You can equip cosiness on personal territory without buying new equipment. From a used, but still strong metal, you can build a base for a country table or bench. Finding the right chipboard sheet for countertops and bench boards is no problem. Racks can even be made from substandard inch pipes.
If there is a supply of material, you can swing and swing. It is better to make the construction complete, with concreting the base. Need two sidewalls of pipes welded at an angle, with jumpers for rigidity. The more massive the swing seat will be, the larger this angle. Jumpers can be welded at ground level or even lower so that they are not visible.
Suspensions are best made from chains, but you can take a reliable rope. The mounting beam must be massive. A thick-walled pipe, a piece of rail or channel is suitable. It is best to fasten the frame parts and suspension brackets by welding.
Sheet Metal Crafts
At any cottage, with rare exceptions, there is a barbecue or other similar device. A pair of logs for sitting, an old stump as a table, and charred bricks to limit a fireplace and lay skewers - for someone, this may be a vacation, but it is better and more convenient to use a more advanced design.
Brazier can be versed. It can be brought with you to the country, it can also have a permanent place of registration with the possibility of transporting it to the place of storage. For such a solution, a grill from an old steel barrel is quite suitable. It can be made on its own and can be done only with a grinder and a drill. However, it will be better and easier if you use a welding machine.
An empty and washed barrel is cut in two along the vertical center line into two halves. Legs from a rod, fittings or pipe segments are welded to one part. The upper part serves as a hinged lid and can be mounted for convenience on welded old door curtains.
Sheet metal crafts can only be fixed by welding after gaining some experience. In order to reliably weld parts and not to burn a hole through the electrode, it is necessary to select the welding current precisely and work with short tacks with constant quality control of the seam.
Metal sculpture
The garden around the country house is not only a plot where trees and shrubs are grown to collect fruits and berries. It is also a place to relax! A wonderful addition to well-groomed plantings will be a garden sculpture.
It may not be made of concrete or gypsum. For a person with creative potential, there are no boundaries for his expression. If at the moment only a welding machine, half packs of electrodes, scrap of ferrous metal and a desire to create are at hand, then from all this you can build an original and unique composition. Moreover, the complexity of execution can be different.
It depends on the material available and on the idea. Such metal crafts for the garden in one case may consist of a dozen different, at first glance, incompatible parts of different origin and purpose. In another case, it can be made up of hundreds of similar repeating elements connected by welding into a three-dimensional model.
Where to get ideas from?
This question cannot be answered unequivocally. Someone, having seen details that happened to be in one place, imagines how they will fit together if they are combined into a common composition. Another purposefully rides to the scrap collection point and wanders around the mountains of this trash in search of a suitable part for the selected sculpture.
You can get ideas or simply take as a basis someone’s already implemented idea from specialized book publications that are dedicated to metal crafts. There is nothing wrong with creating the thing you like from the materials available at the farm.
In any case, DIY metal crafts created according to the existing drawing or sketch will be original. Welding is not copying, but a kind of creativity. Any weld that is made with a decorative design and repeats the pattern or composition is perceived as a kind of masterpiece.
Safety precautions
In order to do-it-yourself metal crafts do not serve as a constant reminder of the unsuccessful welding experience associated with a burn or injury, care should be taken. It is strictly forbidden to work without a mask or shield, otherwise you can get ultraviolet radiation.
A protective suit will protect clothing and body skin from flying sparks and splashes of molten metal, and tight gloves or gloves made of thick material will protect your hands. Knocking down the seam without goggles is not recommended, sharp fragments flying in all directions can get into the eyes.
When working near wooden objects and surfaces subject to fire, you should have a bucket of water and a wet rag on hand. Accidental sparks or electrode residues that bounce and fall onto such materials can cause smoldering and their subsequent ignition. When working indoors, you need to pay attention to proper ventilation.