Welding up the mitered cornersFinally it’s all starting to come together.  along with the 2″ x 3″ x 3/16″ steel angle from before I cut up some 1.5″ x 1.5″ x 1/8″ as well.  I made up a little jig for both the 1/8″ and 3/16″ corners to keep them lined up just right while welding them – made it so much easier. Was a little bit worried about how to weld them all up as cleanly as possible.  For now the plan is to keep the finished desk in a raw state so I can’t just weld away and grind the welds down as one often does.

A brief welding lesson for you readers: when you weld something you create an electrical arc on the metal you’re welding, which heats up the metal and creates a little puddle of molten metal, to which you add filler rod (more metal).  When it all cools the two pieces you were welding and the melted filler rod have all fused together in a single piece.  With MIG welding there’s a big spool of filler rod in the welder and when you pull the trigger it creates an arc and the filler rod is automatically fed out at a constant rate.  It’s one handed and pretty much point and shoot, but you don’t have as much control over the amount of filler added or current.  With TIG welding you have the electrode in one hand (you hold the tip close to whatever you’re welding and it creates an arc between the tip and the work); the filler rod in the other hand (you tap it into the weld manaully as needed); and a foot pedal which varies the power.  In Googling around someone put it well: “MIG is a workhorse, TIG has finesse”.  Definitely agree but I’m still working on my finesse!

Both all put together
Now that you’ve had a basic welding primer we can continue.  In some tests welding up mitered corners with the MIG it wasn’t as clean as I wanted.  Tried the same tests with the TIG welder and it turned out a lot better – mostly because I was able to only add filler where needed.  On the outside of the miters since both pieces came together in the corner I was able to just create a little weld puddle and push it along and not even add any filler rod at all.  For the most part it turned out even better than expected!

The desk really started to take shape (literally!) today.  Each time I go to work on it, I spend way more time doing what I thought “won’t take too long”.  I consistently fall prey to Hofstadter’s Law: Everything takes longer than you think.

Here’s the result of today: