I'm not a welder.  I just had these two pieces of old junk metal that I thought would look good if they were welded together.  Hmmm.  I went to Menards and bought the cheapest 110 volt welder they had and studied the instruction booklet.  Voila!  I had the two pieces of metal junk welded together.  (I have since sold that first metal "sculpture.")  The rest is history so to say.  I soon outgrew the 110 volt welder and bought a used 220 volt Hobart MIG weldler.  I ran the 220 volt line to the garage myself.  As I said on the Home Page of this website, in teaching myself how to weld, I made every mistake there was to make, and then some.  I nearly burned the garage down and I did scorch my eyeballs and had to be taken to the emergency room by ambulance at 2:00 a.m. (A side note to that story: when released from the emergency room, they don't do the courtesy of taking you home.  I had to call my neighbor to come and get me at 3:00 a.m.!  Thankfully, I have gracious neighbors!)  Anywho, I learned how to weld.  I can honestly say I can run a respectful bead.

     I also purchased a plasma cutter so that I could cut designs out of sheet metal, thus my pheasants, flamingos, "Man," "Whooping Crane" etc. below.  (It was with the plasma cutter that I burned my eyeballs.  The guy at the store where I bought the plasma cutter said that all I needed to wear to protect my eyes was a pair of sunglasses!)

      My welded junk has won several art awards.  I especially like to weld old rusty farm junk together to make weird objects.  I basically just like to screw around and have fun.  Enjoy.