Best Welding accessory I ever bought

[RoMad]

My youngest son is home from school for the summer and had said he would like to learn to weld. I posted a thread asking about welding hood advice and ended up buying one with an auto lense from Amazon.com.
On Sunday we went over how the hood worked and I showed him how to run a flat bead and a lap joint using 6011 in my buzz box. I left him out in the driveway welding together a bunch of my scrap metal for about 3 hours. Sunday evening he said he was ready to help me build a counterweight for my tractor that I had been talking about. He showed me his welds and he really was picking it up pretty fast.
On his second day of welding we made the counterweight out of a bunch of metal they gave me at work and a drawbar I had bought from ebay. I made sure that all of his welds were flat lap joints and held his hands a couple of times to help him get the hang of it. Once again he did a pretty good job. At one point after about an hour of welding he said "this sure is hot work" which tickled me since i spent many hours in the hot sun, in boilers, tanks, and vessels welding when I was his age.
All in all a lot of fun watching him learn and pretty darn nice to sit in a lawn chair while he does the hot work. I should have bought another hood a long time ago :laughing:

 

[BlacknTan]

Nice job produced by the two of you!
Your son is also learning a new skill, which is always helpful no matter where life takes him. And most important, you're spending time together.

BTW, I agree that the AD hood is the greatest thing since sliced bread!

 

[KubotainNH]

So is the hood or son the best accessory??? :laughing:

Kidding aside, I love AD hoods.

 

[undercut]

Always nice to see the next generation applying themselves! Had my kids put together a small work bench I bought the other day. I helped them and showed them what each tool was used for. I mentioned I might need another one to use as a makeshift welding station. They've been bugging me when I'm going to bring it home so that they can put it together themselves!

Great project and congratulations on teaching a great skill and getting a project completed at the same time! Cheers!

 

[Shield Arc]

I' am so jealous! I have four grandsons, and a grand son-n-law who looks to be about the same age as your son. All they want to do all day long is play video games! Only time they ever get near my shop, is for me to air up a tire on one of their bikes.

 

[timster2]

I' am so jealous! I have four grandsons, and a grand son-n-law who looks to be about the same age as your son. All they want to do all day long is play video games! Only time they ever get near my shop, is for me to air up a tire on one of their bikes.

When my son was younger he played a lot of video games. As he got older and wanted to fix up his bike we started welding, milling and drilling "mods" to his bikes. He came up with the ideas and we put pen to paper sketched up an idea and we got to building. He shifted to only playing computer games when he was not fixing or thinking up ways to upgrade his ride. When he got old enough to drive he started working on his car, an old Jeep Cherokee. One day out of the blue he comes to me and wants to paint the car, the paint was kind of tired. With the help of the local body supply owner we got together some paint and supplies and he painted his first car. We set up one of those portable garages as a paint booth, hey it worked. Since that time he has attended several PPG painting classes been to Lincoln welding school. He now uses all that computer gaming "training" to run cad software. There is some benefit to all that time playing video games, hopefully it will lead to a skill using cad cam or other technical computer skill. He currently is designing and prototyping aftermarket performance auto parts using the skills learned starting with his bike.

Perhaps you can get the kids interested in upgrading their bikes and get them away from the computer games, it worked for me.

 

[Shield Arc]

The problem is, three of the boy's mom, (youngest daughter) is so afraid her little angels will break a finger nail! Didn't bother her one bit her Dad would have to work 200-feet in the air all day tho!

 

[timster2]

The problem is, three of the boy's mom, (youngest daughter) is so afraid her little angels will break a finger nail! Didn't bother her one bit her Dad would have to work 200-feet in the air all day tho!

My wife use to freak out when he was welding or running the mill, lathe or drill press she was always worried he would hurt himself. Took a while but she got use to the idea that this was real training and not just playing. She was worried he would ruin the car when he painted it to which I answered you gotta learn on something why not HIS car.:thumbsup:

 

[Iplayfarmer]

I put a stinger in my kids' hands when they were about 6 years old. I snatched up cheap used hoods wherever I could find them so that the kids could watch and learn when I was out in the shop welding. I still let them burn some rod every now and then. Soon enough I'll get them running beads and sticking metal together so it will stay stuck. It's never too early to teach a kid the value of work and a little creativity.

My son loves to hand around when I'm fabricating and make all kinds of contraptions out of the scrap that falls to the ground.

 

[yomax4]

That's great to get the kids invilved. I have 3 daughters that insisted that they get to try to weld. Now my wife even cuts things with the Plasma ans welds plant stands, Re-bar for staking trees and other minor things she breaks. Of course i have to referee her decisions. The AD Hood really is a huge innovation for welding but I also like my " Tig Pen " looks like a mini baseball bat that has a small wheel that feeds tig rod so you don't have to. You can hold it perfectly steady and it makes Tig welding a lot easier.