I was thinking about how many people I have taught TIG or MIG welding to in the last year and how few of them I run into again. I’m guessing some picked it up quickly and don’t need any help or rarely weld, and other’s might have tried it a few times and given up. For me personally learning TIG welding was one of the most frustrating tools I have learned, I stuck the electrode hundreds of times. I still stick it occasionally but it’s pretty rare. I owned the TIG welder so I had a pretty high incentive to push through till I got the hang of it. It’s too easy to give up on a new tool at the makerspace because it only cost $10 to try it. If you abandon it, so what.
Our welding classes are extremely short at 3 hours compared to community college classes that go for a semester or two. My approach has been to teach what it should look like and sound like and what is going wrong or right at the moment, the rest can be learned through practice and youtube, and more practice.
When I was first learning MIG I had some questions for our welder at work and his reply was “Well you can’t learn to be a welder in an afternoon” and he wouldn’t help me so I had to figure it out. It would have been helpful to have a few patient welding buddies to talk to.
An occasional welder to me is someone who is pretty new at it, maybe a little frustrated, but determined to figure it out, or someone who is getting the hang of it but doesn’t feel like they are qualified to help someone else. But that second group can be very helpful because they just learned something or picked it up from practicing and probably remember what they went through to get where they are.
So I’m wondering if there is interest in scheduling some casual occasional welder events with:
New welders who have taken a welding class and practiced a few times on their own but are still struggling and not ready to give up just yet.
and
New welders who have taken a welding class and practiced a few weeks or months and feel like they are starting to get the hang of it and are willing to try to explain it to someone who is struggling.
We could get together an hour or two before the metal shop meetings, or an evening (Mondays are best for me) Ideally I would like to get commitments from anyone taking welding classes to come to at least 3-4 of these get togethers to try to make it self sustaining so we always have some struggling people and a few people who just got past the struggling stage willing to help.
And we always need more instructors. If anyone is interested in teaching let me know, I have other things I could teach besides welding. Best part of teaching is meeting people, I have many new friends that I have taught welding to and who come to the space often enough that we bump into each other
@Team_Metal_Shop
Please discuss…
