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The Workshop Shed – the excellent diary of a fabricator

In a regular new feature on our blog we are dedicating a number of posts to the activities and experiences of our customers, the smart people who have seen sense and bought one of our machines. For this feature we are focusing on a hugely successful blogger and keen pro-hobbyist fabricator called Andy who can be found at The Workshop Shed.

His blog is his diary where he shares his thoughts on setting up and using a small shed as a workshop, using and improving metalwork tools such as a pillar drill and small lathe and operating a home foundry – melting aluminium in a flowerpot furnace. Diverse and interesting stuff indeed!
Click the image to read more.

Andy recently bought a TIG Welder from us; here are some of his reasons behind his decision:

“I first spotted R-Tech Welding on eBay selling some shop soiled seconds and nearly bought one of them, however I waited a few months and bought this TIG Welder which is a 160A version instead.
It works off a domestic supply. I am planning to work on small projects for the workshop, so I mostly work with steel. I wanted to work inside and ARC or MIG generate lots of sparks, hence the TIG.
I’m not planning to weld long seams or large items did not need speed advantage of MIG. The controls on this welder such as slope up/down and gas post flow give flexibility when working with different sized materials. The price was higher that some simple transformer based welders but still within my budget and less than welders that could be bought on the high street and being inverter based it was not too heavy.
The argon gas means that the welds don’t need cleaning up after welding. The welder came with the TIG torch and enough accessories to get me going.

I bought the disposable gas so that I could try out the welder on the day that it was delivered but retrospectively it would have been better to stick with the supplied regulator and to have sourced a large gas tank up front.

I would have loved to have bought the AC/DC welder with the pedal control but the price was significantly higher and I’m not expecting to be welding a lot of aluminium.”

Not only does Andy’s site give visitors a huge stack of useful links and features it is also a comprehensive diary of one man’s life a s a part-time fabricator, often using spare time to do the things he loves doing the most, very much like a lot of us do (me included). His experiences give a valuable insight into how things are done and the process of learning and moving forward with things – which, in all honesty, makes for a very refreshing read these days. Of particular note is a recent post about a small TIG project he has been working on (making a battery box for a solar light project) – make sure you have a read of this by clicking on ‘A Little TIG Project‘.