Welding Podcast Episode 2

Welding Podcast – audio with a Welding Professional about General Welding Concepts

Below you can find a transcription of the above podcast/video about welding concepts, including firearm welding, specialty projects, and day-to day work for a broad based welding services company

B: “So we’re back talking with twin Angel welding we’ve got Josh Scott here we’re going to talk a little bit about some of the projects that a full-service welding shop does on a regular and uh his shop is out in Iowa so there’s going to be probably a little bit more AG work and some of the stuff agricultural work that comes along with you know being in that region but we’re going to talk about a couple of different ideas and things that uh typical customer would ask about when it comes to welding and so how are you doing tonight?”

JS: “Oh I am doing absolutely good I woke up on the right side of the grass so you can’t ask for much more” 

B: “That’s always a plus when you’re alive in the morning right that’s right yeah for sure so uh I want to talk a little bit about projects and I want to talk about uh some of the things you know everything for practical to decorative to you know security related to you know pretty much anything that a commercial business would be looking for when they’re trying to engage with a Welding Services shop or a fabrication shop um aside from you know big contracts where it’s like oh we want you to do all of our mounts for our uh you know shocks on off-road vehicles well that’s more of a production shop thing I want to really talk about some of the one-off stuff that you get to do as a full service welder and so I’d like to maybe start with like the whole uh security side you know fences Gates entry systems those types of things where you’re you might be welding together heavy duty uh you know entry gates for property or where you might be doing you know some of the more decorative work like say for an apartment building just for the in out access or where you might even be doing uh some something decorative or super heavy duty that you can’t get at like a Home Depot or a Lowe’s or like a security uh door or something like that that would go on you know where you’d mount it to the outside frame of a of an entry door or something like that so maybe just talk a little bit about some of the jobs that you’ve done that you know stick out in your memory about some of those things.” 

JS: ”Okay um yeah absolutely um I have done I’ve probably done more gate work than I’d like to admit yep some of the I mean some of the gate projects that are hard to come by um as you mentioned you know whether you’re Going Home Depot Menards whatever the whatever your store is that you’re going to um are the the math the massive uh cantilever Gates um which are typically you know those are typically used um to cover driveways for commercial properties uh you’re talking Gates that could be as well you know I’ve done them up to 40 50 60 foot long um and anywhere from six to eight foot tall eighth um those Gates land on rollers and roll across the driveway while those Gates have to be you know they have to be heavy duty when you say cantilever you mean like at like a uh like a railroad stop type of you know like a drop bar or are you talking about something that rides on a track that might be like an upside down uh angle iron like a triangle type of thing yep I’m talking something that’s riding on a rail or uh typically They Ride On rollers uh they’re typically round round tubing um that rides on a roller and they slide across the the driveway…”

B: “You can get those to 60 foot spin oh yeah wow and how do you do that infrastructure from an infrastructure perspective because I mean 60 foot even say on I don’t know typical galvanized tubing or something like that that seems to me like it would just Flex too much. How do you because it’s on uh like a curb or how do you usually mount it when it’s that big of a span?”

JS: “When typically when it is mounted um there are typically uh posts that go in there and there are supports that have to be put in every oh I can’t even remember what the standard is for it and I’m sure it differs from state to state anyways yeah um but you but you will have uh you’ll have supports and you’ll have support posts those support posts will then have rollers on those and the entire thing sits on those rollers um generally something that large they’re put on a motorized system so that it you know you just type in your entry code and the gate gate motor engages and slides the entire gate.” 

B: “Sure so what what typical materials would you use for something like that is that something where there’s off the shelf components are you typically buying like one inch bar stock you know Square to make you know 

JS:”Typically those are you’re looking at uh about two and a half inch give or take um galvanized tubing and it is typically something that large and that massive you’d be looking at an 11 gauge or better just to support it and then the amount of bracing that has to go into something like that to keep it like as you said to keep it from flexing yeah then yeah it is a lot of measuring a lot of um yeah measure twice cut one for sure yeah so is most of that typically Hollow 

B: “Because I mean it’s obviously galvanized has its place right I mean whether galvanized does really well in weather unless you’re looking for you know control rust and then you’ve got to like make sure you’ve got the steel prepped right and stuff but galvanized a fantastic product for relatively cheap because it’s so heavily produced but is it also because of weight I mean just because you’ve got so much span there you tend to cut a lot of weight having that Hollow tubing or well I mean typically I mean you’re you’re talking fencing um I’m yet to see too much fencing that is done solid and isn’t done um with a hollow tube whether it’s round or Square except in like big high security facility or something like that correct yeah and even even then they’ll a lot of times they’ll just use a thicker gauge hollow tube and still end up you know it’s like well okay we need more security well that’s what they make barbed wire and razor work for for sure for sure and for some of those facilities because we’re going to probably talk a little bit about that as we get along in this in this audio track as well because I think there’s a lot of things that um that commercial businesses don’t necessarily realize they need until they actually need it right and so yeah I’m not going to put concertina wire or you know barbed wire on my fences that doesn’t make any sense I don’t want a liability until you get broken into and you have all the wheels taken off of your trucks or you know someone comes in and takes your generators off of the back of your you know uh vehicles or somebody comes in and causes problems for your electric Chargers by cutting the cables out or whatever it is well all of a sudden now you might be a fan of concertina wire or barbed wire on your fence in your you know parking lot or whatever so I think sometimes that’s overlooked Yeah we actually overlooked that uh ourselves and yeah it wasn’t long after that it was like well okay yeah we need to add a add about three rows of barbed wire to the top of the fence to keep keep stock that’s sitting outside from keep it on the lot yeah basically let me ask you a little bit about that because I think sometimes people too they they look at that they say that’s a really daunting challenge right especially from the liability perspective because a lot of city ordinances especially if you’re a little more urban uh instead of being completely you know rural you you sometimes will have to get permissions and approvals even to put in barbed wire correct do you have any thoughts on that or how to navigate that or is that is that a pretty quick trip to the County planning office type of thing yeah that’s typically if it’s a commercial property it’s just a matter of going in and filing for the uh permit to get it done

um just go in check check it out and find out what is or isn’t allowed in your area um sometimes they’ll allow for barbed wire but they won’t allow for razor wire if they allow for barbed wire you know it’s like okay well you can put up barbed wire but it has to be two prong or it has to be three prong you can’t put up four prong um so I mean and that’s mostly a liability concern basically you you want to get the permitting so if somebody does come and try and break in

you don’t get caught with some lawsuit because it’s an actual criminal trying to break in you’ve posted a proper signage and that sort of thing because that is something that comes along with you know adding extra security to a facility you have to have signage right you have to alert people that there’s you know XYZ or whatever because if they do get hurt there are some less than scrupulous lawyers that will take that case on right yep next thing you know next thing you

know you as a businessman are paying the criminal yeah it’s pretty pretty wild we have some of that issue and we we talk guns a little bit on this uh podcast as well so you know we have some of those issues that come along with you know ccw’s or or castle doctrine or home defense and that sort of thing where you know people will break into a home and it’s like but now we’re gonna sue you because you shot me and didn’t kill me right now I’m gonna sue you because I broke into your home and I cut my arm on your window it’s like whoa what or you shot me and I’m not dead well you you tortured me or whatever it is and I don’t get too part of the politics of it but there are some legitimately bad lawsuits that that happen as a result of criminals doing criminal activity and they’re not wanting to take responsibility for the actions right I spoke to a buddy here a while back that was looking into his laws and he was telling me how they uh

where he lives um if someone breaks into their property or their property they are allowed to

shoot them however they’re not allowed to shoot them in the back right and you can’t shoot them in the back as they’re running away and he was like you know but there’s nothing in that law that says I can’t shoot him in the leg until they turn around there you go for sure and uh like I said we don’t want to talk too much politics because right people get pretty feisty about what they believe but there is definitely a situation especially during certain times a year or during certain periods of time when the economy is down where you have criminals decide to you

know hey it’s open season now and hey I can’t I can sue these people if I if anything goes wrong as long as I don’t die I’ll be okay and uh yeah I think that’s part of what you as a welder probably hear from a lot of consumers as you’re doing security upgrades or long projects that have to do with perimeter controls and things like that absolutely um yeah a lot of yeah a lot of the Open Season mindset with criminals um and yeah the the way the economy goes and people not wanting to work um leads to a lot of people wanting more fencing put up um for sure more a lot more security um you know they just yeah people people take pride in what they work for and they want to keep it and you know it’s in situations like that it’s my job to go in and make sure that hey this is as secure as we can make it sure can you have you done and I don’t know if this is really in your sweet spot a lot of like I said I think a lot of people don’t realize a full service welding shop pretty much does everything it’s over the many years that you’ve

been doing it you probably have touched a job in just about every corner and every facet that there is in fabrication and welding but I know some of the companies that provide let’s say like fully metal you know metal perforated screens and things like that for like retail installations or you know sliding um the crisscross cross pattern sliding lattice that goes across the you know glass storefronts and things like that do you ever work on any of those types of projects or is that something that mostly whoever is the purveyor of that material they have their own service provider or how does that work usually a lot of times those are um I haven’t done a whole lot of actually manufacturing those I’ve done a handful of repairs sure on those type project projects

um and I mean it’s one of those things where there’s companies out there that produce those and produce them well yeah although obviously like I said I’ve had to go and do repairs so um even even something like that is not um you know if somebody wants in they’re gonna try and get in and first you’re going to get you hit a car with one of those it’s gonna make it so you can’t slide it anymore for sure right I mean it’s it’s definitely something that’s either going to have to have a full redoing or you’re gonna have to go in and move large sections out and put new sections in and for a shop owner let’s say they’ve got a captive welder or something that does that installation for them they may not have the thirty thousand dollars to pay that same welder to do it they may have to say I already had the installation my side posts are good my two end points are good but I need a section that’s six feet wide or ten feet wide replace what can you do for me right and that’s where a guy like you would come in and say save a little bit of money I might be able to help you with that it might not be an ideal solution from a holistic perspective but it’s a pretty damn good solution for somebody that doesn’t have an extra forty thousand to pay a second or third time for it right correct yeah um yeah something like that would be con I would consider something like that kind of a one-off custom job because I’m having to go in and measure and I’m having to you know rebuild the section for that in the specific measurements that are needed yep um so but yeah it’s definitely something within our wheel frame that we’re able to do for sure let me ask you a little bit about um some of those like sliding shutters and here in Iowa you guys get hail pretty pretty bad hail doesn’t usually travel sideways but sometimes it doesn’t in Iowa right oh maybe in Nebraska but uh do you do any of the like full

metal window like roll Downs or slide down type coverings where you’ll install like a channel on each side of the window and then they can either put in like plywood or whatever it is for storm shutters or how have you ever worked on anything like that in Iowa or is it the weather’s a little bit weird in Iowa yeah the weather is extremely weird in Iowa in fact the saying here goes that if you don’t like the weather stick around for five minutes because it’ll change right for sure but yeah no here in Iowa you don’t see a whole lot of those shutters um and my I mean my personal thought on it is you know hey they’re just you know not needed that much here because you know um typically even hail damage our Windows typically hold up to the size of hail that we get around here and that’s particular because hail falls down it doesn’t necessarily travel sideways into your window right typically it typically it falls straight down and if it is traveling sideways

you’ve got more to worry about than the hail for sure no question what about like for skylights or anything on the road specifically for uh for Skylight securitization I’m sure that you’ve been on top of a commercial building in a strip mall or something like that where it’s like hey we just got broken into through our HVAC access or our fire access what can you do to help us out is that something that you have encountered in the past um that’s something that I’ve oh man the criminals around the criminals apparently go to more extremes than they do around here okay um yeah around here they’re just gonna if they can’t break into the door they’re typically just going to go on to the next building until they find they can break in for sure and that makes a lot of sense too right I mean usually in a community like you know in an Iowa type Community you

got people who are looking out for each other it’s not like a a huge urban sprawl where you know you get like a riot twice a year because you know people are angry and they decide to break into 40 stores instead of one

right however you know like I said you know you hear those stories on the news and as a welder and as a business owner it’s you know those thoughts and those products and you know how to you know how to alleviate those problems you know those thoughts run through my head and it’s it’s something that I have looked into and it’s yeah um yeah there are products out there that can help with that um there are systems that can be built to do that um they’re systems that I’ve thought of myself to alleviate some of those problems and they just haven’t made it to market yet yeah we’ve talked a little bit about uh you know securitizing the entrance way to you uh grain silos and some other things where you know you might have a retrofit from something that’s been you know been in in use since the 70s or 80s where you know there are better systems now but their infrastructure needs to remain they need upgrades on certain parts of it right and it’s like most of those grain silos that were built in the 70s were probably built better than than they are now uh, so keeping the infrastructure is fine but they still need to have better secure access at the top or you know better ways to sift the grain or be able to keep it from clumping and things like that so those are things that you’ve you’ve encountered quite a bit I do have to ask though because your watch is in in the window you weld with that watch on because I I see no splatter on the glass you know what there is no there is no splatter on the glass um I do weld with this one on wow this watch typically stays underneath my welding glove

um but yeah otherwise this watch is pretty indestructible I was gonna say they I know they’re pretty pretty uh well made watch as far as like durability but what absolutely I do want to talk a

little bit about uh about the gloves you use actually because I I think people who might be interested in welding you know they they either go one way they either go with the super cheap you know really nasty split hide you know cowhide type gloves that are really hard to wield or they go Way Too Thin With You know the goat skin or you know you know kids skin type of gloves and then they get too heated too fast right because gloves are very much indicative of the type of welding you’re doing right if you’re TIG welding I can guarantee you’re using a goat skin glove or a pig skin glove at the very thickest of pigskin glove right can you talk a little bit about gloves and dexterity oh man absolutely um so yeah as you stated whether you’re doing Meg or TIG um there’s a difference in the glove and a difference in you know how much heat it’s going to take how much heat your hand is going to take um you know and for that purpose um myself personally I tend to use a cowhide um I I like a nice thick leather um my gloves should I probably change out my gloves probably at least at least twice a month yeah I’m changing changing and getting new gloves um if you were using a goat or a or a deer skin though you’d probably be doing that five to six times a month though wouldn’t you I mean probably yeah if I was using a thinner thinner glove um and myself if I’m doing TIG work um or if I’ve got long runs where I’m doing real heavy material with Mig um I will actually use a heat shield over my sure my off hand as well and um holy cow yeah we’ll keep OSHA out of this this next cursor

yeah I actually do not wear a glove on my right hand because my I’m right-handed yeah um that hand is the one that’s on the trigger it’s away from the heat um it’s away from the direct heat source so I have actually found my supplier I’ve talked to them and they’ve actually gotten to the point where I go in to buy gloves and they will sell me just the left hand glove instead of having to buy everything I and I I did some of the opposite of that which is weird but I used to do a lot of brazing work and brazing doesn’t need to be nearly as hot and I was almost always using oxyacetylene and I would use no glove on my rod hand where I would be putting the stick into the you know because braise is just a different Beast right I mean it’s a much lower melting point things like that but I just wanted that extra dexterity at the tip of the rod feed as opposed to the torch right and I would just angle the torch so I didn’t have to get you know my hands burnt or whatever and I probably had a three inch lead or something on the on the rod but yeah that’s interesting to think as you as you would be doing manufacturing youknow or long runs let’s say in a building capacity or you know even on a 60-foot fence where you know you’re gonna do the same well 30 times or 20 times might make more sense to have the dexterity that you need to just get it done quickly and efficiently right of course and it’s you wouldn’t be doing that on a sanctioned job where OSHA’s on you know has presence or something like that obviously and that’s just because not it’s not just a safety thing it’s it’s also a conforming thing right as you work with other businesses you you come in line with their compliance as well so you you just kind of bite the bullet and yeah this is what I normally do but this is the way you want it done so we’re going to do it the way you want it done that’s interesting it’s interesting to hear you say and maybe this is only interesting to me because I like welding but those that like welding that might be listening it’s interesting to hear you say you use such a a glove that’s on the thicker side of the spectrum but you prefer some of the best you know better dexterity you know types of uh you know when you’re welding you’d rather not use a glove because you like the decks area but you got a heat shield so you don’t necessarily have to worry about that and it’s on the trigger interesting yeah and it’s uh a lot of you know a lot of those type of issues comes down to you know welder by welder everyone has their own preference of how they do it um you go and ask you know it’s it’s the difference between okay well do you prefer Miller welders or less than well for sure um isn’t that interesting too though that there’s still really two monopolies in welding issues I mean you you probably have the Harbor Freight contingency now as well because a lot of hobbyists that might even dabble in more commercial stuff they’re going to be using probably a cheaper welder but yeah I think that Butler and Lincoln are the two welders after 100 years I mean oh yeah and there’s a there’s a handful too that are really coming up there and starting to compete as well but isn’t like Hobart even owned by one of them too I think and and there they used to be one of the Third I believe so yeah Hobart Saab um but yeah and it’s funny that you mentioned the uh the Harbor Freight because uh their quality um on some of their machines has actually really improved quite a bit as well in fact I own a titanium yeah they’re actually a fantastic machine if you’re unwilling to spend six thousand dollars on a a Miller set up or something and even then you’ve got some of the amperage control and and voltage control on that machine that probably 20 percent better capacity than what you’re getting on a Lincoln or a Miller out of the box for this for the same size right which seems insane right because you’re thinking a lot of people have in their mind Harbor Freight this oh I’m not gonna buy that and it’s like actually they’re wealthy machines and some of their welding tables and Welding Accessories are actually not that bad right and then particularly with their titanium machines though they’re fantastic yeah the titaniums I absolutely like I said I I bought mine I have an unlimited 200. um and I absolutely love the machine it’s a dual uh dual voltage so I can run it off a 110 or 220. um it’s a multi-process machine which means that one machine I can run Mig TIG or stick off of it yep I’ve got an old uh Miller that I got at a ridiculous deal that was just so lightly used that I think I paid two thousand dollars and it was like a 9 500 machine or something like that and I was just like I can’t pass this up you know but I don’t use it I’m not aware I’m not

a welder per se right so I’ve got this beautiful machine sitting in the garage with tanks that you know are amazing and you know torches that are amazing but I I weld maybe three times a year right so it is interesting because here here we’ve got a production shop that that’s probably your go-to mobile welder I would imagine right the Harbor Freight yeah it just makes so much sense to be able to move it everywhere and the size is like perfect and you’ve got enough control with what you’ve got on there on board with the electronics it just makes sense to have that as a mobile welder minus that requires a cart right and this is lightweight enough it can be picked up and just hauled wherever it needs to go which is one of the other things I absolutely love about

the little machine yeah um in fact a lot of my a lot of the mobile welding that I do I actually will

take that machine and I’ll just throw a generator in the back of my truck and run whatever needs to be done off of that machine yeah 

and let’s talk actually a little bit about that because I think as uh as you arrive to a job site it’s never going to be perfect especially from your perspective right A lot of these guys will say oh I’ve got this problem and it’s not that big of a problem and I’m sure I’m sure you can do it in 30 minutes it’s like okay cool and you get there and you’re like wait a second it’s going to take me three hours just to jig this up because it’s in the middle of a field and I need you know I gotta drive my truck to get the vice in the right spot to be able to keep it level and it’s like so I think sometimes people don’t realize that can you talk a little bit about things that that commercial or or even agricultural individuals that need you on like ranches and things what are some things

that might be able to help them help you be more efficient because obviously I think I’ll give you two hours instead of six hours because you got to do a bunch of setup it’d be a lot better the the number one the absolute number one because when you said that the thing that my that popped into my head first is how many of these jobs I’ve gone out to where it’s like oh yeah it’s just a small crack or a small break you know shouldn’t take you very long I only need you know four inches or six inches well and I get out there and what they fail to tell me is that oh well yeah the paint wore off you know 10 years ago and it’s rusted all to you know right and it’s and oh yeah and we tried to fix it about five years ago so you now have you know you’ve got six inches worth of dog crap weld that needs to be ground off and then you’ve got to clean the rust off and you’ve got to straighten the inside flange and you’ve got to add a stiffener and I think some people don’t realize that sometimes so yeah how can they communicate that would help you understand it better is it like send me a picture is that helpful 100 helpful um in fact I will you know if people message me with jobs like that um or call me with jobs like that I will nine times out of ten I will actually ask them hey can you send me a picture of this um can you you know go out and get a couple pictures of the area that needs repaired the area that needs welded right uh that way I can get a better idea of what I’m walking into and I can probably you know without even having to come out there I can probably shoot you an idea of what it’s going to cost you to repair it yeah not not only that but just environmentally right so if you’re if you’re walking into a barn that’s 60 feet tall stick built barn and you have nowhere to tie off a ladder or even the idea that you need a 60-foot extension or you’re going to need to put some scaffolding across two platforms or something at 60 feet high that’s a big difference than if you’re going over there like I can pull my A-frame six foot ladder off the back of my truck right so that some of that stuff is stuffy they just need to to help you understand and give you a picture of what’s Happening yeah the best yeah the best uh practice is just shoot me a picture of what you’re needing fixed what you’re needing repaired what you’re needing built um yeah you know it’s been said a

million times throughout history you know a picture’s worth a thousand words well for me a picture’s worth a thousand dollars that’s there you go and they’re probably saving them a thousand dollars as well because then you know exactly what to do and you can get there and it’s an hour and a half instead of four and right you know they don’t have to worry about not to mention especially when you’re talking about repair work I can almost guarantee you’ve got so many odds and ends on your truck just sitting there pieces of cut you know steel and pieces of angle iron and pieces of really obscure extruded aluminum you know where it’s like hey if you’ve got a hitch but the hitch has been rusted out or torn apart or bent well I’m gonna have to grind some of that out I’m gonna have to cut some of that out with aluminum you can’t grind it you know it clogs up the wheel so you gotta cut it out and that might take a you know a

Sawzall or it might take you know a special kind of disc or it might take a band saw or you know some sort of handheld work a Dremel tool with a carbide gutters I’m but you’ll have to reinforce that right because it’s not like you can weld two inch gaps on aluminum I mean you get about a quarter inch at maybe 3 16 of an inch and aluminum starts to fall out the bottom right so even at 3 16 if you don’t have something to kind of adhere to so I think sometimes people don’t realize just how much fabrication comes with repair jobs specifically I think sometimes people like oh well yeah if you’re just going to weld something up for me no big deal it’s going to be two inches of weld or four inches well that’s gonna take you nothing it’s like well wait you didn’t tell me that was on a on an extruded piece of aluminum that has six facets and I’ve got to reinforce the interior just to be able to adhere to something and by the way aluminum is a lot harder to weld than you know mild Steel do it yeah just a little bit for sure and that’s not even getting into the

Exotics right I mean some of the Exotics you might get into with you know tantalum or stainless steel or Titanium or some of the other things I mean those are things you’ll have to know before you even go out to the job because just procuring material to work with that

even rods is sometimes difficult right because you can’t you can’t use the wrong temper of aluminum rod if you’re if you’re doing something that’s air space you know air Aerospace quality on thin grade aluminum you’re going to need a different Rod than what you’re going to need if you if you’re doing something that’s just this Billet block of aluminum right so yep that’s interesting if you think about that talk a little bit about that yeah yeah with aluminum too uh one of the other things that I run into quite a bit is well I’ve got you know we’ve got this aluminum boat and it has this part here that’s broke okay well is it aluminum or is it cast aluminum right

well well I don’t know again take a picture send me a picture of it um because cast aluminum is a whole nother ball game um welding I mean that mostly because castings of all types will have inclusions they’ll have spaces of air they pop they melt differently right is that and yeah you don’t ever know what those inclusions are because you never know where that part was made um what the fixture was that it was built in um you know what what inclusions were in that aluminum as that part was being poured and cast absolutely those things that come into play and without knowing those and you never will know them um your only option is to go in there clean that material as best you can clean it down to almost a molecular level and and then turn around weld it grind that weld out again and you may end up having to grind your weld out multiple times five or six times before you finally get a good weld in there sure and some of

those parts can’t be welded right and it’d be nice to know if you’re going to drive two hours and even if you know they have a casted piece if that casted piece has got a huge inclusion now that you can’t fill the span because it has you know some tight tolerance once it’s you know once it was in its completed State you may not be able to will that even if you grind it perfectly you may not be able to get it to where it needs to go tolerance wise at the end of the well because as you heat up aluminum even blocks of aluminum can warp even blocks of aluminum can shift and so a lot of the work that you’re doing probably 90 of your time is spent in setup it’s set up and then 10 is is spent in welding right and because you’re tacking things you may have to grind some tacking you know as you get into more complex things because things will shift with heat or you know you know as the as the filler turns fluid and that’s right thing talk to us about some of the complex jobs you’ve done uh maybe not just in aluminum but just in general where maybe the the owner or the commercial um uh user of your services didn’t really understand what they were up against when you got there okay yeah because I’m sure you’ve got some crazy stories oh I’ve got yeah I’ve got I can tell you a million crazy stories um but no one of the I think one of the most complex ones that the uh that the owner was unaware of the what all needed to go into it um I had a gentleman oh it’s probably been four or five years back now but I had a gentleman that was rebuilding a oh I don’t even know what the car was it was a 1948 or 49 um but he was rebuilding this car from the ground up yep he needed motor mounts built okay well okay we can fabricate some motor mounts those are fairly easy parts to as long as you’ve got the angle or you know you’ve got something fabbed up you know as a replica that we can then turn around and build it out of a heavy duty steel we’ll get your measurements get your holes drilled properly well his uh his mock-up that he had for this thing was built out of cardboard and Scotch tape well that’s definitely not yeah was it even close to the right dimensions or the the dimensions were were correct however since we were only using cardboard and Scotch tape the angle yeah was was not proper and I ended up having to go back and rebuild those mounts for this gentleman three times before we finally got the angle right and correct in that specific case what would have been the best practice would it have been to have like a uh an engine hoist and put it into the engine bay and take measurements on the spot or what would would it have been better to leave it where he had it in the first place and just get you in there first or yeah if he’d been able to get me in there first it would have before the engine was uncovered from the vehicle right that would have been would have been ideal or had he kept the original

amount even though they were destroyed um the angles would have been proper and

there would have been enough left that I would have been able to you know duplicate that part a little bit easier than trying to do it with cardboard and Scotch tape and unfortunately for him he

had to pay a little bit more money but worse for you because sometimes as service providers and companies we eat that stuff because we feel bad for the situation and it’s really had

nothing to do with you there’s nothing you could have done that made it better right maybe you could have said I can’t do this until you get an engine hoist in here but he was probably incessant on hey man I spent all this time building a replica and it’s like right yeah but really what I needed to do was you pulled the engine out and leave the mounts in there or you put the engine within a half an inch of where I need to be so that I can take measurements type of thing that would have been yeah that would have been ideal um but that that job ended up being a

nightmare yeah um I’ve had you know I’ve had some I’ve had jobs as simple as well here I’ve got this gate that I need built for my backyard for you know we’re fencing in my backyard I need a gate put in and but it’s on a sloped it’s on a sloped ground yep well okay I can build a slope gate that’s not a problem what’s the slope well I don’t know how to measure that you know right and I will explain to the people okay this is how you need to measure this and because those are compound angles if it’s on if if it’s on a slope and it’s going One Direction downhill sure you can measure that pretty easily but if it’s on a bevel on top of a hill that has drainage that now has a different ground cover and it’s going in multiple directions well that’s a much more complex angle right yeah I mean typically typically um this situation it was just a simple um well semi-simple anyways um but it should have been a five inch slope on a four inch or four foot gate five inch slope from the left side to the right side and these people who could not get the measurement down right yeah again I ended up building I built the gate it didn’t fit right um so I ended up actually having to go out to their location and take the measurement myself come back come back and rework that gate to the point where it would actually fit in where they wanted it to fit well and then I yeah I didn’t didn’t have very kind words for the fencing company

that had put the fence up to begin with sure but that’s an interest I’m glad you said that though because I think sometimes subcontractors and contractors in general they want to do the job as quick as they can to get out as quick as they can and they’ve got their own set of you know Corner cutting even if it if it doesn’t hurt any Integrity or  anything like that as far as the job going forward if it’s not built right like for instance if you don’t have the right amount of footing and then you have erosion underneath a 60 foot long fence well that’s going to affect the entire offense at some level right so knowing that you’re working with good contractors is another thing I think sometimes especially on the individual side but sometimes also on the commercial side where people are you know I own this business I own the lot I’m able or I’m able to make these you

know upgrades and they’re like I’ve already got the guy that put in the footings those are good and you get there it’s like wet cement you know how are you gonna how are you gonna put uh you know something that needs to be welded and leveled on on you know and probably even shot down with a Hilty gun or something like that right you know or screwed down with you know special Clips or or screws or mounts or bolts and it’s like well you know sometimes you really need to have a chat with them in the design phase right it’s much easier to contact a welder and say I don’t want to waste your time but here’s what I’m looking at I want you to be the welder

what would you suggest is I’m hiring other you know subcontractors because I need to know what it’s going to cost me when you get here and I need to make sure I have enough stuff ready for you because you’re the final piece so to speak right like you’re the finished Carpenter of some of that you know securitizing their facility or whatever oh absolutely yeah um and oh man and those those type of jobs it’s just again it’s contractor by contractor um and my biggest thing is if you’re a homeowner do do your research with your contractors um don’t just pick you know the contractor that’s the cheapest don’t make a contract can get there the soonest um do your research compare them and by all means freaking take the time to read the reviews on these people the people that have used them in the past are the people that you need to listen to yeah I actually want to talk about that for a second with you you actually have fantastic reviews and that’s great right I mean you’ve done a lot of jobs in and around the Pella area and throughout

Iowa I wanted to talk about a specific job and I won’t mention the specific place but I’ll mention the job and you’ll know what I’m talking about I’m sure um because we were talking a little bit about being prepped or being on having the understanding of what is necessary before you have someone like you a full you know a full service welder come out I’ll mention you went to a I don’t know if it was a racquet club or a swim club but basically you were replacing a corroded stainless steel uh in pool you know half in pool half out of pool step and and handle system right and yeah when you’re next to water with an electronic Arc you can’t have people splashing things on you right so talk about some of the preparation that had to go and by the way you got you know rave reviews for the way you handled the situation getting in and out and being

able to you know assess it and then you know you basically shut down the pool for a fraction of the amount of time they thought you were going to shut down the pool but talk about that a little bit because I think people don’t realize like oh people can’t swim while you’re welding no people can’t swim while I’m welding right theoretically you can but I’m not gonna like the results if you look pretty blue light yep but no uh the preparation on something like that I mean it’s the gentleman had let me know a couple weeks in advance that they were needing this done um they were needing that project done they were needing it done by this date um so I got together with the gentleman and I asked them you know I knew hey well in order to do this I’ve got to

close your pool down or at least half of your pool right um I’ve got to close that down for the period of time that it’s going to take me to get this done how’s that going to work for you well what hours are you available okay well myself I run I run a 24-hour service I can make myself available anytime that you need me there um my only requirements is that since it’s outside I’m not doing it if it’s raining I’m not doing it if it’s really windy um if the weather’s horrible I’m not going to do it and I would prefer to do it during the daylight hours now if it real quick to stop because I I think it’s important that we go through this entire exercise but if it were a mission critical situation where you had to be outdoors it you could possibly weld under a tent or under some sort of a structure you just have to know that it’s Mission critical and you have to be prepped and they have to be prepped for it right because those are ideal conditions you couldn’t be in a downpour welding that’s not acceptable even under a tent most of the time that will be acceptable no and I have small tents that I use for situations like that um however in this situation the gentleman was absolutely wonderful with working with me um which made it easier on my end to work with him and work around his schedule uh we set up a time where it was where I was going in about an hour or so before the pool was actually supposed to close um we we uh barricaded off about half of the pool I put up some blinds so that I wasn’t bothering right you know his clientele um and I got the work done managed to get the work done in and out during daylight hours so it worked good for me worked good for him um but yeah working next to water like that um is always an issue especially if it’s you know splashing around um so it was a matter of well you know we don’t want to close the whole pool down if we don’t have to all right we’ll just keep everybody on that end of the pool and we should be good yeah I want I want to dive a little deeper I know this is how much can you talk about a a pool uh you know handle but I think there’s some things that people Overlook sometimes like even setting up the there’s two things that stuck out to me when you said that and one is you you run a 24 7 operation a lot of welders don’t do that they open at eight and they close at five or whatever the number you know it’s gonna open at six and they close at three or whatever it is and that’s great if you’re doing production jobs on you know standardized you know uh commercial properties or something like that but issues don’t usually happen in regular busy business hours they usually happen right at the end of the day or right at the beginning of the day or right as you open it’s like oh man I need this problem solved now this is Mission critical for us now I need somebody to do this now and it’s like six in the morning or six at night or whatever right the industry that you work inthat’s uh Murphy’s Law rolls into any industry that you work in and even in welding

um to shoot any well welder will tell you that the time that their spool of wire runs out and they have to change their spool of wire because when they’re on their last weld of the day yeah yeah the preparation is super important yep it’s it’s inevitable yum that’s when you run out of weld um so yeah it’s the same uh your equipment out in the farm field it’s going to break down at the end of the day yeah it’s not going to break down and you know first thing in the morning it’s not going to break down in the middle of the afternoon it’s going to wait until the sun’s going down and you’re ready to go home and eat dinner with your wife and kids right for sure and that’s specifically why I run a 24-hour service because I myself have a wife and kids yeah um I how important it is for me to be home with them and it’s just as important for me that my customers are able to do the same thing yep um well and Logistics are easy to understand once you know what the job entails and if you’ve got a Cooperative person that says yeah we can shut down

half the pool we don’t want to but we want this done and we want it done right so we’re going to do this and obviously you’ve had a handful of really good customers you know that that you’ve worked with on things like that where they’re super complicated jobs but I think some of that is about communication and something about it some of it is about experience and and I’ll point to the second thing that stood out to me as you were kind of going through that story there and that is you’re setting up blinds right because as as you know sand in the eyes doesn’t feel very good right I mean you’re used to it now uh when and when we when I say sand in the eyes I mean when you’re looking at an electric Arc without protection on for even few seconds it can really be gnarly especially if you’re not used to seeing it you know somebody just walking by oh that’s a pretty blue light you inevitably want to look and it’s like even 10 seconds looking at that and you probably feel like you have sand in your eyes and what it’s doing essentially is it’s etching your your eyes right as they go through that that light is dangerous to your eyes can you talk a little bit about some of those things you I mean you talk about shielding The Arc which obviously made sense not only from the looking at the blue arc perspective but also if somebody came by and inadvertently splashed you you know that’s a that’s a deadly situation right so you have to Shield yourself for you know protection purposes and OSHA purposes and things like that liability but talk to us a little bit about some of those things that just come with experience as a full-service welder that you know how to do that a lot of the handy people well they might be great welders or might be able to pull off a job you when you’re paying for them you’re almost overpaying because you’re paying for Less efficiency you’re paying for Less experiential understanding of how to do those things talk to us you are about some of those things yeah you know situations like that um it’s you know you call if you call you know your local welder Bob that you found off of Craigslist or Facebook or wherever um he’s gonna come in he’s gonna just do the job um however as a commercial business your job doesn’t just you know that job doesn’t just include um you getting this piece of equipment fixed or repaired um so that your customers can use it but you also need to take into consideration the safety of your customers as well if your customers are on site then it then becomes my job to make sure they do everything in my power to prevent them from getting injured in any way and as you stated that little blue light even looking at that thing for 10 seconds um yeah I can’t remember what the statistics are but I want to say that that that blue light comes out something produces UV rays there’s some somewhere in the range of like 10 to 30 times more more than the sun yeah so looking at the sun can damage your eyes but even looking at that for a few seconds can do some real damage scratching the cornea even or or causing blurry vision or saying in the eye type of feeling and it literally is called sand in the eyes because it feels like you have Santa you have actual scratches on your eyes go on top of it and it makes it worse yep it’s a welder’s flash is what we refer to it as um and I’ve gotten it multiple times tacking I mean over the years it’s

inevitable and I’ve had it so bad myself where you wake up the following morning and you your eyes are crusted shut yeah you know you can’t even open your eyes your body’s basically trying to repair the the damage that was done and it’s filling up with pus or whatever it is you know mucus or whatever that’s trying to repair it but yeah and it’s a bad situation your eyes burn they itch um yeah it’s just it’s not any fun and so like I said um as a commercial working on a commercial job it is my job to make sure that your customers are safe from that you know potential harm yeah I want to talk a little bit more along those lines and we’re we’re already 40 minutes plus into a recording here which I the time kind of flies as you’re talking about I know it’s funny to think oh we like talking about welding but I think some of these things are very interesting right and as we talked to them as people are listening and people are listening right we have people who who like to hear us talk about welding but uh as you talk about these types of things time kind of flies but there’s a couple things I want to dive into a little bit further with that and and it’s it’s funny because I came into saying oh we’re going to talk about five or six

different we’ve talked about two things and we’re right and it’s in right so I I think there’s just so many you know episodes or so many different you know pieces of content that will probably push out here because there’s a lot more kind of facets to dive into but I think for tonight just to keep it in the same ballpark I want to talk a little bit about two things that you kind of stoked in my mind as you were talking just now just about preparation and being ready to deal with you know outside viewers or outside customers the first thing is tech welding technology from a helmet in in Eye shield perspective have come I mean they’ve come a long ways right I mean it used to be used to flip your your lid down or whatever and you know you had to hope that you kept things and you had your jigs right and you had your Rod right for when you lit the ark and you could actually see what you were doing right now you have it and what we might call like like a number five lens or something right a five Darkness where you would normally be using that for like a fire like an oxy acetylene torch so you can see what you’re doing uh you have that in your helmet already your helmet’s down you’ve got a shield that’s at a five and it instantly darkens to a 12 or a 13 or a 15 or whatever you know you have to sit up to and that way you can actually hold the you know the rod where you need you can hold the torch where you need you can pretty much see as long as you’ve got the right lighting you know what you need to do and it just makes it so much better talk a little bit about that transition over the years as Technologies get better because it’s not just mask I’m using mass as an example and shield is no example but it’s across the hood yeah the hoods are definitely the number one um that have seen that over the years I both personally I believe anyways um yeah going from the old pancake style hoods with a fixed 10 shade um to the auto the auto darkening that they have now and third by the way I mentioned 13 and 15 those are extreme that’s like if you’re inside in a tube overhead or something but generally it’s five to ten yeah I typically run about a 10 or 11.

um yeah the the fact that these hoods auto adjust anymore um some of the hoods have built-in

damper systems for uh for ventilation and for Clean Air Supply yeah um I mean just the technology that’s come along with the hoods is absolutely wonderful and um I’m going to put this out there that Miller absolutely needs to do like a voice activated Hood so that I can adjust my controls on my welder just by saying hey Miller turn my wire setting yeah that’d be amazing wouldn’t it I I never thought of that but that’s got to be an e there’s got to be an easy way to do that I mean Miller Lincoln there’s got to be a way to do that or a Hobart or whatever you know they’ve got the technology to do it it’s like hey yeah just put a voice activated deal and put a mic in my hood so that I can communicate with my welder and adjust myself because if you’re hanging from a harness you know up inside of a crawl space and you got to do you know 60 inches of welding but you don’t want to move 17 times in and out of that space because you’re kind of leaning against infrastructure as you’re going anyway right so yeah no that makes a lot of sense maybe we should uh Pioneer that but uh there he goes Miller even just voltage changes right because sometimes you’ll you know you just need to get a little bit hotter as you change on from a bevel onto a solid piece or something like that where it’s like I just need a few more amps or I just need a little bit more feed or I just need a little bit more melt or something you know as you’re talking about specifically bigger infrastructure but yeah just being able to have that and being able to dial it from my hood at a voice activated it would oh it saved me so much time and money and headache yeah no that’s interesting I I never even thought of and again this comes from somebody who knows welding understands the concepts but doesn’t do it right and really what what Miller and Lincoln and all these other guys need is a guy like you saying hey I do this every day do this and then take it seriously right because it’s not just one guy saying that you know I’m sure there’s other people out there that would appreciate the especially for like you know feed rate and or tension on the the wire or whatever it is that you need just a little bit manipulation in you know just a little bit you know you need but a little bit or a little bit less you know just to dial it in um would be absolutely wonderful yeah I mean you even talked about I don’t I try and be out of extreme wind right because your noble gas even if you got a crank to the highest you sometimes can’t get a clean weld you know yep that’s where flux core comes into play yep no that’s interesting because we talked about that extensively in the last audio tracking and yeah I think the marketing people it who you know that particularly the cheaper you know companies that are making smaller machines that you’re buying for 125 to 350 you know maybe even up to a thousand dollars which doesn’t sound cheap at a thousand dollars but that’s a cheap welding machine generally if you’re if you’re buying a welding machine and it’s below a thousand dollars and you’re expecting to do commercial quality stuff out of it it’s pretty rare even some of the really high-end stuff that’s coming out of some of the better you know Harbor Freight stuff is well above a thousand for when you get into the the stuff that can actually handle commercial you know yeah rates and commercial sizes and and the actual heat and things like that that you need um yeah no I’m glad you you mentioned that because we talked like I said extensively about flux core and flux core is pretty much good for about one or two things and it sure as heck isn’t a hobbyist trying to learn how to weld with A continuous feed because it’s just not a great weld that hobbyist that’s wanting that’s wanting to go out there and just start building uh yard art or whatever yeah we’ll get a flux Coral welder get it either go out and pay the extra money for the tag or you know get a MIG that’s wire fed with you know with a gas hookup to it or to be honest I hate to say this because I I maybe I just came out of the old school and you and I are about the same age so we we’re probably seeing the same you know Technologies at the same time but if if you really want to do something where you’re the creative or you’re the the implementation specialist in welding I really feel and again you might have different views on this obviously if you use a mid gun every day all day for your job you’re gonna need to learn on it right you’re going to need to learn feeds and you’re going to need to learn heat you’re going to need to learn how to make sure you don’t have a stem of a wire hanging off because it was too cold or whatever it is but I think one of the best things someone can do as a beginning welder even if they don’t want to be a stick welder is learn how to be a stick welder because it takes so much more finesse to get a pretty weld out of it because you’re 13 inches away from your actual contact point right and I’m not saying that’s for everybody I’m saying I think that what is lost on some people is they think I’ve got this nice torch I paid 700 for and I you know I barely know how to TIG well but guess what you’re going to spend six months learning how to control your torch and then you’re gonna spend another three months on top of that learn how to to dab and control your flow with your other hand just to get the filler right right and that’s not even that’s independent of going from size changes right that’s just like learning how to control it and yeah that’s hoping that you can find enough videos online or find some teach you well enough um because doing it on your own you’re still not going to get it right not only that but how much material have you gone through in your life right I mean you probably go through thousands of dollars in material in just wastage every month because oh yeah Welding and Fabrication requires cutting ends off and you know welding way past where you need to actually complete the weld or you know making a whole jig that’s welded together that takes an hour just to jig something up so that you can weld it right and you may never use that jig again right because it might be a one-off so can you talk a little bit about the in the field kind of experience that and and really I didn’t want to talk about the wastage because I don’t think any any good welding is wastage but there is a lot of extra that has to happen sometimes to complete a single job where you’re going to get there and without knowing that you could spend hours like a hobbyist could spend 10 hours figuring out how to how to measure for Mortar mounts like what you talked about with your your previous client you might have taken 10 hours that job because it was not set up properly but you could have done it in an hour and a half or 45 minutes maybe as far as getting measurements or placements to where you could tap something on and say this fits or this doesn’t fit talk a little bit about that because that’s important I think people don’t really get how much extra time is spent just being able to to start the job yeah being able to yeah just being able to start the job um the fixturing for you know as you spoke the fixturing for stuff like that um it’s not just about being able to look at the project and you know start you can’t just start slapping together a fixture it’s something where you need to know okay well I need to have this on this side it needs to be able to clamp here because I have to be able to get a weld in at this location over here so I can’t have a clamp over there I can’t have a have it bolted down over there um you know just different things like that you have to be able to um you have to be able to see the fixture in your mind as you’re laying it out um I know every possible scenario of what you’re going to run into um problematically and be able to avoid those problems yeah I mean you go but you’ll go through a couple of sticks of soapstone every week right and you’ll go through you know grease pencils and things like that and it’s like the average commercial shop owner isn’t going to have a clue some of the deliverable some of the things it takes to get a deliverable from a welder right it’s like well soapstone is cheap well yeah but I gotta write 500 dimensions on a piece of plate steel and then I got to make sure that that’s right and I got to be able to see them again so I can make sure that’s right while I’m welding it’s like some of those things are not really factored into the cost and so working with someone who doesn’t have to make three trips to Home Depot before they can start the project it’s a lot nicer right that’s absolutely important um myself I you know it doesn’t matter if I’m just going out to do a simple repair um I will throw extra material on my truck um because hey if I have to instead of repairing this if I have to cut it out and refabricate that part or that section um and so be I need to have that material on hand instead of having to turn around and drive all the way back to the shop to pick up material not only that but a lot of when you’re hiring guys I hate to see often Craigslist I mean you you started some of your work off of Craigslist right like I mean there there are Avenues online that make sense when you’re either starting out or when you’re looking to add work to your workflow but I think having a seasoned veteran that has a chop saw that has you know wire wheel flat flap wheels that have you know things that actually make sense instead of saying oh man I’m encountering this now I’m gonna go stop for an hour and a half take a lunch and go to Home Depot you’ve got that stuff on your truck you’re not trying to take a watch on their dime you’re trying to be like hey I want to get your job done I want to get it done right and I have this stuff to do that it’s like calling an electrician or a plumber and then them saying yeah I’ll be back tomorrow well what do you mean I got a problem now right yeah and I think people don’t realize they may run into that and not that I’m plugging your shopping we’re plugging your shop that’s what this is about but we’re not plugging your shop we’re saying look there’s real advantages here to having someone who has a chop saw who knows how to you know use a flap wheel on aluminum instead of using a grinding wheel right somebody who has you know a Scotch Brite pad mounted on their die grinder so that you’re not taking off so much metal by using a grinder and it’s like these things are super important and no one really factors them especially when you talk labor hours right because they’re thinking well I I’m gonna I’m not gonna pay 195 or 250 a labor hour for a welder when I could get one for 65. it’s like yeah you could give up for 16 teen but is the guy is the person gonna know what they’re doing are they going to have the tooling to do it and are you going to walk away with the finished product you need right and then you’re going to end up having to call me back later to fix what they messed up that’s it that’s exactly right I I have people I I was in the gun game I’m in the gun game now but I was in the gun game as a gunsmith for many years and I’d get people to bring me bag of gun and I’d say oh yeah great bag of gum like you have all the parts I don’t know just to know because I gotta reassemble it first to see what’s broken and then I gotta be able to troubleshoot it and then I gotta fix it and if you don’t have all the parts I can’t do that so what do you need to figure out right and so and it’s something I’m going to treat a customer poorly or anything but it’s more like hey if you know what’s going on and give me the most amount of information I can do my job really efficiently so if you write me something to work with I can help you save a lot of money because Bago gun might take me 15 minutes to put back together whereas they’ve been spending three four five hours putting together if they’ve got all the parts but if they’re missing three parts because it went flinging across their room and underneath their desk or their wife vacuumed it up or they vacuumed it up it’s like I can’t help you if you’re missing your your spring detent on your 1911 and I don’t have an extra one you know in my shop you know whatever so I think that’s an interesting concept and and I want to I’m gonna use that as a segue to talk about um specifically about commercial handrails just like railings handrails code upgrades uh accessibility uh upgrades things like for instance you know putting you know you need to install a ramp now for your commercial building because you’ve got uh ADA compliance issues or something like that you know you’ve installed your ramp but now you need hand railings and they’ve got a certain spec or you’re going to install a an extra brace around a toilet in a bathroom for a restaurant those types of things sometimes that’s a handyman job sometimes that’s a plumber job sometimes that’s a tile guy job sometimes it’s not sometimes it’s a welder job can you can you talk a little bit about that and and specifically from the perspective of not wanting just because railing material is probably four times the cost of say your standard galve or your standard cold roll steel or whatever especially if you’re talking about you know 416 stainless or you’re talking about Electro you know Electro polished stainless or you’re talking about um specific hand railing that has a specific height and a specific grade to Mantra ramp or whatever it is talk a little bit about some of those things um yeah holy crap yeah and a lot of this is one-off stuff right so you’re not talking to the masses here but you’re talking about Concepts because we’re not to be exactly to the inch on the job yes yeah um a lot of that stuff it’s um anything like that it’s um again that would that would come down to send me a picture of what you’re needing done or send the blueprint yep send me the blueprint if it’s something that’s just now being built um send me the blueprint send me send me the pictures of what you need and I am probably going to set up an appointment with you to come out and take the measurements myself to make sure everything’s proper everything’s in place um because as you stated the price of those materials Alone um it’s not something where it’s going to be cost effective for me or the customer if something if a measurement is off even a quarter of an inch absolutely because you won’t pass code you the inspector come out and say no this is an inch elevated too high at the end of your ramp cut it bend it or you know or redo the entire segment or whatever right they did not pass that stuff right and it’s no and it’s not a like I said if you make a simple mistake um yeah if you make a simple mistake on mild steel it’s one thing you can cut it apart grind it and you know weld it back together and call it good to go um you start talking about some of the stainless steel some of the polished you know even some of the aluminum stuff that might be powder coated right because those are Specialty Services yep um yeah there’s no grind in that there’s no cutting it um you’re going to end up damaging the surface of it you’re going to end up damaging the face of it so it needs to be done and it needs to be done right the first time yeah um the amount the amount of prep work that goes into those type of projects um is a lot more than the time that it’s actually spent doing the project yeah let’s talk a little bit specifically and there’s no wrong answer here so don’t they’ll feel like if I’m if I’m putting you on the spot don’t worry about that I think it’s more important to give people an understanding of what it would cost to work with someone that really is at the top of their field like you so okay my question is and again I don’t want you feeling the spot it’s more like you know just a general concept when when you say I I’m gonna probably set up a meeting to come out to your location and tell you really what it’s gonna cost to do this is that a meeting they need to be ready to spend a couple hours with you and pay you a couple hours or is it if you have a reasonable expectation that you’re the guy doing the implementation you’re going to eat some of that cost or how does that work in the in in the very beginning phases and it’s okay to say I have to charge hourly on some jobs right because some jobs are going to be so big you can’t just go out there and do them for free just on the measurements right absolutely um and again I mean that’s like I do with most of my work um it’s on a you know like a good job one-off job but on a good faith basis generally yeah you’re not the guy you don’t want to go out and spend four hours doing the work for the other guy right right and I won’t situations like that it’s like okay if I’m going out there and doing the work um taking all the measurements I’m taking those measurements with  me I’m not leaving them not only not only that but you’re probably the best in class to be doing that job anyway and so when you bid it because you’ve bid so many of these jobs You’re Gonna Know It Takes exactly 14 hours or it takes exactly 21hours to do this run of you know 39 inch high railing or whatever it is the average guy that’s going to go out there’s not even going to be close to you on a quote and they’re either going to eat they’re going to eat money or they’re gonna charge a lot more for that job so talk to a little bit about about that concept because and again I I don’t want anyone to think that that we’re just favoring your shops I was big Beyond Iowa’s big right this is something that somebody could be listening to in Zimbabwe right we’re talking about welding we’re not talking about your shop making millions of dollars because you have a podcast we’re talking about no there’s some information here that people need to understand when you get into a job like this can you talk to some of that a little bit oh man I would love to talk to you about that because um one of my one of my deals um everybody’s like well you know I I hate to say it but I think I’m gonna go with one of your competitors well here’s a news flash for you um I know most I know my competitors no most of the people that you’re calling my competitors and I don’t consider them competitors I consider them friends yeah um most of those guys I’ve I’ve either worked with in the past or have worked with me um they were they’ve worked for me um and that may not be a Pella thing that may not be a central Iowa thing that people kind of move if they move 100 miles away you’re still in touch with those people right and you might be the same jobs right um but anyways I don’t consider those people can competition right um if they’re the person that’s getting the job or if they you feel that they’re a better fit for the project that you’re working on by all means um by all means use that person however what I will say is if you want the job done right um give give me a call and that’s not me being arrogant because I’m going to come out I’m going to look over your project and I’m going to tell you exactly what needs to be done I had a job here just oh it was either last year the year before where they wanted me to come out and it was a commercial job they wanted a few few stairs a few steel stairs repaired as in like risers or just the stair platforms or just the stair platforms where they were welded to the risers gotcha but a lot of those welds were old they were starting to rust out and crack so I went out there and I bid the job and I went around and looked at all of all of their other stairwells well quite in Iowa we get you know if your stairs are sitting outside and you got steel stairs well when it snows and maybe it’s gonna sit there and it’s gonna it’s gonna corrode those things eventually they corrode they get rusted and they go bad um well they had a couple of them that had gone bad to the point where they were almost a safety issue didn’t want to repair those ones right away and I told them well I told I flat out told the people I’m like well look here um I can either come in and do this and that or I’m not going to come in at all right because you don’t necessarily want to get blamed for some of that and if somebody’s not going to bring their stuff up to code compliance it it’s not necessarily the type of customer that makes sense for you right because I don’t really do try and operate to your certifications and to your standards to your ethics and those are things where it’s like yeah you can cut a little bit of slack on some things but if you’re talking about somebody breaking their leg because they fell through a stairwell that’s a different story and that’s that’s absolutely it it’s um you know I I don’t have a problem coming in and you know well we want this fixed and we’ll we’ll go along and we’ll fix this later uh we’ll call you here in a week or two to fix this too I’m okay with that but when you’ve got when I come in and I can see that you have a safety issue or you know something’s just not right um I’m gonna I’m gonna call you on it I’m gonna let you know hey look this isn’t right this needs to be repaired this needs to be repaired now yeah somebody’s gonna hurt yeah um that’s the point where you can either decide to go with me and let me fix it and fix it right or you can you know like I said I don’t have a problem sending my business to one of my friends yeah for sure so not only are you a good resource anyway and they’re going to get some insights I I think most of the people you’re working with and they say this in reviews and other things and you know you’re gonna get some insight from somebody who has the experience that you have on a glance whereas a lot of these guys may not even know enough or they may be starting out you know with their businesses or you know really running a one-man operation where they don’t have you know you have oversight experience you have understanding of you know structural you know engineering you’ve got some of the blueprint experience and and you know General engineering background and stuff construction background a lot of these guys may not have they might have come and come off of a commercial line or something um right and and so I think a lot of people maybe don’t understand when you’re working with someone who does this as a business owner many of them even if they don’t do this as their full-time job they’re in the estimation side of it they’re in the measurement side of it they’re in the engineering side of it sometimes you’re going over CAD drawings with people sometimes you’re going over blueprints with people and these are important aspects to think of you don’t want to have seven people staff wise coming out to a single job when you can do it with one right right and that’s just an efficiency thing and anybody who’s running any kind of a project at any scale is going to want to be as efficient as possible right I I do want to so I I really want to get into safe rooms but I think that’s gonna have to be another conversation um because if we try and go into a different conversation then we’ll probably be here another hour and a half but I think uh you know upcoming I’d like to talk about some modular units and some safe rooms and and we will talk about that because you do a lot of those things uh for like hunting sheds for you know accessory dwelling units for Barns and stuff so for those that may hear this before we get into that topic that’s that’s on the radar for us to talk about here in the next you know few weeks or so I do want to probably close with something that talks more to what we’ve already been talking about which like I said I thought we’d come in here talking about six or seven Concepts we’ve talked about three now but uh along the concepts we’ve talked about and we probably got another two or three hours we could talk about you know with stairs and and you know handrails and fences and things right because there’s just so many things that can be done um but I want to talk about red iron for a little bit and and when you encounter red Iron and have having to weld specifically for really hardcore Commercial Code you know when you’re walking into a building that’s at a school let’s say or when you’re walking into a building that’s you know has to have a certain you know for instance it’s multi-flights of stairs where you’re using red Iron of a certain gauge a certain certain thickness and you have to fabricate stairs what are some of the things that you have to take into account when you’re talking about mating red iron or you know structural steel to what you would use for like stair Landings and and stair steps okay um you know and maybe just run with that because I didn’t really set you up that well on that but it basically I want you to talk about like basically what you would do as you’re coming because every single Elevator Shaft has to have specific code when it comes to welding every single stairwell has to have specific code 99.99 of them have red Iron as yeah outside encasement can we talk just a little bit about how you would because you know a steel stud framer or something might Hilti you know shoot a shoot a uh a pin into the Red Steel and that might pass code for some parts but when you’re talking about welding that’s not going to work you can’t just have a mechanical uh Fastener go in there and pass code some of that has to be really thought through can you talk a little bit about that um you know what in the majority of the cases like that if you uh if you look at the blueprints and like I stated in one of our last cases um last sessions um you know I am blue blueprint certified as well um and one of the things that is helpful with that is if you go in and look your blueprints will specifically State what the weld what the requirements are for the welds on those whether it’s everything down to what you are are or are not allowed to use for filler um how the how thick of a material needs to be welded to it or can be welded to it it’s all a matter of going in and looking at the blueprints and reading those and being able to read those um being able to those what is a pretty typical way to weld onto to red Iron you have to have special preparation for it or are you allowed to use continuous feed wire or is it generally an arc weld type of situation can you talk about some of the the general Trends and how you would adhere to that metal so General Trends around here um something like that you’re going every job is going to be different so I don’t I don’t want to Peg this on you but I’m saying generally General generally generally around here um stuff like that has to be stick welded um do not allow like if the welds are vertical you are not allowed to weld them downhand they have to be vertical up um that would meaning that they have to be welded from the bottom to the top right can you talk about that because I think somebody who might be a lay person listening I mean I understand why that is but I’ve actually welded red Iron welded on red Iron at commercial job sites on prevailing wage jobs where you had to be a certified welder talk to why that makes sense because a lot of people like why would you need to worry about the orientation of the weld but there’s very specific reasons why can you talk about that specifically um so specifically on something like that if you are welding from the top to the bottom um gravity yeah gravity comes into play and at that point your welds your weld puddle starts moving faster um the faster your weld puddle moves obviously the less time that it’s sitting in that spot and allowing for penetration it’s not allowing for um the proper adhesion um you know you’re not going to get a good weld those welds May occasionally look flat um and they may end up looking like a good weld the majority of the time when you’re down handing those welds will become concave and almost looks like it’s dripping yeah it looks like it’s drip which is what it’s what it’s doing right but and the interesting thing about going uphand starting at the bottom and moving up is as soon as the glow as the red goes away from the puddle it becomes solidified essentially or starts to solidify and so what you do is you’re solidifying that one puddle that you started with and then as you go above everything that’s dripping onto it is already solidified you’ve already you’re dripping onto a solidified area whereas you have a gap if you’re welding downhand and that’s dripping into the Gap right and it’slike so you almost have that like V shape on your bead and there’s usually not enough because with red Iron we’re talking usually what 5 16 or or even 3 8 half inch sometimes uh sometimes even larger than that right generally and so your gaps can be 3 16 of an inch or or more some of them are maybe up to 5 8 of an inch where you may even have to put backing in at some points right yep I’ve had a handful of them where it’s been you know a half inch Gap with a bagger plate which is incredibly difficult to well even with a stick arc welder you it’s hard to weld a half inch Gap when you’re welding two really heavy pieces of Steel that need to also form a puddle for full adhesion right so yeah that’s where the experience of having pictures or jigs or understanding and I I I’m scared to even find out how many c-clamps you have or how many uh vice grip C clamp you know uh Contraptions you’ve got because I can’t even imagine it’s probably in the hundreds and yeah it probably is yeah and I’ve got um I’ve got quite a few of them that are that have been modified personally yeah so that they specific jobs that you you know you can’t find a clamp that does this yep you know they don’t they don’t make a they don’t make a vice clamp that clamps a piece of pipe to a piece of flat metal yeah it’s true I mean you can get strap strap clamps or whatever but those don’t work if you’re using an I-beam next to it right sometimes you need to get creative with magnets I imagine yeah yeah I’ve gotten creative with magnets um I’ve got quite a few magnets as well yeah I’ve got a nice question of those floating around as well for sure but those are kind of my collecting collectors items right now yeah for sure um well I and I we’re at a almost an hour and a half and I I recognize it’s it’s probably bedtime for you because you’ve got to get to work at some point pretty soon here um I I appreciate your time here I I mean I feel like there’s probably a thousand other questions I could ask or we could talk about that we haven’t even we’ve just scratched the surface here so as how long as it may be to our wives um I really appreciate that you’re spending some time with this so that people can kind of hear you know what you encounter on a day to day and I and I promise we’re going to talk a lot more about what we already talked about tonight and in in a future episode where I’d really like to talk about modular units and some of the stuff you’re doing that’s really cool especially for the hunters of the world the the farmers and ranchers that need those extra accessory buildings or you know want something that they can put on a truck bed and bring you know into the field for hunting or bring to a vacation proper free to Corral a horse or something like that those are super super interesting because twin Angel is really on the precipice of starting to distribute some of their own uh accessory dwelling units and things like that so that’s going to be a very interesting discussion I think we’ll span probably a couple discussions on that but uh yeah so just prepare for that and I really appreciate your time tonight is there anything you want to add as we as we go out um I can’t think of anything off off the top of my head um it’s been good talk yeah like I said I’m I’m absolutely willing to discuss welding anytime you want I bet I bet you’re like man finally somebody talked about welding with right because your customers probably don’t want to listen to it because they don’t know enough about it and then there’s there’s a whole audience of people that are probably getting tons of value out of this so all right we will talk again soon I appreciate your time uh Josh all right thanks man all right bye-bye

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