Sometimes help comes from the strangest places. Here I've been struggling with deciding whether I should by a welder and learn how to do some light welding vs hiring someone to do it for me.
Neither really had a good side and each had a bunch of down sides. Starting out with how much would it cost to buy a welder vs hiring one? Then, how long would it take me to learn to reliably weld vs hiring a pro?
Throw into all of that what the he77 am I, an antique car restorer, doing in a hot rod forum? Damifiknow. Other than I no longer go to that "other place". :roll:
I made a few phone calls and could find no one local (within 35 mile radius) to do any welding. I was seriously leaning towards buying a welder that Grumpy showed me in another thread. I went in town to take care of some chores and ran into a friend and asked if he knew any welders.
As a matter of fact he did. The local veternarian builds race cars.
So off I went in the hopes I could get him to do my welding.
Nope. My welder is too large to transport to your house. Bring your car here.
I can't. It's disabled.
Buy a welder and do it yourself, he said.
But I don't know how.
I'll teach you.
Great. I still need a welder.
Buy a cheap one, he said. He then starts to describe the one Grumpy gave me a link to. I showed him a print out of it. He said that would do nicely.
Then, he not only said he would teach me to use it but that he would also come out to my house and using my welder he would make sure what I was doing was done correctly.
I went to Home Depot and they didn't have one in stock.
So I ordered it on line.
Moral of the story, if you need work done to your antique car go to a vet who races cars and get him to do it for you. :mrgreen:
Meanwhile, while all that was going on, my air compressor broke a belt. It's only belt. This air compressor is capable of painting the car but barely. It's only a few months old. I bought it mostly for light use around the shop. So I have pretty much decided to buy the compressor that will leave no doubt at all that it can do the job.
Geez, this can get expensive. But I knew that getting into it all.