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Continue ShoppingHappy 2025 to all our customers and blog subscribers! The year started with David and I taking our 4 year old twins Ada and Imogen down to the workshop in the ice and snow for their first welding lesson. All of our weathervanes, hanging signs and other metalcraft is TIG welded for it's precision, strength and neatness. It can take years to become competent at TIG welding, but we do have a MIG welder tucked away that had not been used since we moved up to Scotland... MIG welding is significantly easier as it is not much more than being a case of pointing the torch in roughly the right direction, pressing the trigger and moving it along at a fairly steady speed.
It got off to a bad start. The MIG welder is clearly a lot more 'electricity hungry' than our regular TIG welder, and immediately tripped out the power. So, off went David to the derelict cottage next door to find where to turn everything back on, while the girls and I smashed up some lumps of ice on the single track road outside.
After this midly annoying interlude, we went straight back to try again. Ada was first, as she has zero fears of anything. Imogen was happy to hold back a little, presumably to see if any harm came to her twin, and when Ada was still in one piece after several minutes, she was equally keen to get involved. We dressed them both in my extremely oversized welding jacket, and with a hat on, we found a small enough welding mask that just about fitted on the tightest setting. The hardest bit was rolling their sleeves up far enough to release their hands!
Anyway, David used a magnet to hold two pieces of scrap steel together, and stood with each of them making sure the torch was pointed in roughly the right direction. Both of them pulled the trigger when asked to, and did not get scared by all the flying sparks which I thought they might have done. The result was genuinely some really not bad welds - I think I have definitely seen worse done by 'professionals'! We'll definitely get back to the workshop for some more practice over the coming months, and when they are able to do it without a grown up holding the torch, we have a few little projects in mind for things they can make for themselves.
I think it's so important to teach kids practical skills whether it's woodwork, sewing or welding, for those of us lucky enough to have the facilities. These days you can get pretty much anything at the click of a button and we're in danger of losing the appreciation of where 'things' actually come from and the work that goes into producing them. It's also fairly well understood that most people feel really good when they create something beautiful or useful for themselves - Ada and Imogen certainly felt like very grown up girls being trusted to use the welder.
I learned to weld when I was 25. I loved it immediately, despite dressing completely innapropriately and buring a purple triangle into my chest because I hadn't done up the top button of my boiler suit AND dropping a red hot piece of steel down my rigger boot because my jeans were tucked into them (OUCH!). Ada and Imogen clearly loved it too and came away really proud of themselves, though thankfully without the injuries I sustained on my first forays into metalwork! Looking forward to a future of creating interesting stuff together for as long as they are interested.