This is a shot of the L.A. skyline right at sunrise. You can make out the Staples Center on the left. The reflection of sunlight in the middle of the photo was just pure luck. No smog on this day!
A bunch us (students) at LATTC's welding program are currently working on a display to show what the welding program is all about. Here's what we've got so far. Almost everything here was welded together or fabricated in the welding shop.
(Left) This side view provides a nice shot of the crane. The crane arm was made entirely out of welding rod. The staircases were made out of sheet metal and crimped into shape by a sheetmetal "bender" (I don't know the official name of it).
(Right) This is a closeup of the crane. Some of my classmates did a great job fabricating the steering wheel and gear shifts. And if you look carefully, you'll see that the driver seat sits on coiled springs. Look at the quarter (on the driver seat) to get a sense of the size proportion. The axle for the wheels rotate and both the crane's cab and the actual crane arm pivots 360 degrees!
One of my contributions was this model sized basic oxy-acetylene outfit. I welded pretty much everything out of mild steel and welding/brazing rod.
This picture is a bit deceiving, so I put a quarter in the photo to show the model's actual size. It was too hard to round over the tops of the oxygen and acetylen cylinders using steel, so I figured wooden dowels would be much easier to fabricate. With a little paint, no one can really tell its wood and not metal. And with a little creative thinking I realized that green and red electrical wire is a perfect replica of what actual oxy-acetylene hoses should look like.
Trying to gas weld such small parts (even using a double aught welding tip) was difficult. But all in all I'm pretty happy with how this miniature model came out.
Here's the oxy-acetylene setup hard at work. My classmate and I spent an afternon bending and welding nine of these stick figures out of welding rod. It was much easier to weld steel rod as opposed to yellow brazing rod. But I insisted that, there be at least one yellow stick figure in the display (I'm the only Asian welder in the class this semester--gotta represent the New Chinky Workshop!!!)
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This stick figure is hard at work lifting some welding rod cutoffs onto this welding table. I really like how the arms are secured to the spine of the stick figure. By coiling up some wire in a cross pattern, I was able to make the arms swing up and down and from left to right.
In the end, it was about the students showing their appreciation for welding.
So what do you do with hardwood plane shavings? Here's my solution. One of my new side hobbies is trying to grow an herb garden. I'm not that much of a gardener, but I really want to have some flavorful ingredients on hand during the spring/summer BBQ season. Here I planted some thyme into the ground. I don't have much experience growing this stuff, but I noticed its foliage tends to drape down to the ground. I wanted to prevent other weeds, grasses, etc. from crowding out the thyme. So my leftover plane shavings serve as free mulch. I made sure there wasn't any walnut or softwood shavings in the mix (I've heard those varieties can be harmful to some plants).
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