Quote Originally Posted by randyr
Thanks for the advice! I used the hand-held thing for a while yesterday and I suppose it served it's purpose but it's definitely a pain in the butt to try to hold it and weld at the same time. I have some good welding gloves and I'm pretty cautious with stuff.....however, I was wearing some ripped up jeans and looked down to see how easily they catch on fire!! Yikes!! No harm done though. Probably would have been funny to an onlooker.....LOL!

Home Despot has a self darkening helmet for $100.....I see various ones on Ebay for $29-$300 so I guess it just depends on how much one wants to spend....I too am leary of many of the "great deals" on ebay!

You'll be happy to know I finished my taxes on Saturday! Woohoo! and I don't have to pay! double WooHoo!

I hope you get a break in the weather so you can do some painting. Tell me again what color you're painting the car.....

You have to be real careful with sparking from welding - I have set a pieces of steel wool on fire as well as an occasional rag. I haven't yet done my ragged jeans but that day is most likely coming as some are pretty disreputable. My wife makes them 'disappear' when they get too bad and are about to moon the neighbors.

Nice thing about Home Depot - you can hop in your car and take it back if it craps out. I was just in our local store - it looks like since they fired my old GE boss, Bob Nardelli with his 210MM golden parachute, they are cleaning house and the help is being retrained and more customer centric (how's that for a corporate buzz word ).

I picked my taxes up on Sunday - and whoopee, I get a few bucks back - just enough to pay for the washer that died on Saturday. I wish I could do my own but I have some interesting investments that take a CPA to figure out. Turbo Tax had me paying when I went thru the numbers a few years ago but when the tax person went thru the numbers, ended up with a pretty good refund, so.....

The color will be a bronze which is a mix of gold and metallic brown. I didn't like either, mind you at about $100/quart wasn't about to dump 6/7 quarts so I did mix and spray trials until I got something I like. I hope I never have to duplicate it though I do have the "formula" written down. Possible next week the weather will change according to the weather folks - but here in Upstate NY, that is never a promise, only a best guess as we are 200 miles downstream of Lakes Ontario and Erie and control it.

Gotta go rig up a new filter for my compressor -