NO RADIOACTIVITY

Nick

9 Feb 2025 — 2 min read

Happy Sunday!

I've been procrastinating on these shower drains, but on Tuesday I got myself together to finally figure them out. Going through the welder manual to set things up, I looked for the torch, squinted, then looked back at the manual. There in parenthesis, "torch not included." That arrived on Friday, by which point I was fever-deep with a splitting headache and a stomach on the run.

The forced time-out was annoying, but nourishing. Nice to ignore the boat for my few days in a daze, and it made returning this morning that bit sweeter. Starting with varnishing, which I could finally say was dry. In spring I can trust the "re-coat in 24 hours," but even the 6-hour stuff takes a day-and-a-half in this cold, humid air of impatience.

(Don't conflate the mess with the amount to do; this is mostly just panelling... once I've cleared the mess.)

Back to the drains, I once more got the gear out, then sharpened some tungsten electrodes on a belt sander:

Grind *along* the rod to create a "straight" grain towards the tip for better arc stability.

Those are the T in Tungsten Inert Gas, the gas being argon in this case. I'm using the blue ones with 2% Lanthanum, which amusingly say "[NO RADIOACTIVITY]" on the packaging, unlike the red thoriated ones.

It all works by striking an arc with that electrode, held in the torch, then slowly moving along the seam, keeping the arc steady, while you dab in a filler material (ER308L in this case, for 304 stainless steel).

With everything set up, I went to put the electrode in the torch, and only then realised some items were missing, like the collet to secure it... Sigh. Thankfully I live in a world of next-day delivery, and I've left everything set-up for an easy restart.

Until next Sunday!

- Nick

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