I've been doing a bit of welding today, and I was having some difficulty. I haven't used my MIG for ages, and thought that it was down to lack of practice... then I realised that I couldn't really see the weld properly.

Thought about it, then realised that I had the workpiece mounted in the vice and, when in my normal close-up welding position, I was looking through the top of the lenses of my glasses - and I wear varifocals so I was looking through the long-distance bit... no wonder I couldn't see the weld properly!

Wondered how on earth I was going to solve this problem, then realised that I'm short-sighted, so took my glasses off... and surprise, surprise, I could see the weld perfectly... got some nice welds after that...

My excuses were (1) I hadn't welded for ages, (2) I was freezing my nuts off in the garage and probably wasn't thinking too well, and (3) "not wearing my glasses while doing a task" is not something I normally consider, as I've been wearing specs all day, every day for most of my life.

Every day's a school day...

Yep, bought myself a tig during a hospital stay (I know, bit random but...) as used them at work for years.

Started doing work on my now scrapped Beetle project and welding a piece of steel into the vent area above the engine cover and had real trouble - turned out the sheet was galvanised.

Then I had more trouble welding the replacement panels into place and was using argon/co2, which turned out to be a no-no as the co2 reacts with the tungsten.

Once all that was sorted, things got a bit better, on the welding front anyway!

Yup. I have just come in from the garage. The car is already ready and back together following a few upgrades and deep clean. Last thing I did was to check the brakes after bleeding them and realised I had mounted the pelvis seat straps the wrong way round.

That's a under ready off and seat out job to get to the mounting. Bugger!!

Spent weeks trying to resolve TIG weld issues, first time it was CO2/Argon, second contaminated gas - clearly I don’t learn. Then getting a new roof fitted to a car and one of the studs was shot, no probs I’ll just weld a new one one, was a pig to weld until I went to turn the gas off and realised it had been off the whole time!! Seems I don’t trust my abilities rather than checking the basics!!!