Things so far

Progress was coming along but is now at a full stand still. You see, before I had a schedule worked out to where I would cut parts at home, make measurements, tack them together in the fab shop at school the next day, recheck the fit at home that night, then weld it up the next day if all was good. It took me three days to do a couple hour job but at least I was moving. Not any more.

TIG welding stands for Tungsten Inert Gas. You use a tungsten to focus the heat of the arc and an inert gas to help purify the weld zone. Everything has to be clean for the weld to happen. If your base metal is unclean, you contaminate your weld zone, if you touch your tungsten with your filler rod, its contaminated, if you dip the tungsten in the molten puddle, you got it, contaminated.

So my story now is that my tungsten keeps becoming contaminated by some means and burning a hole right through my frame. Very frustrating. And even more so because Ive checked and rechecked all possible causes and cant come up with anything so now I have to tug on the coat tails of my instructor and ask him kindly to take time out of his day to help with my personal project.

Thats the state of things to date. I still have a lot to do and not a lot of time left before the quarter is over. Always comes down to time