First weld

I initially had my uncle help me set up the stick welder. I bought a cheap one on AliExpress that stated it could push 300 amps. To our surprise, it worked quite well.

I started practicing with 4 millimeter electrodes and soon I needed a project.

Idea

Since I was travelling frequently between my apartment and my mom's, where I set up the workshop, my brilliant idea was to create a foldable welding desk. I needed it to fold so I could fit it into the trunk of my car—a 2002 Fiat Stilo.

Challenge

This was the first time I had to measure and custom-fit something I made. No template, no help from my uncle. Some issues I had to contend with:

1. Since car trunks are usually irregular, I had to change the design so a square-shaped object could fit through the open trunk and land flat.
2. Because I wanted it to be portable, I now needed to add hinges. It turned out that you cannot just weld usual hinges, but need to get the welding ones.
3. I had to add some kind of mechanism that stops the hinges from opening all the way. The table had to be able to support enough weight.

Outcome

I found a local metalworking shop where they sold square pipes and cut them to size on the spot. This was great since it reduced the amount of cutting and grinding I had to do.

I used the pipes as the primary construction material and filled in the rest of the missing details with what I had lying around the shop. So junk. :)

I used the offcuts from the square pipes to stop the table opening one way, and some old chain to stop it from going the other. I put some of the old busted up pallet wood on top and—voila! My first portable metal table!

As you can see, these were the early days of the workshop, as evidenced by the heap of junk in the background. :)

Learnings

Definitely wasn't the prettiest workshop, or end product by any stretch of the matter. But it allowed me to practice with the stick welder and taught me some valuable lessons:

1. Learning from other people and books is great, but it's definitely worthwhile getting up and trying it out for yourself!
2. Try to think about all the use cases in advance. Consult others. Refine the design.
3. Cheap tools can get you far. As a novice, you don't need much to scratch that itch and spark some creativity.
4. If you're going to use it for welding—do not use wood for the table. It needs to conduct electricity and, wouldn't you know it, wood burns!

After all the learnings, my lovely portable table ended up as the main stationary tooling table in the workshop. It did fold, fit my trunk, and lie flat though! But it turned out I did not really need it moved around much.

Lesson learned. Onwards!