Decided to make a sierpinski’s tetrahedron as a first REAL project! I built a shitty angleiron workbench (with an old door ziptied onto it as the tabletop) before but I’m actually trying this time so it’s different
170 welds completed so far 
!! So, only 346 left to go!!.. 
This was a really good idea until I remembered how complex fractals are, like GIRL, DUH, fuck was I thinking hahaha
Its REALLY scuffed though, I’m talkin like using my stick welder to melt a half inch off the end off of the pieces I had precut to make it shorter so it will fit in the actual dimensions needed, I’ve been holding the smallest (~2") pieces with a wrench and holding it in place freehand. It’s been a lot of fun so far, and I’m definitely improving as I go, I weld my welding stick to my stock way less often now, and achieve arc much more reliably too, which is cool to see my own progress within the project!
I hurt my shoulder a bit ago so I haven’t been able to do much lately, but welding is pretty low impact in that I mostly just sit on a folding chair in my driveway next to my shitty workbench lol
Have some more views!
When it’s done it’ll look like this image I found on google
Also, if you’re welding material with a larger gap between them, you can do a series of tack welds to give yourself more material to work with without burning through the metal. This works better with MIG welding though.
With stick, it’s bad practice but you can take an electrode, knock off the flux, and use the electrode itself as a filler metal.
If you’re using flat pieces of metal together and are afraid of it burning though, you can use a backing bar to both draw excess heat away and reduce the chance of blowing through the weld by providing structure for the weld pool to sit on. You need to use metal with different properties than what you’re welding though, otherwise you’ll just end up with a 3rd piece of metal attached to your weld piece. I think I remember using either bronze or brass.
Oh don’t I know it! Like a dozen of these bars have a half inch or more that is all just the electrode filling empty space cause the bar I cut was too short xD
just had the thought, would I be able to manuver inside the fractal to be able to actually get a mig torch to the weld point? The stick isn’t exactly convenient but idk what mig torches are like
With a mig torch, a metal wire is constantly fed through a tube instead of you constantly having to swap electrodes. It may be difficult to access some spots initially but once you get to it, you’ll have to move less.