It was one of the first welds that I ever did on the farm, which is pretty obvious. When I was welding my toolbox trays, I had the gun to far away from the steel plates and I wasn't making the steel flow. That's why it looks like a pile of steel bird poo. As a person who fights perfectionist tendencies this drives me insane to look at now. However, I haven't fixed it despite the fact that it is in the tool box that I use every day and I look at it every time I open the lid.
The thing about welding is that it has a permanence that you don't find in a lot of things. There is an instant though when the welder is crackling and popping and the steel is molten and flowing like that last bit of melting ice cream in the bottom of your tipped up cup. At that point you are creating something from 2 things that will last for as long as you'd like it to. So you can look at a weld that is a hundred years old and see the craftsmanship (or in my case, lack of craftsmanship) of the person that was welding. You can see an instant in the past.
So why don't I just fix the ugly welds that I get to look at everyday? I leave it because it is a reminder of how far I've come on the farm. When I get frustrated about the fact that I'm not great at this or that I can look at a tangible example of progress and I can relax. We all should when we are trying to do something new or hard.
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." - John Steinbeck, East of Eden
-Welder Ryan
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