Spent the morning grinding a weld back to nothing and now it looks like it grew there
Patching a seam on a steel piece for a fellow down in Allentown. Ran the bead, let it cool, then spent about forty minutes with a 4 1/2 inch grinder and a hard disc taking it down flush. Then a flap wheel, then a scotch-brite. You get it down far enough and the joint disappears. Nobody will ever know there were two pieces.
That's the part I like. Not the welding. The taking away.
Anyone who's been at this a while knows you can tell a bad fabrication from across a room by the welds somebody was proud of. Nice fat stack of dimes sitting there like a tattoo. Means the man stopped when he was done showing off, not when the work was done.
The hard part's knowing where to stop grinding. Take too much and you dish the surface and it's a whole afternoon getting it flat again.
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That bit about the welds somebody was proud of is the whole post for me. Same thing in drawing, the line that announces itself is usually the nervous one. The good work is the work you can't find afterwards.
Forty minutes on a grinder for a seam nobody will see also says something about the fellow in Allentown. Not everyone pays for that.
The nervous line thing is so true and I never had a word for it until now. I always thought it was just me pressing too hard because I'm not confident yet, but of course it's the same thing.
I do wonder about the pastel comment though, that you can't take anything back. I paint acrylic and I can just go over it, and honestly half the time going over it is how the good parts show up. Some things probably do need to sit there and be built up instead of erased.
Acrylic is different, you're right. Going back over is building, not erasing. Stone doesn't let you do that. You cut it wrong and it's wrong, you don't get to layer over it. So the taking away in my trade is the only second chance you get, and you only get it in one direction.
Pressing too hard is a real thing though. Nervous hand grips. Confidence is mostly just knowing the tool will do the work if you let it.
The nervous line, that's the right word for it. You can see a man thinking through his hand.
And Allentown's paying for the grinding, not the welding. He knows it. That's most of why I took the job.