mistralbuilt.com

Maybe first I will say a few things about myself,

Right now I´m 16 years old, I am in a 10th grade at a gymnasium here in Germany. I you ask- my grades are very bulls*it. I don`t like math, my mark in German is a F, because I´m polish (actually my parents...) and the only englih I learned on YouTube because I watch pretty much every video in english. Probably because there are more english videos o YouTube than german? You know what i mean... The only half way good marks I have  in Physics, NwT or how we call it here science and technology, where we do things with electronics.

I personally am a guy that does not like to learn for school, instead of that I like to hang out in my room, or how i call it my "electronics lab" and spent my time there. Last year I did kind of ok without ANY learning, my end mark was about a C or a 3 here in Germany...

And 50% of my day I spent with my great friend Google, YouTube and Ebay, where i watch when there is a not expencive welder that is easy to repair.

While some of my classmates like to have milions of letters in front of their eyes, I like to have milions of wires in front of my face, I´m basically a bit different then my other classmates :D

 

How started with electronics:

 

Oh well, these are things that i will probaby remember to the end of my life...

When I was like 8 or 8,5 years old, I wanted to be a DJ, I liked to play with the VirtuajDj software, but I did not had any Dj equipment. Then once my father said to me "Hey Patryk, there is a shop with Audio stuff in our town, my friend was there once!", of course i responced to him "let`s go there" and he took me there. When we came into the shop, it was a very small one, having about 40 squae meters it had a lot of stuff in it, that I haven´t even thought of. So at the left we were able to see all the mixers, I wanted to buy the smalles one, that could only control the volume of 4 mics :D. but I did not bought that mixer because I did not really wanted it. I the shop I also saw a lot of stuff, cables, fans, tools and things that I did not know what they were. When we went out of the shop, a guy gave me their old catalog from 2009 for free.

- And here ther was the "big bang" - 

When I was at home I looked through that catalog, like it was a drug for me.

I saw al lot of parts, transistors, diacs, triacs etc. and  I thought what the f is a ...?

I saw that there were some learn or beginner kits. One of them was a LED beginner kit. I wanted to buy it but I had no money so I asked my father, while I was at school someday he went there and bought that kit.

The time passed and I went to that shop, everytime we were in town. Scince my father likes to go to the fleamarket, I always went with him, sometimes people hve electroncis parts.

And there I once bought my firs part cabinet for 25€ :D, in it were like ten 1980s foil capacitors, some switches and leds and other old parts, but I cant really remember.

And scince that I´m sometimes going to the flea market, right now being 16 yo you can not find and you do not find parts every time, but sometimes there re parts. Thats why I usually look on EBay, if there some nice and inexpencive parts for me to buy and my father buys them.

 

Scince we have a big (ok ok maybe 20x 15 meters...) workshop in Poland where my uncle once had his car service, I liked to "play" with the tools there.

In about 2010 I was at my grandmas house, my grandpa was a great welder, so all his machines are left over from him....., my (other) uncle usually uses them to built small stuff for around the house/ garden etc. and one day he welded something, I asked him if I could try it. He said "why not" and pushed the electrode holder into my hand. And off i went. Or not :D. Either my electrode was sticking to the metal or I burnt holes in it ;D, so I better leaved it. When we now go to our grandma I like to use the small lathe there for doing some unprecise stuff, because the lathe has like 2-3 mm offset ;D;D.

 

When I was about 13 years old and we had hlidays in school, as always, we went to poland. We had a big 1987 polish "Bester sta 250" welder there, it ways like 156kg and to be more movable with it somebody put a 45m long mains cable on it, so when you switch the machine on the neighbours light dims itself :D. With this welder I started to do my first welds, it took me like 5 hours to really learn welding (with standard electrode method) but with every our passing my welds were better and better. At the end of day and 2 boxes of new electrodes my welds were ok. The were not best but ok.

 

In 2014 I watched mainly welding videos on Youtube and I saw the tig machines there. And as always I asked my father if he could buy me a TIG welder. My mother said to " Welding i not for you, what do you want to do with a TIG welder?". I was quiet. After my father once came from work he said to me "My friend has a TIG welder to sell. How ahout it?" I responced "If you will pay it I agree.", and he went ahead and bought it.

Since my uncle usually goes to germany, he always takes heavy the stuff we buy there.

In our next holdays in Poland I wanted to try it but first we spent a whole day in town to buy argon, once we finally had it I connected the bottle I tried it out. I belive everyone of you who first started with TIG welding can imagine how my welds looked like.These werent even welds lmao. I went to the ginder every time to sharpen the tungsten :D. Now my TIG welding is still not the best, but tacking op pieces and adding a little bit of filler is no problem.

 

Right now, or actually a few days ago I saw a old german Carl Cloos GLC 356 MIG welder, and schince it was not a long way there from our town I (my father, but let me call it I) mailed the seller and he went from 650 to 150€. And schince I thought wellc, we have a electroder welder,  Tig welder so lets complete everything with a Mig welder! And right now I am also loking for a good  Plasma cutter..... The Mig welder looks to be a "overpowered" welder for our hobbytype workshop. Having 350A and a watercooled torch it takes some place, but you can never have enough :P. People say that Mig is the easiest welding technique so I will try that welder in the next holidays 2016, but first, as always, we have to buy gas for it :D. Im such a guy, I am even planing to include a Pulse function into the welder with some parts, thyristors etc....

 

So as you can see scince I am born I am a technician.

 

But I think i should be thankful to my father for that all stuff. When I was a little kid he always said to me "look if the phone cables are pluged in correctly :D", and instead having toys (ok i had some....) he always bought me cables old not working radios etc. These were in a bit box, and when I wanted to play I just dumped thet whole box insides on the carpet and played with it :D, when I finished my Mum lwasy had to put my "toys" back in the box, scince I dont wanted to do it ;;D.

 

Scince 2 years I had the idea to do some YT videos but I didnt do them.

Now Im thinking I will do, when were again in Poland, some eviews of these tools, since I did not saw a single video about for example a Messer Griessheim Wiggi 150G

 

Now I took the camera in the hand and just did one, about my borig room, that I have to clean up 3 days long after I do something in there :D.

 

So agan thanks very much to comming here. And again please excuse my english mistakes.

 

- mistral