My Trusty Welding Fella

I have now encountered my first completely and disintigratingly rusted steel tube. It’s a crucial tube on a chair that Deb likes a lot. That’s the killer part. I began disassembling it yesterday so she could soon sit in a metal chair of her own that she enjoys, and then this tube simply turned to dust in my hand.

The question: Can my trusty welding fella fix it?

The second question: Is it worth my paying my trusty welding fella to do it? Because this is not a simple fix.

So, this is my guy. He owns Cinn City Choppers—a very dark and cool back-alleyish motorcycle service and body shop. It’s a seriously dark and cool and hidden place. But Chris is very nice and personable, and we get along famously. (I don’t know if I should put his full name in this blog or not…I don’t know if he wants the publicity. I’ll ask him when I see him next…which should be tomorrow when I haul a couple of these steel-tube problems to him).

At Chris’s feet in this image is the chair I found in a wet and crumpled heap in a woman’s backyard. This chair is now beautifully welded back together (NO KIDDING…the welding work in spectacular. I was astonished by it) so that it stands on its own. I’ve sanded all the rust and flaky paint from it, and it’s sweet and clean and waiting for a nice day in which I can paint.