TIG welders
Shortly after discovering MIG welding I also discovered TIG welding. My first TIG welder was that Hobart Stickmate welder that I attached a scratch start TIG torch to. All you need to turn any stick welder into a TIG welder is a TIG torch adapter, a TIG torch with a valve on the handle, and […]
MIG Welders
About the same time that I purchased my Hobart Stickmate welder, I came to realize there are a number of different electric arc welding processes. The big three that most hobbyists use are stick welding (Shielded Metal Arc or SMAW), Metal Inert Gas (MIG) and Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG). I grew up with stick welding, […]
My Second Welder – Hobart Stickmate
My second welder was a Hobart Stickmate LX 160/235. I really learned a ton on this welder, and it was really a very versatile machine. I will never say that I have mastered stick welding (aka shielded metal arc welding or SMAW, or just plain old “arc welding” to many). I am still trying to […]
How I Got Started Welding
I got my start in welding in middle school, believe it or not. Back then we were required to take shop class as well as home economics. Mr. Miller’s shop class at Memorial Middle School, in Middlebury CT back in the 1970’s was very comprehensive. They had a wide range of equipment and a lot […]
Epilogue – Future Projects On My To-Do List
This blog entry is going to be fairly brief and simple. I will give you and idea of the projects that are still on my to-do list. So, in no particular order, here we go Joplin. Lee-Ann and I are big users of Evernote. Unfortunately the price of Evernote has been increasing and the product […]
My Current Home Lab Setup – What I Am Currently Running
The picture above is my entire home lab minus 1 machine which doesn’t fit on a shelf. Here is a basic sketch of my network diagram, and I will explain each item in detail On the top shelf of the book case is the wireless access point (TP-Link TL-WA3001) and the pfSense firewall/router (Hunsn N100 […]
My Home Lab Chapter 9 – VPNs, Remote Access, Overlay Networks, Tailscale
This is basically the final chapter in my home lab journey, or at least it brings you up to speed with where I am as of April 2024. I am sure there will be new projects and future blog posts, but they will probably not be in the “chapter” format. At this point, I feel […]
My Home Lab -Chapter 8 Buying a Domain, Cloudflare Tunnels, and SSL Certificates
Let me say up front that this chapter is going to be a bit more technical. But these topics are very fundamental to the home lab. When you first set up your home lab, you will be accessing virtually all of your services, dashboards, user interfaces, etc. by using an IP address. So let’s say […]
My Home Lab – Chapter 7 SSH, Automation, and Ansible
Sooner or later, if you run enough servers, you will get tired of having to log into each server, and run a series of commands to ensure that all of your software is up to date and using the latest version. Software updates happen quite frequently, especially in the world of Linux and open source […]
My Home Lab – Chapter 6 Self Hosted Software – WordPress, NextCloud, and More
The two main applications Lee-Ann and I run are WordPress (for hosting our web sites, both this one and my her food blog), and NextCloud for creating our own cloud storage. We do run other applications here as well, but for Lee-Ann, creating content for her food blog is one of her major hobbies/pastimes, so […]