Mike Freda Completes Day 1 of Paul Brodies’ Frame Building 101

Well, Day 1 is complete... The course is at the University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford Airport Campus. There are three people people taking the class. Two of us are from the Lower Mainland and one is from Chicago! All three of us have varying degree of shop time from very little to a lot.

Things we did today:

- Introductions - Shop safety - Oxy/Acetylene set-up - Intro to Bronze Brazing - Intro to Nickel Soldering - Intro to TIG welding - Intro to Metal Lathe, Milling Machine and Metal Shear - Intro to Tube metering

I spent the entire afternoon TIG welding which was cool/fun but a bit fatiguing to my torch hand and eyes. Not sure how someone could do this day after day! I also started mitring my mini "test" frame just before it was time to call it a day!

No coffee breaks, just a quick lunch. Time just flew by!

Paul is a very nice and seems very humble. There is a lot of knowledge in his head I will have to do my best to extract as much as I can in the next 9 days! This has been a dream come true!

Mike Freda