Talk:Gas tungsten arc welding

I feel the need to ask...why Gas tungsten arc welding? --Anyone 19:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, did this spawn from a bet with your local mechanic? :) -- Hindleyite 19:38, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I figured it out. He's going to prove he can make anything VFH worthy! May I have the pleasure of nom'ing it? --Anyone 19:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, hello ... sorry, I was writing this as you were discussing it. Well, the answer is pretty simple - this topic was featured article on Wikipedia a few days back and I thought that it was so incredibly utterly dull that it crying out for having a go with. There's something funny in the absolute dullness of it, which I was playing around with. And yes, please do nom away if you wish. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 20:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see. It is still quite funny without knowing that though. Is 'currants' meant to be spelled that way? -- Hindleyite 20:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC

Kind of. I alternated the spelling, but it doesn't really matter. Again, I sporked that from the Wikipedia article (which, by the way, is nearly ten times longer than this) and I thought the idea of all these currants appearing was amusing, except when I checked the spelling, it was currant, not current - so I just thought what the heck, I'll do it anyway and change the spelling. Cheers for all the links etc... --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 04:30, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I remember this article before on Wikipedia and thought the same thing! I would recomend some work on the last couple of sections. The begining is hilarious! Did you mean for the 'Atmospheric Contamination' to have that really long run-on sentence? I think it's funny, but I'm easily ammused. --Syd Heresy 03:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I changed a lot of it, and especially the last parts. Seems better now. More perky. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 09:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

(Lots of Colons)I really like what you've done--showing the erotism in welding. People don't understand how easy it is to just get lost in the throes of passion while welding. It's almost like welding welds you and the metal together, and combines your souls into one where you and the metal can just be. Sometimes after I weld something I'll just talk for hours to my weld; I really feel like I can be open and share all my secrets. Welding brings me closer to God. You know what I'm saying? Of course you do. Just had to get that off my chest. Anyway, I think it's pretty near VFH worthy yeah? --Anyone 18:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I know exactly what you mean. I talk to my weld too. But when I tell them that in rehab, they all just look at me funny and mutter mean things about a relapse. Yes - I finally feel that it's got something worthy for running the gauntlet at VFH, and if anyone feels the same, please feel free to nom it. If not, let me know where to improve it and I'll give it another going over.--Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 19:21, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Wow! I've got to try this gas tungsten arc welding. I'll get down to the job centre tomorrow. -- Hindleyite 19:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Get there early, there's quite a queue... --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 19:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Well now that you mention it, I feel like parts of it are too silly. I'm not sure how you feel, and if you think it's just the right amount of silly than fine, be that way. But certain aspects feel somewhat random and out of place, like the wombles, the star trek line, 2025 tungsten tungsten tungsten thing, and holographic tax collectors. Maybe I'm just being overly critical. You certainly have more expierience with these sorts of things than I do, and if you feel it is better that way than leave it unchanged, all I'm saying is if you don't change it I'm never going to Nom it, and if someone does Nom it I'll vote strong against and then blank your article repeatedly. Thanks! (No realy though, whatever you think) --Anyone 19:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, my actual experience with holographic tax collectors is thankfully pretty limited....

I know what you mean, but I kind of like the surprise angle of those things. The whole "plasma" section is pushing it though - kind of forced in to push through a couple of puns and a made up Scotty quote - but I kind of like them too. The wombles, on the other hand, I shall defend to the death. The wombles stay. This is the kind of thing to let settle and see what the old subconscious brings up tomorrow. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 19:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Hate to disagree, Anyone, but I liked the Wombles and holographic tax collector references. Dunno why, but I like those little irrelevant snatches of humour. -- Hindleyite 19:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Wombles? Gentleman...are you both high? Alright then. Quoting Ramsies..."So it is written, so it shall be Nommed!" --Anyone 19:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Dude, the Wombles are always funny! Altogether now... # Underground, overground, wombling free... #
And Ramsay never said such a thing. Well, he might have, but in a more profane manner. -- Hindleyite 19:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I mean Ramses. There is no such person as Ramsies. --Anyone 20:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I apologise for that terrible 'joke'. -- Hindleyite 10:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

ok - I re-thought the thing after the comments here and on VFH and re-wrote it into what it should have been in the first place. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 00:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally I would have been all for it if you just did this:

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There is probably nothing more exciting on God's green earth than Gas tungsten arc welding. It's quite like ordinary gas arc welding, but with added tungsten - the rock and roll of the modern welding scene. Hardened arc welders across the world are not ashamed to admit that their hearts dance like corks on the ocean when they fall asleep at night and dream of getting to grips with a rod of tungsten, some gas and an arc.

Uses

A Gas Tungsten Arc Welder successfully destroys an ant.

Normal welding

Welding is most commonly used to stick lumps of metal on to other lumps of metal, until an even bigger lump is formed. These bigger lumps, known in the trade as "bigger lumps" are then welded together into lumps the size of small horses, known in the trade as "horsey lumps". These lumps are then welded together into something bigger, known as the "mutually assured lump", or M.A.D. for short, because by that point the entire world has been welded together.

It is actually the secret dream of some extremist welders to have the whole world welded into one massive mutually assured lump, pure and perfect, like a huge glitterball in space. This will make visiting aliens think that the Earth is all loved up and groovy. Set up a few Pulsars and a supernova, and it's a galactic party! That's the cold hard reasoning behind it all. But welders don't ever tell anyone this. They just keep welding, silently, stealthily, while the rest of us sleep.

Gas Tungsten welding

The addition of tungsten to the welding process adds a kind of bluish light and lots more sparks, so welders can pretend they are in a big movie, like E.T. or Flashdance. Tungsten makes it possible also to weld things together that were previously thought unweldable. With tungsten, for instance, it is possible to weld giraffes to tax collectors, or Wombles to cheese. Such stunts are frowned upon by ordinary gas arc welders (known in the industry as "losers"), because they are really amusing and the gas arc welders (known in the industry as "losers") feel that usual jealous pang like a rod through the brain again.

This has lead to the creation of a ramshackle force of welding vigilantes who will use force to ensure that only metals are welded, and nothing else. Many of the beggars we see on todays streets are in fact ex-gas tungsten arc welders who went and welded a gorilla to a winnebago and then paid the price with their foot. Soon afterwards they stopped shaving and started eating glue.

How it works

So, the bluey stuff in the middle is really really hot and it comes out of the end there as you can see, from the kind of coppery thing there and there's some kind of rod you need to stick in and poke the blue thing with and also, the copper shoe is optional.

It's really so simple, there's hardly any need to explain, but anyway - what happens is that this high frequency generator provides a path for the welding current through a shielding gas, allowing the arc to be struck when the separation between the electrode and the workpiece is approximately 1.5-3 mm (0.06-0.12 in). Got that? No? I'll try it again.. what happens is that this high frequency generator provides a path for the welding current through a shielding gas, allowing the arc to be struck when the separation between the electrode and the workpiece is approximately 1.5-3 mm (0.06-0.12 in). Still no idea? ok, I'll type it again, only more slowly this time: what happens is that this high frequency generator provides a path for the welding current through a shielding gas, allowing the arc to be struck when the separation between the electrode and the workpiece is approximately 1.5-3 mm (0.06-0.12 in). No?

Allow me then to put it in laymans terms: there's this pipey thing full of really hotty stuff, ok, and when this man pushes a switch all the hotty stuff shoots out of one end in a big flame with loads of sparks and lots of whooshing noises. So, when this man puts the hotty stuff next to some metal, the metal melts, but only a little bit. So, you can get the melty part and stick it to another bit of metal. The tungsten is for helping this all happen somehow.

Plasma

Plasma is the key to all arc welding. Without plasma, the welder might as well stand all day inside a phone booth with no change, wearing nothing but a hat and singing the old songs from his youth - because that's going to help him with his welding just as much as a welding torch with no plasma. The world's most famous plasma arc welder was Scotty from Star Trek. He loved plasma so much that he kept it in a big jar. Hence his catchphrase: "Och, but it's the plasma that keeps me perky, Captain.".

Here, a mobile phone has been welded securely inside a small pipe. It won't be causing any more trouble now.

The future

The next step after gas tungsten arc welding will be tungsten tungsten arc welding, and by the year 2025: tungsten tungsten tungsten welding. By this time, a welder will be able to weld things using only his mind, while his hands will be free for any other use he wishes to put them to. Welders will finally be free to stick their tools in without even thinking about it, let rip and then go home. Almost anything will stick together this way, and if something does break off, people will always be able to just weld it back later. Common applications will include rebuilding critical seals inside nuclear power stations, space shuttles and submarines. It will also be used to stick multiple giraffes to a holographic tax collector.

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Like you said, "There's something funny in the absolute dullness of <gas tungsten arc welding>". I liked how the article attacked that aspect ("tungsten - the rock and roll of the modern welding scene") rather than going innuendo, but most people might like the new version better so I guess we'll see how people vote. --So So 05:54, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

<NOTE TO OTHER PEOPLE: The above is just the 27 October 2006 version of this article with the "Operation" section taken out.> --So So 03:10, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow - that's the first time I've seen an article on its own talk page. This could set up some kind of infinite recursive loop and cause the site to vanish into its own fundament...

I know what you're getting at So So, and thanks for the advice - but I reckon that the current kind of demented and repressed technical rant thing is what I was trying to get at all along. It seems like something worth exploring to me - and whatever happens on VFH, it's hitting the right seam of comedy gold that's my current concern with this one. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 12:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

From VFH

• For. I found myself getting aroused, even though I'm usually more of an oxy-acetylene kind of guy. -- Sir Armando Perentie KUN FP 05:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

  "She's a maniac, maniac on the floor/And she's dancing like she's never danced before..." --Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 06:16, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Er... come again? -- Sir Armando Perentie KUN FP 07:36, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Lyrics, music....oxyfuel cutter by day, stripper at the world's cleanest nudie bar at night...Flashdance. Hello? What, I'm alone here? --Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 01:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, Flashbeer. I'm with you now. -- Sir Armando Perentie KUN FP 05:57, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

From Pee Review

Ok, the idea behind this one is that the subject is really really dull. I wanted to make that very dullness funny, without actually making it dull. That was the challenge I set myself. I seem to have ended up with something that sort of does that but has a lot of silliness thrown in. Any suggestions would be read with enthusiasm. This topic was feature article on Wikipedia last week, so I started from that, incredibly long and dull article. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 04:37, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay... I think I see what you're going for, and I found it pretty funny (the bit about welders ceaselessly welding in a slightly sinister way while we sleep is a beautifully comical image) but my only suggestion would be that it could be cut down a bit... I know the humour relies on the fact that it's an improbably involved piece of writing, but I can see a lot of people being turned off by the apparent flatness of it- of course, that's the price you pay for subtlety. Ho hum, I don't really know what the gist of this is now... --Sir Jam 12:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's kind of out of focus at the moment. Needs more sharpening. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 19:52, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I chuckled a few times during the first couple of sections, but I sort of wondered off after that...I had an idea popping into my head, that maybe you should consider making a violent change of style somewhere along the way, sort of like what Terantino did in "from dusk till dawn". Seen that? -- Brigadier Sir Mordillo GUN UotY WotM FP UotM AotM MI³ AnotM VFH +S 13:47, 17 October 2006 (PDT)

Under normal circumstances, I would probably do just that, Mordillo, but my circumstances are rarely normal. Some folks on VFH have voiced their weariness of "narrative" style or "novelty" articles, and that made me think - so part of this challange here what I have set myself is to make this one really encyclopedic and normal but with funniness leaking out from between the joints. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 12:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you're going to have to make the funny at ground level, ie, line by line and paragraph by paragraph. The narrator seems to take TAW very seriously, so he can't be overtly mocking. You're a better writtar than me so you have it in you and you know the drill. Techniques various. Changeup from technical to non-technical: Helium arc welding takes advantage of the non-reactive qualities of the noble gasses vis-a-vis metallic elements to avoid splattering and spluttering and guttering and nattering and all sorts of rubbishy stuff. And punchline structuring (which of course the narrator needs to wot not of): In the days of Rosy the Rivetter some mystically deluded idiots believed that oxy-acetylene welding would be a kind of Second Coming of metallurgy, a Holy Kingdom right here on Earth...as if a mere technological process could be somehow the End-All and Be-All of man's universe! Of course oxy-acetylene was not the Second Coming. Tungsten-arc welding is! And you might consider more radical measures: Uncyclopedia asked Dr. Harry Lowbrau of the Carnegie-Mellon School of Metallurgy to explain the atomic basis for using tungsten instead of other metals. He replied, "In the tungsten atom, electrons arrange themselves via Bohm's reticulate into devolute vortices interstitial with the quantum positional Feynman integral...Gads. Are you really interested in this nonsense?" We urged him to go on with his fascinating mini-lecture. "Well," he continued, "when considered as a Hertzholt matrix of Lorentzian electrodynamic pseudo-point field, then the eigenfunction reduces to...to...Oh God this is tedious. I wish I was a bus driver instead of a metallurgist." Unfortunately, at this point Dr. Lowbrau accidentally hung up the phone and so his lecture ended. Just when we were most interested, too.

Anyway, you know what I mean, I think. These examples are just coughed up like hairballs, but perhaps you can find ways to turn more of the projects toward the comic. Good luck! ----OEJ 15:14, 17 October 2006 (PDT)

--OEJ , I have never read such utter gibberish in my entire life - from when I first learned to read, last year, until now. Complete tripe. Nonsense. Cruft. I am not a better writtar than you, and I won't hear of it. No no. We work in different idioms perhaps, but my idiom is just as good as yours, if not worse - so enough with the comparisons already. You can turn a joke on a sixpence - and to order also, and if there's folk out there who just don't understand, well that's the dusty underside of democracy for you (the bit under the filing cabinet, with all the dead earwigs), and until the world is ruled by philosopher clowns, we'll have to stick together and fight them with whatever tools we have.

So, now that's out of the way, on to the good stuff. I think you may well have cracked it there - shown me the path through the forest - and so if you wish please feel free to contribute. Otherwise I shall be forced to steal your fine techniques, if not the actual examples, and that will make me feel grubby.

And many thanks for the free advice - it's much appreciated. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 12:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

...and just to geek out on you, it's not GAW (that's Gillian Anderson's Website, silly), it's "Gas metal arc welding (GMAW)" and it's generally refered to by it's most commonly used variant, "Metal Inert Gas {MIG}". Also, they love capitalizing their terms; TIG, spelled out, always appears at Tungsten Inert Gas welding, even though TIG is just lingo for TGAW, which is also cap'd when spelled out. They also dig terms that, anywhere else, would be blunt double-entendres; eg: "You've gotta heat evenly around the gap, then slowly push the tip of your rod in, work those soft edges now...". Granted, that was Oxyfuel. They use "electrodes" in arc welding, which isn't nearly as funny (except for MIG, which uses "wire", another funny word if used properly).

Welders are weird, and they either blink too much or not at all. Which in and of itself is weird, even if it is a byproduct of accidentally seeing the arc before they've got their mask on one too many times. Good work, by the way; I wish that you'd writ my welding texts back whenever it was that I took welding (no TIG though, pity).--Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 22:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Seriously - you're a welder? An ex-welder perhaps? Nahhhhh.... I don't believe it. You'd be in good company though. Billy Connoly was a welder. GAW is a good name for Gillian Anderson's web site. That's how I always go when I see her. Well, more kind of "Gaaaaaaawwwwwwww", and then I have to peel my tongue from my shoe. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 09:21, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I only took my "C" level course because a) my job was going away and b) work would pay for the course. When I was done the course (after working full-time and schooling full-time for five months) I found out that a) my job wasn't going away and b) I was paying for it. So, long story short, I'm still an office drone...the Gillian mention was only because I checked wikipedia (because the course was a couple of years ago, and I haven't welded since) and it said on a disambig page that GAW was her website. Being an office drone does have its advantages; it leaves the right side of my brain free to fly, and it has interweb...if I could photoshop from work I'd never leave. Not that visit Uncyc while there, of course.

Again, good work on the page, you've stolen half of my geek heart (if welding lives within the pantheon of geekness). If everyone wrote this well Pee Review would be a breeze. Of course, if everyone wrote well, Pee Review wouldn't exist.--Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 11:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Sir Hardwick: "...shown me the path through the forest..." Wellsir, that's the absolute tops one can hope for in Writtar Advice like Pee Review innit. Mostly one's thoughts are not transferred clearly enough or are not received as one would intend, I think, and so fall like -- um -- Onan's best efforts. No one's fault, of course. Cheers! ----OEJ 20:13, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I tackled it all again and this is what came out. It seems more cohesive overall. I am beginning to like it. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 09:57, 27 October 2006 (UTC)