Fabricating metal whirligigs with my retired millwright father-in-law

When Josh Welton’s father-in-law retired after decades of working as a millwright and a millwright instructor, he took up fabricating metal whirligigs for family, friends, and his own yard.

My father-in-law, Bob Burl, retired from Warren Truck Assembly and Chrysler in 2009. At the time everyone in the family wondered what he was going to do with all his extra time.

Bob was a millwright and/or millwright instructor for more than three decades, and he always worked loads of overtime. Skilled tradespeople in the United Automobile Workers (UAW) labor union and around the auto industry tend to work a lot of hours, and he was on 7-12s, working 84-hour weeks more than not.

With his kids all grown up and out of the house, as well as his inability to terrorize the ballfields like he used to due to foot and knee issues from wear and tear over the years, we all kind of thought he’d go nuts sitting around the house with this new free time.

Then he started making whirligigs for family, for the neighbors, and for his own yard. What exactly is a whirligig? It’s simple, really: just a plastic or metal object that sticks in the ground with rotating arms or blades, like a pinwheel (you'll see plenty of them donned with stars and stripes this extended Independence Day weekend). He’d find old ones to repair, and he’d make his own. He doesn’t have his own MIG or TIG welder yet (although he’s going to borrow my Miller Multimatic 215), so sometimes he needs a hand.

A while back he gave me a steel whirligig to fix. I took forever to get to it, but finally I did. The factory tack welds holding the main vertical support to the horizontal axle housing had cracked.

The metal was superthin and dirty, so I broke out the silicon bronze filler once again to use with my Miller Multimatic 220. This is one of those “it’s not always going to be pretty” repairs. The metal wanted to curl away at the first sign of an arc, but eventually I was able to bridge the gap. You can see I used the broken tacks like puzzle pieces to line it up. If I use that technique on more structural pieces, I’ll go back once the piece is securely in place and grind out the tacks or broken edges.

With the SiB rod and the Multimatic 220 I could also have used AC, but I stuck with DC. Once I gooped enough filler in there, I cleaned up the joint with a Weiler flap disc in one of my Metabos.

Bam! Better than new and ready to take a spin in Bob’s yard.