More Manly by the Minute

Well, It's been a while since I blogged, but I'm excited about my day yesterday.  Through work, Michael (my brother-in-law and business partner) and I have arranged to come up with performance incentives.  The first incentive that I received was a welder; a Hobart Handler 140, seen here:

I have rock sliders on my 4Runner for off-road armor so I don't turn my nice car into a scratch & dent.  Sliders are the tubes under the doors, and they are generally used for two purposes: 

and

You can see the shape of the sliders (if you can look away from my cute wife) 

When I initially built them (or had them built, I just put plastic end caps on, and they were getting all rusty on the inside, and filling up with dirt.  I decided to cut off the ends and use my new welder!  I ultimately thought they looked pretty terrible anyway.

So I made the first incision:

Ground the paint off:

Made my first official weld ever!

Cleaned it up a little bit (not too shabby, I say):

Ground it smooth:

Primed and painted!

It's basically a custom set that would cost over $300 that I made for under $100 total.  Plus I learned to do something new!  I like the way they look much better now too.  I only ruined 2 jackets and started one small fire (oops!). I've got the bug now, so I'm probably going to be spending some more quality time with my welder soon.  Any suggestions about what to build?