damn welder/ing

[Talonmotorsport]

Mask. If you have a cheap 1 shade (darkness) lens make sure it's the right one for you, too dark you can't see any thing and to light and you'll end up with mild arc eye. If you can strech to it buy an auto tint helmet found on ebay for £35-50(ish). Don't be affraid to stick your head right into the job to see what your doing.

Hands. Sounds silly but a good pair of welding gluntlets will give you better welds as you can hold the tourch by the swan neck. Hold the tourch at 30' -45' so you can see the wire on the job and you need to push the weld not drag it where possible. run your left hand across the surface and let your right follow, straight welds are done with stable hands. For long welds don't forget to breahe!

Gas. If you can get your hands on a pub bottle of C02 it will be a much nicer experiance as you won't get as frustraited when your 6th tiny on expires. If you've got access to C02/argon mix it will look alot better with less splatter.

Welder. The more money spent here the easier it is to learn. A cheap 130amp welder looks good from a budget point of view but it makes for a difficult learning curve. The wire feed motors are not the best and by the time you've learnt it's quirks you may have finished the chassis. My MIG was £700 new 8 years ago and still going strong (fingers crossed) the money it has saved me in car repairs ie MOT welding and the varies things it has helped me fabricate has probably earnt me £20-30,000 in the time I've owned it.

Testing. Weld two pieces of tube together in a T shape and allow to cool. Hold it in a very good vice and smack it with your fav bashing stick (hammer) if the steel tears around the weld then it's a good'un. If the weld comes apart like a scab then you don't have enough penetration ie not enough heat on both surfaces for the filler wire to melt to. Try moving the tourch by 1-2mm up and down like a sawing machine .