Endless welding. Not going well

[semtexsteve]

Hi all. I am at a stage that my chassis is about 90% cut and tacked together but I am struggling with my welding. I can weld offcuts on the bench with OK results. I have cut some to see the cross section and penatration and all seems fine. I am using a gassless mig which apart from the extra splatter does a nice weld. I have anti splatter spray for that. The issue is as soon as I try to actually weld the chassis it looks like I have never even seen a welder before let alone used one. Getting a bit fed up now. Any advice would be much appreciated thank you.

[jps]

All the feedback i've seen about gasless MIG is 'don't use it'.

The MIG Welding Forum is a good resource if you are not already on there.

I have a lot of sympathy for your problem - the advice people always give is "keep practicing", which is no good for diagnosing what you are doing wrong!

Personally I looked at getting formal training - it's very expensive round here (Essex), i'd be looking at £500 odd for a 12 week 1 night a week evening course. But it might be the only way to really improve.

In the meanwhile, I am welding what I can that i'm happy with (which has been small parts, not on the chassis where I can get a weld i'd happy with and redo easily if i'm not) - and anything i'm not is going off to fabricators to weld, once i've prepped as much as possible.

[semtexsteve]

Thanks for your advice. It's definitely not the welder as I am getting great results on the bench. Great depth good melt the lot. Today I had much better luck I dot about half hour on the chassis and much much better only had to grind of a couple of welds. They are not pretty but they look strong. Like you said it's just practice practice practice.

[Ianr]

Must say the difference between gas and gasless for some people is extreme. My friend had been doing gasless for years, when I was helping hime weld his full cage for his car I brought my gas bottle and added it to his gasless sytem with the correct wire and his welds improve 10 times over immediately. He now makes a living creating artistic structures from cutlery welded together with his gas system - and he now has my TIG welder as well