Any welders out there?

[ontwo]

Originally Posted by derf

I started by just welding stuff together and kept doing it until I got good at it. I also bought a book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/076...FEKK8WSF4EQ5PV

That's the one I thought about getting. My father in law welds and has the equipment. I'm gonna try to get some basics from him.

Thanks for all the feedback

[goof2]

Originally Posted by Avatard

Bah. As was already said, it's not fucking rocket surgery. A good wire welder is so easy, *I* can fucking do it. Just get a good one, the cheap ones "skip" under load, and make it harder for a novice to get good results.

A basic wire welder may not be the right equipment if ontwo wants to do anything out of the ordinary.

[ontwo]

Nothing fancy needed. Just want to learn how to join some steel when needed

[goof2]

Originally Posted by ontwo

Nothing fancy needed. Just want to learn how to join some steel when needed

If all you want to do is relatively thin gauge mild steel then pretty much any basic wire welder should be fine. If you may want to work with other materials or thicker steel some basic wire welders will not be able to do so.

To be clear, I am not a welder and am only working from what I have read on the subject. That being said, I know when I do have the time and money to get in to it I will want to work with materials other than mild steel. That eliminates some of the basic wire welders from consideration for me.

[derf]

I own an upper quality cambpell housefeld wire fed welder, bought it for $200 5 years ago. It will weld anything I throw at it. Eventually when I moved on to aluminium I was able to do some upgrades to it (argon gas bottle) and pretty much anything was within my welding ability.

This is pretty much the welder I have, nothing fancy, and the heat settings kinda suck, but it is infinitely ajustable for wire speed, and you can switch it to gas as an upgrade (at least the one I have).

http://www.toolsusa.com/asp/item_det...ode=GoogleBase

[Smittie61984]

I learned from just practicing on scrap metal when i worked at a machine shop. Then I did a huge aluminum project which can be a bitch at times. On angels just keep doing a backwards C.

It gets really fun when you get a 480 welder.

[Phenix_Rider]

Originally Posted by derf

I started by just welding stuff together and kept doing it until I got good at it. I also bought a book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/076...FEKK8WSF4EQ5PV

Originally Posted by Avatard

Bah. As was already said, it's not fucking rocket surgery. A good wire welder is so easy, *I* can fucking do it. Just get a good one, the cheap ones "skip" under load, and make it harder for a novice to get good results.

Yup. A decent 120V MIG will do most things you ask. I absolutely suck with a stick, but wire-feed is simple. Pull the trigger and go. Just have to watch your wire speed or you'll get really long PITA tails that just break off. Just start with a simple project like a stool. And watch out using Vice Grips as clamps. You can weld to them. And if you get an arc to near them, you'll destroy the jaws. The steel loses it's temper from the heat.

I'm not great at it, partly because the wire-feed and the stick I learned on were cheap, but I can strong welds.