>Gordon Glasgow
> Look around at your local community colleges or tech trade schools for a basic
> welding class. You'll get much more knowledge from that than from reading a
> book
> and trying to teach yourself the techniques. Not that I'm opposed to books
> (being a book junkie and married to a librarian!), but sometimes there is no
> substitute for having an instructor look at what you are doing and giving you
> feedback.
Good suggestion, Gordon, but Marc's a good hour to an hour and a half from
San Antonio or Austin, so a regular course stretched out over a semester
might be tough. I found up here in the D/FW area at the CC's that they only
scheduled a couple of classes each of gas and electric welding, two nights
per week over the full semester rather than say four Saturdays in a row. The
classes that are held fill up literally as soon as they're announced.
You think they'd get the hint that they need more classes, with at least
some scheduled a bit more conveniently. Then again they may have trouble
finding qualified folks to teach the classes, too. I'd love to take a class,
but just can't seem to sync their schedules with mine.
Regarding the welders themselves, it seems to me that your better off over
buying a bit. The smaller Lincolns, like the 100 will work on 120 volt A/C,
but draw close to 20 amps at 120 and only have a 20% duty cycle. Go one or
two steps up, and with a gas kit they run virtually the same price as some
economy 220 volt units, which usually offer considerably higher duty cycles.
But you have to figure out where to plug them in. I think most of us can
commandeer the clothes dryer plug, or parallel an extra drop into the garage
using the breaker for the dryer.
I plan on getting a medium duty unit (35 to 40% duty cycle) which will
probably be in the $800 range. The Eastwood catalog has some units, as do
catalogs from Northern Tool and TP Tools (www.tptools.com). The TP catalog
also has some excellent info on setting up a compressed air distribution
system and which you want to do it that way. All are good references.
Maybe at the next TXDROC meeting someone can put on a welding seminar..
FWIW, Ron
***We too got caught in the Excite/AT&T debacle. New address is below***
Ronnie Day
ronday@attbi.com
Dallas/Ft. Worth
'71 510 2-dr (Prepared Class Autocrosser)
'73 510 2-dr (Street Toy)
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