I think you have already gotten a lot of good advice. If you are in a
hurry to produce or repair something, then just get the best quality
American made 110 volt MIG welding setup you can find, with an
automatically darkening welding helmet to go with it, and have at it.
Use C25 as has already been recommended and .023" wire. Practice on
some scrap steel for a few hours and buy a couple of grinders, die and
electric, and start to get serious.
If you really want to learn, then you can recapitulate the history of
welding, starting with oxyactetylene. If you can run decent beads
while gas welding butt joints and T-joints and have learned how to
cope with heat distortion, then you are ready to try any other sort of
welding. You can even gas weld aluminum, but need good welding
goggles that filter out the yellow flare (see the Tin Man's web site).
Real experienced experts can gas weld fenders and work magic. The
rest of us probably will do better with MIG and a grinder to remove
the excess metal. A TIG welder will do almost anything in the way of
welding, but no cutting. A MIG will do it faster, but not as neatly.
You really should have one of each, ultimately :-)
-Roland
one of each, and two gas welding setups -- one a jeweler's torch
On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 16:28:41 -0500, you wrote:
:: I am going to have a go at learning how to
:: weld. I plan on doing most of this learning on a trial and error basis and
:: I intend to read a lot and maybe view videos as a learning
:: tool. Unfortunately I have not been able to find a local school that
:: teaches this other than as a full blown class of which I don't want to go
:: nine months every day to school. Although it probably wouldn't hurt me. :>)
::
:: My intent is to use this primarily (at least in the beginning) for truck
:: and car panel repair, patching, etc. I do have a couple of old donor cars
:: that are ready for the scrap heap and I thought I would practice on them at
:: first.
::
:: Now for the question. What type of welding should I start with - mig, tig,
:: arc, ???.
|