Learning to weld ....and lovin' it

[IshChayil]

I wanted to share with my BF peeps, I've been learning how to weld from YouTube; just stick welding with a $115 welder.
It was quite intimidating at first but after burning holes through some thin metal I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. I made a crude door for a big animal cage (human door so we can go in and out), and I'm almost finished with a big double door with welded mesh to keep animals out of the master bedroom from the terrace but to allow the night breeze as it's soooo hot here in the Philippines these days.
It's so cool, the materials for the 8ft x 4ft double doors, all metal cost a bit under $45 including chrome paint (some things are pricier here than in the states I don't know if this would have been cheaper there or not).
I'm not really a handy guy; I'm more of an electronics / programmer Geek type so for me this is a big deal so I wanted to share and see if any of you more handy types have any tips for me going forward.
I've got a slew of things I want to do.
I gotta say, it's really kinda fun and I've got huge manly man points with the wives.
Finally becoming a real man

It's funny, now everywhere I go I'm looking at welds. When I went to a gov't building a month ago I noticed the crappy blow holes on a staircase handrail and it was big metal. I've been working with thin metal mostly. I can't wait to get my hands on some thick stuff.
Anyway tips, or if you wanna share any of your own welding projects, goof ups, etc chime in.

 

[Isaac]

No welding advice to give as I’ve never embarked on that journey, but I will give you a big “ATTA BOY” for “becoming a man” and “earning some man points”. I feel the same as I’ve been doing electrical work in our new house. It’s fun and feels good to do it yourself. Keep it up, Ish! And thanks for sharing.

 

[andrew]

My limited experience with welding wasn't much fun, but if you've got a carpentry or electrical project going, I'm in! Congrats to you, though, for getting over the hump to the fun/rewarding part!

 

[Cap]

Weldings fun. YouTube is a great teacher for that. If you think of it as a mechanical thing it makes it sort of clunky, but if you get you mind to think painting with metal things seem to flow better. The fear of it keeps one away from getting in the groove. If you get the chance try MIG welding. You get cleaner welds when you can use a sheilding gas. TIG welding is super cool.

I'm currently welding some aluminum supports for one of the boats I operate.

 

[rockfox]

Any youtube channel suggestions for learning this? It's something I need to learn.

Any opinions about starting with MIG vs TIG?

 

[Cap]

Not sure if you were asking me but, i would search any video in regards to welding for beginners. Also try and find specifics as to the thickness, types of metal, thin, steel, stainless, or aluminum. When you do get started PM if you like and I'll try and help you out.

I would start with MIG. Welding stick is kinda hard because you hold the welding stick away from your work and it's hard to be steady. You need to use rods with flux It's the simplest, no gas, not much settings. MIG wire feed with argon gas is pretty easy but require volt and wire feed settings to figured out based on metal and thickness. TIG is like Stick, MIG, and using a musical instrument foot pedal. Lots of settings. But once you get it down the welds you can do turn out good. But it's a little limiting on locations you can do welds until you get close to the professional level.

 

[aineo]

BOOYAH!

I don’t have any advice to offer other than lots of practice and seeking to get better. I learned to weld as part of a past job, though my weld was only to fill in holes, not to hold two things together, so it could be as ugly as could be, and didn’t have to hold things together. Even so, we always competed to see who could finish and have the least metal to grind off.

My dad used to tell me that my grandfather was an expert welder, and it was one thing he wished he had learned from him. Despite all of his father’s attempts to teach him, Dad was never interested enough before Grandpa died. It’s funny, now that I type that I realize I have my own lessons I didn’t learn from my dad when I had the chance to do so.

 

[Asforme&myhouse]

I’m a certified welder... technically...

I have done a bit of welding but wouldn’t call myself a welder. So how am I a certified welder, you might ask? Well, I was working for a company that built bridges (think I5 overpasses and the like) and the welders were all re-upping their certifications and an instructer from the state was there to conduct the tests. Long story short, when they asked who was next, I jokingly raised my hand. He said “ok come on up” I stepped up to the table, slapped the helmet on my head, picked up the electrode, gave the customary head nod to drop the face shield, and proceeded to lay down about five inches of bead. Then I tapped the slag off like a pro, stepped back and expected him to say something like “what the h$!! is that?!”. But he didn’t, he just goes “yep, looks great. next?” So my company filed the appropriate paperwork and I received my card a week later lol! I believe it must have been the confidence i was exuding in jest that made him think i knew what i was doing. Sometimes you can fake it till you make it

You may have driven over a temporary bridge, in an area of road construction, that was supported by beams that were welded by a carpenter who jokingly raised his hand at a welding test... Doesn’t that just give ya a warm fuzzy feeling?

 

[Verifyveritas76]

My father in law taught me to weld. He was quite the welder. He was a certified welder in a nuclear power plant for several years. He wouldn’t let me touch a Mig welder till I’d become proficient in stick/arc welding. That was at 16. At 18 I passed my welding certs for structural and was a carpenter welder for several years.

The mig is definitely easier and though I have both, there’s some things that I still prefer to arc weld.

Kudos on your accomplishment, especially learning via YouTube.

 

[eye4them]

Congratulation IshChayil, welding is a blast!
And with the manly man points, it's just that much better
If you don't already have an auto darkening hood, I would strongly recommend getting one. It was like night and day for me, and it's especially useful for stick welding since you have to scratch start. If you do, don't forget to adjust the shade so you get a clear picture of the work area when welding. I forget to adjust the shade, and I'm there like looking at the sun, or wearing sunglasses at night. Get it just right and it's nice. The comfortable shade value changes with the arc current. Also, be sure not to have any skin exposed to the light from the arc, or you can get a nasty "sun" burn. I read one man commenting, his wife thought the blue light was pleasing to look at. My recollection is that she was OK (Thank God), but it sure wasn't a good thing.

Rockfox;
Welding Tips and Tricks is a great channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks

As for MIG vs TIG... I think it is somewhat dependent on what your goals are.
I have done some welding for my own purposes; stick welding in the past, but now I only do TIG welding, and have used perhaps 4-5lbs of fill metal with the TIG.

MIG is nice in that one can probably produce passable welds within 10-15 mins of starting. I think I used maybe 0.5~1.0 pounds of fill wire and ~2 sticks of tungsten before I liked what I was doing with the TIG. MIG has the advantage of allowing you to put down a lot of metal really fast (not so with TIG), and you can produce spot welds just by holding the torch stationary where you want the weld, and pull the trigger for 2-3 seconds. Spot welds can sort of be done with TIG but it is not nearly as easy as with MIG.

With MIG you can lay down the weld and not get the piece super hot; the metal is going down and you can just move. With TIG you have to add the metal separately, so if you're not adding the metal, you're just heating the workpiece. It takes coordination to achieve the optimum pedal/heat setting, travel speed, and wire addition rate. Optimum isn't necessary, but heat buildup can be a problem in certain situations.

One huge benefit of TIG over MIG is the lack of spatter. I can weld right on my shop table around flammable things (wood/paper/plastic) with safety.. MIG would be there spattering hot cherries all over the place, damaging things, and possibly starting fires. That is the primary reason why I TIG and not MIG.

MIG is also nice in that the metal doesn't have to be quite as clean as with TIG. TIG does not like dirty metal. TIG has the drawback that you have to have the tungsten close to the work, but not touch. If you touch, the work metal coats the hot tip of the tungsten and then you can stop and regrind your tungsten. When I was first learning, I literally spent more time grinding the tungsten than welding, so I changed tac and just snipped off the contaminated tungsten and kept going. Only after I stopped dipping the tungsten was my skill sufficient to notice the improvement from having a sharp tungsten and not jagged from the snips.

Now with that said, tungsten is a toxic heavy metal, and you have to grind it to a point, and end up with tungsten particles all over the place. I use a cheap dedicated bench grinder and variable speed drill (to spin the tungsten) outside on the grass and sharpen up all of my tungstens at once... doing the process at arms length, and spraying the grindings away from myself. Worse yet is if you use thoriated tungsten. Then you have not only heavy metal dust, but the thorium is there decaying and emitting.... eh, energy. I've have only ever used 1.5-2% lanthanated, and I am happy with it, so I cannot comment on any other dopant.

 

[IshChayil]

Any youtube channel suggestions for learning this? It's something I need to learn.

Any opinions about starting with MIG vs TIG?

For arcwelding aka "stickwelding" I watched videos from several different guys; but this is the series I liked the most.
Chuck's ark welding lessons

I may get a TIG setup in the future after I've gotten enough use to justify the expense out of my current set up. I figure I've still got a ton to learn.
I was surprised to find they even sell electrodes for doing Aluminum welding but they are pricey. From what I've watched on youtube it looks like TIG can handle the small, thinner metal I'm working with better than stick welding can. But... the setup is more.

Congratulation IshChayil, welding is a blast!
And with the manly man points, it's just that much better
If you don't already have an auto darkening hood, I would strongly recommend getting one. It was like night and day for me, and it's especially useful for stick welding since you have to scratch start. ....

Yeah, at first I was just using a cheapo $6 helmet. I couldn't see anything until the sparks started flying. Quite a pain to lift up the mask try to get stuff positioned right, lower the mask, be blind until the arc gets going then realize "oops I'm in the wrong spot". Also, after I did my first project, the human entrance doorway to a big cat cage, my eyes were hurting me.
I was a bit concerned; I realized then here in the Philippines you can't count on safety stuff like you can in the states. Anything to make a buck; that's something I think folks in the Western world really take for granted. If you buy a "welding mask" you can darn well expect it to not let your eyes get fried otherwise ... lawsuit.
In my naiveté I had not thought that through. So next I spent $30 on a Japanese autodarkening mask and you are right it's awesome. I can actually see when the arc isn't going and my eyes haven't hut any more since I got this thing. really good tip @eye4them

No welding advice to give as I’ve never embarked on that journey, but I will give you a big “ATTA BOY” for “becoming a man” and “earning some man points”. I feel the same as I’ve been doing electrical work in our new house. It’s fun and feels good to do it yourself. Keep it up, Ish! And thanks for sharing.

Haha, electrical work way to go! In our basement there was a weird buzzing sound recently you wanna come over and help?

 

[mystic]

I'm not oriented to hands-on stuff like this but when I took a welding class in high school, man, it was a neat feeling. I made nothing practical but got a wonderful relaxation out of drawing a bead with the arc (or making little figures from bare rod with a torch). The mellowness I carried each time class ended was like nothing I'd experienced.

 

[andrew]

It is good to be a Maker.

 

[PeteR]

Weldings fun....If you think of it as a mechanical thing it makes it sort of clunky, but if you get you mind to think painting with metal things seem to flow better.

Yes, definitely part science and part art! I'm not great, but I can hold my own. Kudos, @IshChayil .

 

[IshChayil]

I'm not oriented to hands-on stuff like this but when I took a welding class in high school, man, it was a neat feeling. I made nothing practical but got a wonderful relaxation out of drawing a bead with the arc (or making little figures from bare rod with a torch). The mellowness I carried each time class ended was like nothing I'd experienced.

Yes, this was not what I expected. It's nice to not think about anything else; well put.