Welding Tips and Tricks

My obsession with jeeps started early. When a not wealthy kid in Vermont hooked on Jeeps gets his first at 12 it will be rusty. In my case a 1947 bought in 1969. The first thing I built was a Jeep body. 44 years later my sons love it. It is still rust free. All I had was an acetylene torch. My father had heard wire from a very early hay baler was best as rod. All I found was rusty. Coat hangers weren't ideal. We had no internet, knowledge was harder to come by. A generous neighbor was a wealth of knowledge his background had been NJ shipyards.
To this day, thousands of dollars of welding equipment later, I still sometimes use acetelyne/oxygen.
Why don't we hear of it any more? It works, set up is cheap, when accompanied by shrinking skills it is the easiest auto body weld to learn.

While I to mourn the demise of oxy/fuel welding, IMO it is not cheap, (I don’t think you have bought acetylene recently) nor easy to do right especially in an auto body situation. It is far easier for a novice to weld in some patches with a $90 Horrible Freight wire welder than an oxy/fuel setup.

I agree, oxy/acetylene welding is still useful and relatively inexpensive. I know this from buying my own equipment. My welding machine, complete with a wire feeder cost me over 4 grand. I can't touch a plasma torch set up for less than a $1000 not to mention that I would also have to buy an air compressor and all the related plumbing. I know that for all practical purposes, I cannot cut stainless or aluminum but then again, I work mostly with steel and have no need for such fancy stuff. I am also more proficient with oxy/fuel cutting than I am with plasma.

Having said that, in my world, I find that oxy/acetylene to be inexpensive, easy to use and most important, versatile.

I'm in welding school and the next set of class's are oxy/acetylene welding and it's interesting the school spin on why. We can cert. at our choice one of the forms we want . They consider oxy/acetylene the lead in to the TIG course. Since they have a first class pipe school it dozes make a lot of sense. I personally believe the process will be with us for a long time considering the amounts of and inexpensive equipment that available out in the work place. I think prices on acetylene well fall in time when a plant is built to process the gas. I'm finding MIG is a lot more than point and spray weld. I'm going to take a basic MIG. at night to speed up the process. They do teach spray-arc MIG.

It is really a dieing art just like most things that are old school ... Most people don't have the time or patients to sit around and learn something they may newer use ..... I use to gas weld alot and love it and it became a labor of love for me and almost and art from which many people can't do or will even try .. It reminds me of lead body filler ,when was the last time you heard someone using it or even playing with it ??

Acetylene welding is an art form to me too. Very akin to tig welding. I used to do that all the time in high school and haven't done it since.

I have not tried it with propane have any of you?

I need to get an oxygen tank and I will try it. I have all the torches and it would be interesting to try.

Greg From K/W wrote:Acetylene welding is an art form to me too. Very akin to tig welding. I used to do that all the time in high school and haven't done it since.

I have not tried it with propane have any of you?

I need to get an oxygen tank and I will try it. I have all the torches and it would be interesting to try.

Sorry Greg, propane is not for welding. Tried it before I knew better and even tried to modify an acetylene torch tip to make it burn right.

I do use propane for cutting and heating though - its cheaper and easy to get refilled. I've done the math, it is cheaper.
Here is a web page that will do the math for a person if anyone is interested: http://apps.harrisproductsgroup.com/gascost/

Bill B. - I'm with ya on welding with oxy/acetylene. My first auto body experience was to repair the bed/tailgate area on my 77 F150. It was a nice heavy metal and welded great

I also taught my son to weld with a torch before stick and now he is learning to tig

Its been years since I've done it. Watching the video makes me want to go and play with it.

MinnesotaDave wrote:

Greg From K/W wrote:Acetylene welding is an art form to me too. Very akin to tig welding. I used to do that all the time in high school and haven't done it since.

I have not tried it with propane have any of you?

I need to get an oxygen tank and I will try it. I have all the torches and it would be interesting to try.

Sorry Greg, propane is not for welding. Tried it before I knew better and even tried to modify an acetylene torch tip to make it burn right.

I do use propane for cutting and heating though - its cheaper and easy to get refilled. I've done the math, it is cheaper.
Here is a web page that will do the math for a person if anyone is interested: http://apps.harrisproductsgroup.com/gascost/

Bill B. - I'm with ya on welding with oxy/acetylene. My first auto body experience was to repair the bed/tailgate area on my 77 F150. It was a nice heavy metal and welded great

I also taught my son to weld with a torch before stick and now he is learning to tig

Be careful, I carry a Mag Light in my pocket, when it gets dark son #1 wants it, if i find another, son #2 wants it, then comes their mother. I get what's left. Garage bays, tools and welders are like that. Some guys complain their kids don't like tools, I wonder what that might be like? If you ever demand to know "where's my tractor?" and the answer is two towns away, you'll have a sense of what my life is like!

Did an exhaust repair Monday. R45. The MIG sat there quietly.See my user name ?

Bill Beauregard wrote: Be careful, I carry a Mag Light in my pocket, when it gets dark son #1 wants it, if i find another, son #2 wants it, then comes their mother. I get what's left. Garage bays, tools and welders are like that. Some guys complain their kids don't like tools, I wonder what that might be like? If you ever demand to know "where's my tractor?" and the answer is two towns away, you'll have a sense of what my life is like!

Funny! Although, I like my tools so I'll have to buy them their own stuff....and my tractor may need to get locked up!

I really enjoy torch welding, you should the xray techs when I bust out the torches for an xray weld.

At the gas company I work, we are required to use torches for anything under 2". At 2" and up we can go stick, mig, or gas. I like using gas because it slows you down and really see what your doing, and it almost has a meditating quality, unless your fighting the puddle.