I've been lurking a while and decided to finally sign up and say hello. I've recently decided to teach myself how to weld from a hobbyist's point of view. Wanting to learn to weld has been with me since my days in High School Metal Shop. I never could strike and hold an arc with a stick welder back then, despite trying over and over, managing to stick the electrode to the bit of steel I was hoping to lay a bead down onto. The Shop teacher finally suggested I go over by the forge and cast some more fishing sinkers...
I picked up some safety gear and a Harbor Freight MIG 170 welder - I figured that if I found out that metal working wasn't for me, I wouldn't have too much dough invested. So far, I've only used it with flux core wire, and I've been able to actually produce a couple of decent looking welds. I also managed to put this simple welding table together:
- welding.table.JPG (50.84 KiB) Viewed 349 times
After I developed a bit of mastery with the small MIG welder, I picked up an Everlast PowerArc 200ST stick welder and 5 lbs of 6013 rods. I'm striking arcs and running beads on 1/4" plate, so I hope my fishing sinker casting days are behind me now.
Dwight
