Welding Tips and Tricks

So, I am completely new to welding. Never welded a thing. I do have a hand torch for the usual resin/art projects but not even close to what I need to learn for this project.
The other night, I downloaded an awesome set of plans/tutorial for building a teardrop camper (about 1,200 pages of photos & step-by-step tutorial). It starts off with building your own trailer & that means...you guessed it...welding. I could take the easy way out & buy a Harbor Freight 4x8 flatbed. But...why?
So, this is why I decided to join this group:
To learn, get guidance, find out what I need to do this.

Welcome. Just to be clear. By the time you invest in equipment and materials to learn the skills to complete a project like this you will likely have $3k into your trailer or more. As long as your open eyed about what your getting into you will be fine.

Poland308 wrote:Welcome. Just to be clear. By the time you invest in equipment and materials to learn the skills to complete a project like this you will likely have $3k into your trailer or more. As long as your open eyed about what your getting into you will be fine.

I have no problems saving up money to learn to weld. It is a valuable skill. I may just buy a Harbor Freight trailer for my camper & practice welding once I get a MIG machine, books, safety gear, videos, etc. Found out that MIG is the place to start. Research is a valuable skill.

new_to_welding wrote:......... Found out that MIG is the place to start. ..........

not really.
mig has a lot of variables you need to get right and you need to know what your looking at to be able to get it right (bit of a catch22).
one of the dangers is mig can give very nice looking welds that fail.

stick is the best way to learn. welders are cheap, don't need gas, can work outdoors. plus the little inverters are small and can be easily taken to a mates place to weld something. once you get good at stick you will find mig and even tig much easier to learn. its a whole lot easier to adjust migs if you already know what to look for because stick forces you to learn correctly.

tweake wrote:

new_to_welding wrote:......... Found out that MIG is the place to start. ..........

not really.
mig has a lot of variables you need to get right and you need to know what your looking at to be able to get it right (bit of a catch22).
one of the dangers is mig can give very nice looking welds that fail.

stick is the best way to learn. welders are cheap, don't need gas, can work outdoors. plus the little inverters are small and can be easily taken to a mates place to weld something. once you get good at stick you will find mig and even tig much easier to learn. its a whole lot easier to adjust migs if you already know what to look for because stick forces you to learn correctly.

Yup, when beginner MIG welds ultimately lead to the inevitable "what am I dong wrong?" thread, the list of things to check is about 4x the length compared to stick. With stick it's usually just CLAMS.

Sweet! Will look into stick welding. Thanks for the information!

I have the option to use all three of those processes, but I use Tig 75 % of the time and stick 20% of the time. You can do the math on the Mig.

Poland308 wrote:I have the option to use all three of those processes, but I use Tig 75 % of the time and stick 20% of the time. You can do the math on the Mig.

Looks like it is good to know all three. Thank you for your response.

Poland308 wrote:I have the option to use all three of those processes, but I use Tig 75 % of the time and stick 20% of the time. You can do the math on the Mig.

i'm very similar to that.
tig because its often stainless or aluminium and most of it is small repairs and fabs.
its really only when i have big projects that i use the mig.

for me its quicker and easier to set up the stick than anything else. pita to set up tig etc for 10 seconds of weld.

tweake wrote:pita to set up tig etc for 10 seconds of weld.

ain't that the truth!