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New Guy Introducing Myself

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2014 6:25 am
by RookieWelder
Hello, all!

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
welding.table.JPG (50.84 KiB) Viewed 350 times
It's not perfect, but it's getting the job done!

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

Re: New Guy Introducing Myself

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2014 8:07 pm
by Otto Nobedder
Welcome aboard, Dwight,

We all start somewhere, and that welding table suggests you won't be casting sinkers here...

And, here, you can ask anything you want and get a serious answer.

Steve S

Re: New Guy Introducing Myself

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 9:55 am
by Mike
Dwight welcome to the forum.