[Chips O'Toole]

My best friend decided to start welding, and he has driven me crazy.

He had a Vulcan helmet he hadn't taken out of the box. He got himself some kind of $90 stick welder from Harbor Freight and tried to repair a trailer. He called me and said the helmet was no good. I asked him if he put the batteries in.

You can guess the answer.

Told him to read the manual. He didn't want to.

Welded again and said the helmet still wouldn't darken. I asked if he had turned it on and made sure it wasn't in grind mode. Uh...

He had welded the trailer anyway, and the weld looked like a big piece of sponge. I told him to grind it and do it over. He said his grinder was packed away somewhere. He jumped on the trailer a few times and said it seemed pretty strong.

He did some more welding with the helmet working, and I told him to make sure he knocked the slag off. He whacked the welds with a hammer and said nothing was coming off. There must not have been any slag. Oh, wait. It was coming off after all.

He just unpacked his grinder, so I think he's going to start over and do things sort of right.

Anyway, I asked him what kind of rods he was using, and he said, "J422." I had never heard of J422, so I thought he was looking at the model number of the welder or something. Then I Googled and found out J422 was a real thing.

Is this a new rod? I don't know much about stick.

[Chips O'Toole]

Oh, boy. I just checked Harbor Freight. I think he's using a spot welding pistol.

[Chips O'Toole]

Well, I confirmed it. It's a stud welding pistol. It has a 2% duty cycle. I have no idea how he connected a rod to it or where he got rods. Not sure why the pistol hasn't melted in his hand.

[tweake]

thats so funny.
the old "i want to weld something together but i don't want to learn welding".

j422 i think is one of the asian rod codes.

[Chips O'Toole]

I can't understand anything he says about this thing. It's really hard to understand someone talk about welding tools when he has no background.

It turns out it's not a spot welder. It's some kind of weird new welder in the shape of a pistol. You can get them on Amazon. The J422 rods came with it.

Now he says he wants to get better at stick. He has no 220 power. I told him to use a generator. He has a couple. He is thinking about buying a used welder from Facebook Marketplace and trying to do things right.

[tweake]

i found what it is. its a hand held inverter. ie a small inverter packaged so it can be hand held. but to make it light enough, its going to be really underpowered for even 3/32 rods.
just yet another cheap junk. more than likely way underpowered and the weight would be huge.

good basic inverter stick welders are pretty cheap. add in a decent helmet, gloves etc and you can learn welding pretty fast.

[Chips O'Toole]

I love my friend, but he is the kind of person who has to learn from his own mistakes. Can't say I'm totally innocent in that regard.

[tweake]

I love my friend, but he is the kind of person who has to learn from his own mistakes. Can't say I'm totally innocent in that regard.

sounds like most of us. some things you just have to learn the hard way.