I first started welding when I was 16 years old. I also stopped welding when I was 16 years old. Yeah, it was that bad.

If you have decent welding skills, would you consider sharing how you developed these abilities. I am not looking for a second career in welding, I just want to be able to safely weld a little if needed during the construction of an EAB aircraft. I don't think I'd ever consider welding anything major like a fuselage frame, jig or not. I have decent mechanical skills and have tons of soldering experience in electronics and copper plumbing. Welding still scares me, but I find TIG welding just fascinating,

Where did you learn your skills ?
How long did it take you to "get there" ?
What sort of welding do you do ( TIG, etc.?) and what welder units can you recommend for EAB construction projects ?
Any other tips or advice ?

Images like this one make me cry they are so beautiful.

Most local VoTech schools offer a welding class. I took one a few years ago. Good exposure to different machines and methods.

UngaWunga wrote:Most local VoTech schools offer a welding class. I took one a few years ago. Good exposure to different machines and methods.

Taking a class from the local tech college would be a very good way to go. My dad looked into it and it was about $400 for the class here.

I look forward to the reposes here. I'm a poor welder but I really enjoy doing it.

I had watched my dad and grandpa weld for years when I was a kid. When I was 15 I wrecked my XR500 and ripped the muffler off. My grandpa wouldn't weld it back together because the muffler was too thin to weld with his old Lincoln "buzz box" stick welder. So I waited till he wasn't home, rode the bike over to his place and welded it myself. I blew hole after hole and kept slobbering weld, mostly slag, over the holes till the thing stayed together. Actually it is still intact 15 years later. I've never had any instruction and it shows but I can make a ok weld with either stick, mig or gas.

I only recently started welding with gas had I learned everything I know from youtube I actually really enjoy gas welding and that will likely be the system I use for my BH project. We just borrowed a TIG machine from a friend and I'm getting so sick of sharpening the tungsten because my hand just isn't steady enough. I'm sure with more practice I'd figure it out but I'm losing motivation.

My advice, which isn't worth anything, is to get either a TIG or a gas setup, because that is what you will use on 4130, and practice, practice, practice. I'm using a gas rig I inherited from my grandpa; it is a really old Smith but it works. The TIG we are using is a Thermal Arc. The guy we borrowed it from is a perfectionist and is certified to weld on nuclear systems; if it is good enough for him it is good enough for me. What I wanted in a TIG was at least "lift start", you don't want to scratch start on a airframe, would hold an arc at 10amps with a max of 100amps and a foot control.

I wouldn't weld anything that my life depended on, but I've gotten decent with a mig mostly by cheating. A good helmet makes all the difference, like landings, being able to see good has a direct bearing on the end result. A good chop saw makes nice clean cuts which eliminates filling gaps. I like a heavy left hand glove to steady the tip and a thin right glove for the trigger. An argon mix costs more than co2 but doesn't spatter as bad. A steady rest and a good vise to hold things in place are nice. A quality copper ground clamp to replace the standard issue one is a vital investment. If you ever become conceited about your welding ability, try aluminum.

I took some ticketing welding classes years ago. It came in handy when using my own equipment. When I got into fixing and welding on my own planes I used gas welding. It's quite easy to use when welding thin walled 4130, but puts a lot of collateral heat, or what is called, heat effected zone, into the weld area. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Then I bought some tig equipment. Miller makes a great entry level machine and is perfect for the airplane guy. The miller Diversion 165, It is very light weight and electrically efficient, because it is all electronic or "inverter" tech. It uses much less power or amperage than the equivalent transformer machine. The key to being proficient at anything is practice practice...X 10. That especially goes for tig. It not the welding that is difficult, it is training your body, nerves and eye to be able precisely control the torch tip over the area in all three axis. Distance of the tungsten tip to the work is the most difficult and requires many hours to acquire and countless regrinding the electrode..uggg. after repetitive contamination. This skill is not as important in gas welding, all though gas welding experience is valuable to have when moving to tig.
Tig can makes mighty pretty welds, not really necessary when sticking metal together for airplanes, but very handy for making intricate parts.
I highly recommend the video, chromemoly airframe construction by TM technologies https://www.tinmantech.com/html/vid_aircraft_avi.php
There is a lot of info on this site for the scratch builder whose interested in doing their own welding.

Also, this guys videos are very useful https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqq70A ... ApS_m_6mPw

I started in my dad's shop 40 years ago.....I was 5. Just started scabbing pieces together and practice, practice, practice. It was an old Lincoln diesel welder.

As others have said, take a class if you can, it will shorten the learning process and the frustration. Get a cut off saw, small hand grinder and an inexpensive tig or gas set up and then buy some 1" square tubing.

A great smaller project can be a small work bench frame, you can use wood for the top then mount some caster wheels on it.

I think I could train my avatar to MIG weld. I've never TIG welded but I've burned hundreds of pounds of rod, (stainless, 60 and 70 series) and a thousand miles of MIG wire. I've gas welded aluminum and steel tube a little. As has been pointed out but needs to be emphasized in the extreme:

Learn to see

That's it. That's the whole deal. If you can see the puddle you can learn to control it. There are basics that you learn in welding class: Move your heat from the heavier material out to the lighter and then back to the heavier with more time spent on the heavy. I think the classes at your local vocational school are good for one thing; you'll learn to critique your welds. This is too cold, this is too hot, Etcetera. The worst thing about the voc school deal is you'll be welding on shitty material; old stuff that's dirty and covered with other peoples experiments. If they don't give you new steel to work with bring your own the second night. Here's the second part of the whole deal:

Practice!

Miller and Hobart equipment are made in the USA. Alas, most Lincoln stuff is made in China these days. Most of the really good pipe-liners I've known can weld with anything but when they buy their own for home and farm they buy Miller. I've got a 50 year old Lincoln Idealarc 250 amp AC/DC machine. These are perfection in old style stick welders. I paid $150 bucks for mine off CL. Unfortunately they are useless for aircraft work but they are perfect for basic learning and building tables and jigs. If you've got room for one you can make a great start with it. It's got a huge footprint and weighs several hundred pounds. They are happy to live outside. Truly industrial machines.

Some day I'll buy a Miller multiprocess machine. Don't buy a DC only machine if you expect to weld aluminum. Almost all the lower end mig stuff is DC only. My gas setup is the Smiths with the "aircraft" torch. This one has the knobs on the tip end instead of the hose end. It's better for tubing work. Get a rosebud when you buy the torch. A rosebud makes a bigger flame for heating wider areas. Don't buy used bottles unless they come from a welding supply house. They need to be tested on a schedule and do fail.

A "Buzz Box" is an AC only machine that doesn't use a conventional step down transformer. It uses a split core with a single turn coil through the gap. This is like a shaded pole motor. They make a terrible racket and don't work worth a damn for anything.

I love to weld but hate to breath the fumes. I recently got an auto darkening helmet. I think it's worth it but I still make that nodding motion with my head out of habit.

I grew up welding on the ranch. Like many things, theres a differenc in being able to weld and being a welder. I weld often at work and just recently became an AWS certified weld inspector. Practice is the biggest thing. The next biggest thing is to read about it and learn about it. If you can take the time to learn the science behind metal properties and some basic metalurgy, it will help you tremendously. Take your time, do good prepwork, and watch the puddle!

I learned in Jr Hi. The shop teacher had a problem with alcohol and let us do whatever the heck we wanted. I welded for a school year. Then I helped weld up a couple of Experimental Piper projects in high school.

If this is a skill you want to develop seriously, I'd recommend buying an AC/DC inverter TIG rig for around 1200-1400 bucks. Get at least 200A and variable frequency and variable duty cycle if you want to work on much aluminum. Some rigs have a plasma cutter and a stinger for stick welding too. This is really nice for dirty welding.

You should also have a comfortable welding table. In a pinch, a portable folding unit is available pretty cheaply form several sources. For cramped quarters, these are pretty nice. An angle grinder, a bench grinder, an autodarkening helmet, the usual brushes, and some right angle magnetic fixtures and clamps round out a basic setup. Add electrodes and nozzles and sticks, and buy a tank from your welding shop. Most places will honor their tank exchanges even out of test period if you buy it from them. Just a argon tank will allow you to learn to TIG anything.

And then practice. Watch Youtube. Etc. Buy scraps from a welding shop and make stuff. It is really handy to have a metal band saw to cut apart your welds to examine penetration and defects.

Thin wall steel tubing is actually pretty easy to TIG weld for a novice. Easy heat control, and 4130 is really forgiving. Even ugly welds can still be very strong. You can buy a grinding wheel appropriate for your tubing diameter to fish mouth your pieces to practice making angled joints. You should have a small gas rig to normalize joints too.

In the classes I teach for TIG, MIG, and gas welding, I've watched kids learn safety and techniques that are sufficient for a lot of applications in a matter of a few classes. At that point, they know enough to run off and become strikingly proficient after perhaps $150 in materials (TIG electrodes, gases, and MIG wire mostly). Adults tend to be more motivated by actual projects.

Depending on where you live, there are hacker spaces in many communities that offer an alternative to community and occupational colleges. You can also get experience on the other methods...gas,MIG, stick. Our local welding shops and supply houses refer several customers a month to our classes,which run 85-150 bucks for a comprehensive intro, and membership covers supplies as long as they want to practice. It is cheaper than buying equipment. Students are always flabbergasted at how accessible and fun it is to jump in with both hands.

Have fun.

I started stick welding with an AC "buzz box" 40 years ago, mostly self taught, but with some suggestions from an old timer pro. Bought a little 110 volt Lincoln MIG in '88 and thought I was in 7th heaven it was so easy, at least for the thin wall tubing used in "wrought iron" work. Now I have a bigger Miller MIG and a Miller 200 amp TIG with liquid cooled torch that has more settings and doo dads than an aircraft cockpit (I still haven't got it figured out). The TIG is much slower than the MIG but it's like comparing a scalpel to a machete. TIG is harder to master, but it is more precise and makes it possible to do tiny welds.

For older eyes, an auto darkening helmet with built in magnifying lens is a must. Welding is fun! One of those things that once you get the equipment and learn, you wonder how you ever did without it.

There is a downside, if you want to call it that, and that's that if you have metal working tools at your hangar, press brake, hydraulic press, plasma cutter, mill, lathe etc, you can end up staying busy doing favors for people forever.

Another thing: the gases produced by welding are poisonous. You NEED good ventilation. Stick, Mig, Tig... doesn't matter. Don't breath the smoke if you like your lungs. Welding anything chrome or galvanized is a really bad idea because of the fumes that are produced.

Its tough. You need little air movement to keep the welding gas surrounding the weld while you weld, but you want anything else to be removed from the area quickly.

Get a leather vest and good gloves. Slag burns suck. Wear a backwards baseball cap under you helmet. If you're under the thing you're welding, put in earplugs. Slag in the ear is not fun.

And don't weld in sandals. Unless you like to dance.

A self taught farmer style welder here, since I was 12 . What I lacked in welding skills when I started I made up for in overkill design: meaning I've never had anything break! One subject I learned the hard way, is the different polarity required with different rods and wires. Obvious yes but many guys self learning may miss that minor detail, not that I did I totally agree, if starting out take a class, wish I had but too late now. The self darkening helmets are the best thing since sliced bread... and you can get magnifying lenses?? Wow, didn't know that. Almost all MIG nowadays, no aircraft welding but solar array racks, trailers and whatever. The little Honda welder/generator for mobile work, it works but stick welding is no fun after MIG, and I can't wait to get back in my shop. My next project looks to be a 1 yd. trash bucket out of 10 gauge brake formed steel that will be rigged so the crane can pick it up to a roof top, 4 cables, lose two of them and then it self dumps. Fun stuff, and a fraction of cost of a store bought one.

I took a night class at the Laramie HS one winter, back in the late 70s. At the time, I was chairing the airport board, so I took advantage of the nice welding equipment the airport had and did a number of small projects on my own in the airport shop. But I never considered myself a real welder, just someone who could weld. So when it has come time to do something critical, I've always hired it done by a real welder. I would never, ever trust any welding I might do to hold an airplane together!

Cary

I learned to weld when I wanted to build a hangar. A friend loaned me his little wire feed welder and showed me how to use it. I still remember him telling me "I want to hear sizzling bacon". You can tell where I started welding the tubes on that hangar, and you can tell where I ended up. The welds look like crap but they've held up for almost 20 years now.

Nobody mentions oxy acetylene? By the sounds of this thread it must be as old-school as a suction pot spray gun. Grew up welding old exhausts on old cars, mufflers were just cut out of one junker and welded into another.

Whee had mentioned the value of youtube videos for learning more about welding. How right he is.

Here is a short video which will amaze you. The gentleman uses a small affordable TIG welder and does some astounding welding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkjthiUUKRc&html5=1

Here are more links to some really affordable small TIG welders.

http://www.longevity-inc.com/tig-welders


http://www.homedepot.com/p/Everlast-PowerArc-160STH-Stick-TIG-Welder-PowerArc-160STH/204417773#customer_reviews

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=longevity+welder&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=31680765037&hvpos=1t3&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17584940741582192004&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_5ut5s12bey_b

I'm old enough to have a Lincoln stick welder with a dial on the front to increase the power. The big rods double as a torch for cutting... ....sure would light up the shop .
I have used various Mig but today if I would buy another it would be a TIG. Go on the internet learn and then practice practice practice ............just like take offs and landings

UngaWunga wrote:Another thing: the gases produced by welding are poisonous. You NEED good ventilation. Stick, Mig, Tig... doesn't matter. Don't breath the smoke if you like your lungs. Welding anything chrome or galvanized is a really bad idea because of the fumes that are produced.

Its tough. You need little air movement to keep the welding gas surrounding the weld while you weld, but you want anything else to be removed from the area quickly.

Get a leather vest and good gloves. Slag burns suck. Wear a backwards baseball cap under you helmet. If you're under the thing you're welding, put in earplugs. Slag in the ear is not fun.

And don't weld in sandals. Unless you like to dance.

Yes and those gasses must have other effects as well. Every old welder/fabricator I know is grumpy as all get-out.

UngaWunga wrote:And don't weld in sandals. Unless you like to dance.

Speaking of dancing, one time I was welding in jeans with holes in the knees. One of my legs started to feel a little warm but I thought no big deal and continued the weld. Couple seconds later I smelt something burning, looked down and my pants were on fire It was quite the dance I did trying to get the flames out. I don't wear holy jeans while welding anymore.

Karmutzen wrote:Nobody mentions oxy acetylene? By the sounds of this thread it must be as old-school as a suction pot spray gun. Grew up welding old exhausts on old cars, mufflers were just cut out of one junker and welded into another.

I liked welding with gas a lot more than arc welding. It was fascinating to watch the metal puddle, and then shape it with the flame. I might take it up again, if I could figure out what I might like to build that wouldn't drive Mah Woman nuts with all sorts of yard art!

Cary