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I have always wanted to be able to weld as my ol man was able to build anything with metal so I went and bought a gasless MIG welder a while ago and built a trailer (used for PI trip in January with Disco, Wayne and crew) as a trial to discover what I wanted in a trailer. Well that worked well and although I had to grind back a lot of the welds and re-weld I finally got it finished.

My biggest problems were my shaky old hands and my sight as despite trying everything I could never see what and where I was welding as I could never get the helmet settings right…everything was nearly black. I sold that one on ebay and nearly got what it cost me to make .

I have now started to build my ‘keeper’ and have had some of the heavier welding done by an engineering shop in town. I have done some of the lighter welding and have recently found my single focus lense glasses that I got for computer work and had put away in a safe spot.

Now these glasses are not transition glasses and to my amazement this has cured my vision problem. Seems the transition lenses were compensating for the brightness coming through the helmet.

My welding is now much better even though I am still shakey but not too bad.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Get comfortable in your body/arm position, try out a similar weld on some scrap and get your settings right, then its all about practice, practice, practice

Slag inclusion is a bitch with gassless and slows you down. (basically a modern arc/stick welder imo) This is why they make grinders for

Thats a good idea to get the main welds done by a pro, they have decent equipment and proper MIGs to get the best penetration and better results overall.

There are a few current professional welders/boilermakers in here that can be more specific.

My uncle is a boiler maker and when i was learning he told me to do small overlapping circles. still do it to this day even when i'm stick welding. Ive never had a weld fail.

Will you have to stop every 20min's to pop rivet this one aswell

Tips your after.......mmmmm..... get someone else to do it and drink their beer while you watch them
works for me

Disco wrote:Will you have to stop every 20min's to pop rivet this one aswell

That had nothing to do with the welding mate...
Nobody told me that a few aluminium rivets would hold a heavy sheet of colorbond steel on...we didn't have to stop on the way back as I doubled the number of rivets...

A few shots of Jim Beam before welding always cures the shakes. Cheers!

Get yourself a good autodarkening welding helmet from BOC Gas & Gear. These take the guess work out of where to point the torch. Get comfortable, grab some scrap steel and do a few runs, checking the weld pool and the penetration of the electrode and heat settings. I would steer clear of gasless wire unless you can't get hold of a cylinder of Argoshield Light welding gas. Gas wire is much cleaner and easier to use than gasless as you have slag and generally quite a bit more clean up with an angle grinder and flap discs etc.....

Just found this, it's a haynes guide to welding. Looks good from what i've seen of it thus far.

Get Seiko to weld it for you with his new toy other than that listen to jonno and the other boys+keep practicing

I'm trying to figure out how & where i can weld at home. I can do it in front of the garage, but it requires a long extension cable coming from my unit block. On top of that i don't wan't to go blinding the neighbours, so i guess i'd have to choose "when" to do it so no dogs children or random people are blinded.

mike-s wrote:Just found this, it's a haynes guide to welding. Looks good from what i've seen of it thus far.

Thanks mate...a good read.

StuMiller wrote:Gas wire is much cleaner and easier to use than gasless as you have slag and generally quite a bit more clean up with an angle grinder

Angle grinder?.....you're doing it wrong!
The biggest mistake I find people make with gasless, is that they attempt to weld as they would with gas.
The polarity should be reversed for a start and you should weld as you would with a stick....away from weld...not into it!
Lay the weld in, don't push it in
The Gas industy has spent a lot of time convincing people that gasless is not as good, for obvious reason's
I find it much better, no oxidisation, as you get with gas if you have the slightest breeze
Common sense, aint so common, but old fashioned "it's always been done that way"...... IS!

seiko1 wrote:

StuMiller wrote:Gas wire is much cleaner and easier to use than gasless as you have slag and generally quite a bit more clean up with an angle grinder

Angle grinder?.....you're doing it wrong!
The biggest mistake I find people make with gasless, is that they attempt to weld as they would with gas.
The polarity should be reversed for a start and you should weld as you would with a stick....away from weld...not into it!
Lay the weld in, don't push it in
The Gas industy has spent a lot of time convincing people that gasless is not as good, for obvious reason's
I find it much better, no oxidisation, as you get with gas if you have the slightest breeze
Common sense, aint so common, but old fashioned "it's always been done that way"...... IS!

I've done many a demo with both gas and gassless wire. If you can afford it, go for an inverter. Stepless control and corresponding wire speed.
You're right in saying you "drag" the gassless, not "push" the wire into the weld pool.
I think you have far more control over the weld pool and the finish with gas, rather than with gassless. Both methods will do the job, but for inside a workshop environment, I would use gas every time.

Just my two cents....

StuMiller wrote:

seiko1 wrote:

StuMiller wrote:Gas wire is much cleaner and easier to use than gasless as you have slag and generally quite a bit more clean up with an angle grinder

Angle grinder?.....you're doing it wrong!
The biggest mistake I find people make with gasless, is that they attempt to weld as they would with gas.
The polarity should be reversed for a start and you should weld as you would with a stick....away from weld...not into it!
Lay the weld in, don't push it in
The Gas industy has spent a lot of time convincing people that gasless is not as good, for obvious reason's
I find it much better, no oxidisation, as you get with gas if you have the slightest breeze
Common sense, aint so common, but old fashioned "it's always been done that way"...... IS!

I've done many a demo with both gas and gassless wire. If you can afford it, go for an inverter. Stepless control and corresponding wire speed.
You're right in saying you "drag" the gassless, not "push" the wire into the weld pool.
I think you have far more control over the weld pool and the finish with gas, rather than with gassless. Both methods will do the job, but for inside a workshop environment, I would use gas every time.

Just my two cents....

Shit yeah, it's perfect for production welding, but most of us don't have a workshop
Just a breezy old garage