Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Fixing and making things, what tools to get and what skills to learn, ...
RusticBohemian
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Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by RusticBohemian »

I'm interested in learning to weld, with an eye toward eventually making a bit of money off of it.

I'm looking for an 80/20 approach to learning enough to be effective in what I want to do and acquiring the minimum amount of equipment to be safe/effective.

I'm not particularly interested in welding pipes for oil/gas, etc. I'm interested in making furniture, railings, gates, etc.

I plan to go into my local high-end fabrication business, which does exactly the type of work I'm interested in, and asking if they can make suggestions for me.

But beyond that, I've considered two options:

1) Go to my local community college, and take the two non-credit courses they offer

- (WLDG 1009) will introduce you to oxyacetylene and arc welding techniques. Safety is an important focus of this class.

- (WLDG 1043) introduces the student to MIG, TIG, and flux-cored welding processes.

2) Look around for low-end welding businesses and try to get a job there to learn enough welding.

Do I have other options? Any suggestions?

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Kriegsspiel »

Do high schools or tech schools have shop class? Maybe find out who the teacher is and have them tutor you directly, instead of paying more to take a standardized class. Or put an ad online asking for a welding tutor.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I think your ideas are good, especially if you can get someone else to essentially pay for your education. You could also look for a makerspace nearby, they often have welders and lessons.

If none of the other ideas work and you have a place to do it that you won't burn down you could also buy a cheap welder and give it a try. I learned on a used flux core mig welder. I never got enough experience to get good at it but I can weld steel and it isn't too ugly.

George the original one
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by George the original one »

The welding classes will give you experience in the broadest range, I think, which will then allow you to choose equipment based on what you like & want to use.

A friend and I taught ourselves with a tank of gas & MIG welder & solar welding mask & welding gloves. Neither of us are very adept at it unless the metal is shiny new and then we're pretty decent. We are both, however, very skilled with grinders and can undo what doesn't get done right.

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Sclass
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquis

Post by Sclass »

Really good tips here on how to learn. I acquired my welding skills much this way. No class except a two hour lab in my engineering shop in college on oxyacetylene.

Looking back it was like @Gilberto or @GTOO’s experience.

I watched people weld (actually I didn’t or I’d be blind) from a distance. I think I just hung around while friends welded up trailers, engine mounts, motorcycle frames etc. I got the general idea of what was going on. Basically fusing one piece of metal to another with minimal filler material.

Then one day I went down to Harbor Freight and bought their cheapest stick welder. It was like $50 for everything. Equivalent setups (mask, welder, gloves, sticks) can be had for less now. One afternoon I tacked a bunch of scrap steel together with the set. You figure out what works and what doesn’t...how not to burn yourself. It was pretty scary but that’s the rub. You can learn a lot if you are brave and stupid if you don’t kill yourself.

In an hour I knew how to weld poorly. $50 + audacity. No lessons. This was thirty years ago. I was young, broke and bold.

Then I watched some VHS tapes on MIG, TIG and arc for trade schools. Got them at my local library. I got a used TIG welder for $2000. Now a similar kit costs $200 online. Thanks China.

Anyhow I stumbled my way through and welded a few scraps together. I think it took one tank of Shield gas 20cf or so to get good enough to weld custom exhaust systems for my cars and motorcycles from there. About two hours of practice. I did a few custom exhaust headers for friends too. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t pretty and I cannot make money doing this. But my stuff was solid and didn’t leak.

Later down the line a buddy showed me how to MIG weld during a bike build project. After gas and TIG I literally picked up his MIG gun and laid down beads in three minutes. It was easy. Again, not aircraft quality but solid farm grade welding.

Now we have cheap equipment on Amazon from China. YouTube. It’s a lot easier to jump in now. I kind of laugh when people say you need a class. Depends on how dumb, brave, resilient to failure, attentive to details, etc. you are.

A little chutzpah goes a long way. You just have to be brave enough to pick up the torch, turn on the gas and hit the power. The rest is details and practice.

I recently gave all my equipment away during a move. I looked at it and realized it was too heavy to pack and cheap to replace given the influx of Chinese welding gear. I only went through three tanks of shield gas so I’m hardly an experienced welder.

Sticking two pieces of metal together is actually easy. Making it strong is the next level. Then making it pretty enough to sell is yet another.

I gave away all my stuff because I used it infrequently. I also remember a fab mentor telling me that you should always let somebody else weld for you “Sclass have you ever met an old welder?” I lost interest after I learned how precious my lungs are.

aptruncata
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by aptruncata »

It's a great idea.

Back couple years ago, I needed to spot weld a bull bar on our Suzuki samurai and some spot welding on the exhaust.
The mobil welders quoted $150 for the exhaust and for the bull bar, it was about $200 for 4 sections of 3" welds.

Decided to pickup a Hobart handler 140 and first made the welding cart from abandoned shopping cart then went on to spot weld the exhaust and the bull bar and have the welder to keep for other minor projects. I'd pickup a good helmet and watch for the fumes...it's pretty toxic.

good luck.

ducknald_don
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by ducknald_don »

@aptruncata A spot welder is generally used for welding two pieces of sheet metal together. I don't think that is what you are doing.

aptruncata
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by aptruncata »

ducknald_don wrote:
Tue Dec 29, 2020 7:08 am
@aptruncata A spot welder is generally used for welding two pieces of sheet metal together. I don't think that is what you are doing.
Thanks for the correction. Meant to weld a small section or a spot; not spot welder or spot weld.

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Sclass
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Sclass »

Recently got interested in minimalist welding. I posted some stuff on propane torch brazing with brass and borax on the fixit log. Good way for making small steel parts stick together. Cheap and easy.

I ran into some limits with larger items. For example something like a bike frame head cannot easily be done with my little torch. It needs an oxy acetylene torch or a TIG setup. Oxy torches are very good versatile things to own and they're very inexpensive. Cheap ones can be found from HVAC school dropouts for less than $200 with tanks and torch.

I decided to get a cheap TIG set because I've done some TIG before. This unit cost me $145 on ebay. These Chinese manufacturers have blown the market wide open with these units priced less than 10% of prior TIG boxes. $145 is dirt cheap. My last welder made by Miller was $2000. Enter the Hitbox HBT2000. It comes with a torch and some consumables. You need to buy some additional stuff like a helmet, gloves, tungsten rods, filler rods, a gas regulator and argon bottle. Those will be an additional $300. I'll likely be TIGing for less than $500.

To see if it worked out of the box I decided not to buy the expensive gas bottle and regulator. I just picked up a cheap welding mask for $40, $10 gloves and some cheap 1/16" stick welding rods ($8). That way I could light it off and check the high frequency arc starter, the consistency of the arc and some other odds and ends without committing to the $200 shielding gas setup. This is because TIG and cheap stick welders are kind of one in the same unit if you switch the polarity of the ground.

Results are below. Basically I jammed a cheap welding rod into the TIG torch and tried to melt some rod on to a piece of scrap steel. It worked. Just this setup is sufficient to do some minimalist stick welding. Good for welding shelving, Fixing stuff around the house. But I plan to take it full TIG in the next week.

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Unorthodox TIG > stick welder hack. This way I can test the torch and the easy arc starter.

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Here is the result. The ugliness is me, I never developed any proficiency with stick welding. As far as I can tell today I was able to melt the plate and penetrate it with the filler. The HF start makes starting the arc a breeze and the arc is stable. After half a stick I'm sick of flux smoke and I am ready for argon shielding gas and tungsten electrodes. Oh, yeah @Cam I wore a respirator under my helmet. In the photo above :D

I'm going to start off brazing with some copper electrical wire. I have a lot of solid copper wire around that's free. I think I'll see if I can braze steel and stainless with it after I get my gas. I also have a lot of aircraft wire around which I can use as stainless steel filler. It'll make for some fun experiments. A pound of real rod is about $15 but i'd like to see how far I can get using trash.

Image

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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by jacob »

The thing that's holding me from welding is that I only have access to 110V and it's my understanding that 110V is not going to get me "very far" (ill-defined as that is). Is this still true?

ffj
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by ffj »

I've never seen an electric welder less than 220 but I'm not a welder.

It would be quite easy to run a 220 circuit however off of your main electrical panel. Especially if you have some open slots not being used.

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Sclass
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Sclass »

My first TIG was a 110v only DC unit with max current of 90A. In theory it could do roughly 0.090” thick steel. But I never welded anything over 0.065” wall tubing. It was fine. I fabbed downpipes all day long with that thing. Yes it was a “wimpy” welder but it got the metal flowing without hesitation. It was a Miller so when they said 90A they meant 90A. I’m quite sure I could weld steel bike frames easily with it given how it did exhaust and intake systems.

I’m not sure about this one. It is a 200A and they say it’ll weld up to 1/4” in the spec sheet but that is at 220V. When I did the welds above I had it on a 110v wall socket and the display said 100A (Chinese units! YouTube videos often measure and find the display inaccurate). FYI the welder is dual voltage with an adapter to go to a dryer socket. You can use a standard extension cord to lengthen the cable then put the dryer adapter on the very end to plug it into the washroom socket.

If you want to do a bike frame I’m sure you can do it with this box. I recall high quality Easton tubing for frames was pretty thin…like 0.040”. It may be butted on some builds but the customs I’ve seen are rarely made with butted tubing. I had a Diamondback mountain bike that boasted double butted tubes but I’m not sure all custom builders use those. I think you know more about this stuff.

ETA - oh yeah, and the whole motivation for me to braze is brazing requires a LOT less heat than welding since you’re just flowing brass/bronze. You’ll need significantly less current to joint the same thicknesses.

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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Sclass »

Burned half a dozen more rods for kicks. My $8 box of welding sticks must have over 100 pieces in it...2 lbs says the box. Below is the result. I am on a steep learning curve for stick welding. Tried electrode negative and I can control the arc a bit better. Turned down the current to 60A. I was totally wrong using TIG numbers for stick. My bead is starting to look like the welds you find on Ikea furniture.

I really don't know how to stick weld, I am just faking it. I keep forgetting to feed the electrode. That's a nice thing about this welder - the High Frequency arc starter allows for restarting the arc at the press of a button when I inadvertently extinguish it. Anyhow, not quite the skill I'd like to pick up but it has been fun passing the time while my TIG consumables arrive from Amazon. This kind of shows how easy it is to weld poorly. Farm quality welding. Quite minimalist. No shield gas - just cheap rods and electricity. The cheapness and electrical energy efficiency has some allure.

Image

For less than $100 you can buy a 110V stick welder, some gloves, a helmet and some steel welding rods and weld. This is kind of what I did when I was a kid...but I kind of recall the welder was just an AC transformer without a current adjustment. Nobody is going to pay me for these but if you fix a neighbor's garden tool you may get a free beer. I'm definitely getting penetration and the welds are good enough to make two pieces of steel stick together.

I am going for something a little more delicate. My goal is to refurbish old car parts by adding metal to the wear surfaces to refurbish them. There are a ton of old Mercedes parts discarded at the junk yard because the holes are worn too big or the gear teeth are ground down to little nubs after forty years. I can get them cheap, potentially rebuild them with silicon bronze filler, then sell them online. I also intend to braze together small tools and fixturing to support my hobbies.

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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Toska2 »

Ok. A couple things.
At 110v you're limited to 1/8 single pass mig, maybe 1/4 triple pass if you preheat. Flux core/no shield gas adds 1/16.

A simple lincoln box arc welder can go from 1/8 to 3/8" and can be picked up for $200. This is a better option if not welding contantly as rods keep better than wire. They still degrade, the coating will flake off due to moisture. Its pretty hard to weld less than 1/8" . Welding rod's digits mean something. 6010 is 60,000 psi and all position (overhead, horizontal and flat) 7014 is 70,000 psi and horizontal and flat. Each welds unique.

@sclass you're doing yourself a disservice by not using actual welding rod. As for soft gears, aluminum and lost pla.

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Sclass
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Sclass »

Toska2 wrote:
Fri Oct 14, 2022 10:10 pm

@sclass you're doing yourself a disservice by not using actual welding rod. As for soft gears, aluminum and lost pla.
Not quite understanding what you’re saying.

Cam
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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Cam »

Good on you @Sclass with the respirator! I love this thread.

I started welding in 2020 in my garage with a little chinese $200 welder. It is still going strong, in fact I just did two small projects with it in the something from nothing forum. With the helmet, hammer, gloves, and wire brush I think I was in slightly over $300 for the whole set up.

Toska2 you are correct about the limits of 120V. With preheat and bevelling you can push limits, but access to 240V is the best option if one is doing thicker materials, or welds that will have bad consequences if they break (other than inconvenience).

Sclass there are plenty of channels I love on Youtube to learn more about stick. Welding Tips and Tricks is the #1 for me, followed by TimWelds and weld.com. I remember my first welds looked like a spattery mess because I had the polarity wrong. Stick is tough because you the welder control most of the variables - travel speed, feed rate, push vs pull, arc length etc. Running stringers like you're doing is a great idea. One of the first exercises in welding school is stacking beads. Just stringers on a plate until you fill it up completely. Best to alternate directions so you get good at right to left and left to right welding right from the start.

Anyways! Have fun. Now that I've got a bit of experience feel free to ask me welding related stuff. Or google it, there is loads of good info on the welding company forums.

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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Sclass »

So I bought my 60cf pure argon tank this week. Got some welding practice in. Relearned some rookie lessons that'll I'll go over here. Now I'm $575 into this. Welder, gas bottle, regulator, 1lb of stainless steel filler rod, 1lb of steel filler rod, 1lb of Silicon Bronze filler (took @Toska2's advice and bought real filler rod). Two regulators (more on this below). An autodarkening helmet (this is a game changer as I'd never owned one before and welded with a shade 10 helmet). Gloves. Stick welding rods. Sheet steel for practice.

I could have gotten away with a lot less money. Just getting a small dc stick welder and some PPE would get me welding for $100. But what I was really shooting for was bringing up my brazing game with some TIG brazing using bronze and copper on steel. This requires a minimalist TIG setup that is basically what I put together for less than $600. Is it going to pay off? Likely not. Some tools like my sewing machines and my 3D printer have paid for themselves many times over. But this welding stuff is going to be hard to capitalize on because I really don't weld many things in a year. Additionally I'm self taught and I weld like a farmer. Nobody will pay for my welds.

I make some small tools. I repair my cars. Usually if I cannot repair or make I'll just buy. So I'll be keeping track of all the times this tool allows me to avoid buying something. For example if a window regulator fatigues in my car I just buy a new one. Now I have the option of welding it back together. And as I said before, my cars are gradually wearing away and I need to add metal to them periodically.

Ok, so on with the adventure this week. I went to the welding gas supply and the guy at the counter quoted me a price for the gas bottle 50% higher than they had quoted over the phone. He gave me a sidewards glance and said "who told you that price?" I said the guy on the phone or I wouldn't be standing here because it was the best price in town. He said, ok, lets see what we can do. Five minutes later the price had gone down below what I'd been quoted on the phone. $330 to $200. That's the way these welding supplies work. I used three in Silicon Valley and saw the same variability. You eventually find the cheapest one or become familiar enough to get the special pricing. If they like you there is this crazy sliding scale on prices. Anyhow talk nicely and be ready to walk out when dealing with these guys. I happen to look like a nerd with money so they often try to take me for everything I've got. They're like any other old school mom and pop business. I don't have the swagger of a blue collar guy and their radar goes off the scale when I wander in. I don't belong there and it's like walking into the wrong bar.

So I got my tank home and I hooked on my cheap import regulator and it leaked at the high pressure fitting. I checked it under magnification and there was a dent on the seal. $30 for a flow regulator was too good to be true. I went out and bought a real one for $100 and it seals. So there is a limit to how cheap you can go with this welding gear. I was pushing the limits in the "minimalist" fashion.

I was really excited that I could get a 200A TIG welder with high frequency arc start for only $145 shipped to my door. And a $35 true color autodarkening mask. Before the influx of Chinese imports this stuff would have run me into the thousands. The lesson is I got away with it on the welder but I didn't get away with it on regulator. I'm still seeing this text editor so I think I got away with it on the autodarkening mask.

I built up my gas lines with recycled CPC quick disconnects because I need to store the parts in different places in my garage. I'm running out of space and I don't have room for a dedicated table or a cart. So the system gets put together in 15 minutes outside my garage on my patio where there is a nice breeze to take away fumes. More on that later. And I lit off my first tungsten and made some welds on plates. Below are my results. The welder works beautifully. Arguably its better than my old Miller TIG set from 1997. The arc is smoother. It has HF starting - push button to initiate arc. 220V option. Light weight. The LCD mask is awesome. Combined with the HF start I rarely contaminate my tungsten which was a regular thing before with scratch start.

My tungsten is more repeatably sharpened because I downloaded a printed a tungsten sharpening jig from Thingiverse and printed it. It uses a dremel tool a $1 diamond rotary disk. Amazing tool. I have perfect points now.

So things are so much better than my past experiences with home welding. This is a great time to dip your feet in the water if you're interested. Cheaper. Easier. If you can wade through the import trash (use the ebay money back guaranty and follow online reviews) you can try all kinds of cheap import gear and settle on some stuff that works. I'm very happy with my bargain basement priced set. It took some time to get all the stuff together and check it's function but for less than $600 I'm jazzed.

So here are some results from this afternoon. And again, the quality of the welds is me, not the gear. I didn't bother setting my post flow and arc down slope so there are the typical errors associated with breaking off too fast. This is the quality I can live with on my car fixes.

aircraft safety wire (307 stainless) filler on mild steel. I love TIG. No spatter. No slag.
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silicon bronze. This is real welding rod. I wanted to try all these other ad hoc rods like electrical wire, safety wire, DT swiss spokes and coat hangers in the name of minimalism but the real rods were just so cheap I decided to get a pound of each.

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copper electrical wire. I had to try. I'm a cheapskate. It actually worked well as a brazing filler.

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I tacked this washer to a steel plate with copper electrical wire on the left and silicon bronze TIG filler on the right. The genuine filler made a much less porous bond. It was also harder than the copper and didn't get scratched under the steel brush. Definitely worth the $17/lb. This stuff will be my goto material for tool making. It bonds steel together without too much heat so it preserves heat treating and doesn't cause as much distortion. I really like the gold tone look. It isn't real welding but it serves my purposes and has these key advantages.

Image

In closing I'd like to mention that the second I sparked up my torch I smelled that telltale TIG odor that I haven't smelled in years. It got right through my respirator. I had these hopes my new respirator would filter all the unhealthy stuff out. It doesn't stop everything. My best guess is it's mostly ozone. Has kind of a bleach smell for lack of better description. TIG has little smoke but you get that funny odor. I used to think it was metal vapor but I don't really know. Bottom line is it went right through my P100 filters like they were a screen door. I felt like I wasn't even wearing a mask.

So I still wonder how safe all this is.

Hope that inspires. Be bold and don't let the fear of poisoning yourself, blowing yourself up or burning down your house stop you from learning new skills. Next time I fix something I'll put it up in the fixit log.

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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Cam »

Sclass wrote:An autodarkening helmet (this is a game changer as I'd never owned one before and welded with a shade 10 helmet).
Welcome to the (auto) dark side. Shade 10 helmets are reliable because there's nothing to break. But being able to see your set up with your helmet down is definitely a game changer! Wait until you try it with stick. The only downside to a cheap auto dark is they eventually stop working and the batteries are sometimes non-replaceable. My first helmet was like that. Definitely no point getting a high end Lincoln or Miller though to just have it sit around most of the time. My ESAB Savage A40 is my at home helmet now. $263 CAD everything included, so no where near the $500+ helmets from Lincoln and Miller. Seems to work very well and I love the headgear design of it. Super comfortable. Not something I'd get as a brand new hobbyist, but if you get more serious or your cheap one craps out it's a good option.
Sclass wrote: The arc is smoother. It has HF starting - push button to initiate arc. 220V option. Light weight. The LCD mask is awesome. Combined with the HF start I rarely contaminate my tungsten which was a regular thing before with scratch start.
The little inverters are something else eh? I still remember bringing mine to school and blowing my teacher's minds with it. It definitely did not perform as well as the 300lb lincolns in the shop, but it was in the same league which is incredible for it being 10lbs and $200. The only question is longevity...a good transformer welder will outlast the person using it, but an inverter? The jury is still out.
Sclass wrote:I love TIG. No spatter. No slag.
It's my favourite process. So clean, so quiet, and what you see is what you get! Well quiet except for AC aluminum which is very buzzy.

About ozone: I did some googling. It is an organic vapour, so if you have cartridges rated only for particulates they will do zip to filter it. My pink 3m 2097 filters have 'nuisance level organic vapour relief', so they aren't rated to protect me completely, but unless I am actively painting or using the wax and silcone spray at work I don't smell any vapours. It looks as if Miller has a filter option for that as well on this page https://www.millerwelds.com/safety/resp ... ors-m00469
I never had any issues with my pink filters even though they weren't technically rated for protection, so that miller option should work just fine too.

I am in the process of putting in a 40A 240V receptacle for my welders right now. Great to see someone else getting pumped about welding!!

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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by Sclass »

I must say I was influenced by your journal. Thanks.

I was up at my place in LA today. I had mixed feelings when I saw some new rust bubbles on my classic pickup. I have half a dozen small rust spots that need patching before they spread. I’m kind of looking forward to fixing it but I’m dreading it at the same time. It’s a black hole of time.

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Re: Minimalist welding skill and equipment acquisition

Post by jacob »

This is but tangentially related, but ...

Suppose I want to build a forge for (s)melting metal. There seems to be two ways to go: Charcoal+blower and propane+tank.

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