Good morning gentlemen. I think it’s time that I might start a Welding thread.
There is no substitute for time behind the torch. If you were to take a class, the instructor would have you laying bead upon bead upon bead. 100s if not 1000s. Practice makes better...
I cut my filler rods in half so they are less unwieldy...
They make a heat shield for your glove you might consider. One torch option you can try is to get a #26--I think it rated for 200A and is a little beefier but will eventually get hot--just not as quick as a #17.
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If I had time to sit down and practice on more scrap metal I would do it, but I’ve got to get this thing together pronto. Besides, the members that I am repairing right now are going to disappear in the future because the frame design is hokey as hell. They don’t have to look any better than the rest of the welding on this car. LOL
BTW I always have to cut those filler rods in half and bend them before I can start. Now, I also have to grind about six electrodes because I know I will wreck five of them right away.
I am definitely not laying a straight bead here, as what I have is a tube fillet weld to a flat plate that doesn’t quite cover the end of it along one edge and has a bent edge that falls away from it too.
Doing this on the floor, and allowing for the weldment to be turned over twice, I was able to get 12 good tack welds on the bottom before I flipped it.
Most of them turned up beautiful, but a couple did not want to take and I blasted them in too long. I think this was a matter of electrode angle, although what try to do is the same thing I would do with the gas torch: point the heat at the thickest metal first, while shielding the thin metal with a filler rod until things come up to temperature.
Still I made a hole and a blob, but also 10 good tacks, which turned out to be plenty. I flipped it over and it felt solid and it was still square when I measured it.
Welding up the rest of it let me sit on the floor to do the gap fills, but I should’ve used a thicker filler rod, allowing me to shield the thinwall even more. The 3/32 rod was not up to the task.
It would definitely have been easier up on the table but I would’ve had to move the whole table, plus the floor is flatter.
I’m going to go stand it up now and finish the welding, So I can get it bolted on the car and put my fenders on.
I was going to take it for blasting and powder coat but on this go around I don’t think I will even bother with that. When it belongs to me, I’ll worry about how bad the bottom looks.