Welding Tips and Tricks

This may have been discussed on the forum before, but wondering if anyone has had much experience good or bad with Welding City. Their prices are very inexpensive for welding rod and if I put a big order together shipping is reasonable.

Thatkid2diesel wrote:This may have been discussed on the forum before, but wondering if anyone has had much experience good or bad with Welding City. Their prices are very inexpensive for welding rod and if I put a big order together shipping is reasonable.

I've purchased consumables from there:

Tungstens 2%La: work fine
standard collets/colletbodies/cups: work fine
gas lens collet bodies: I threw away all my 9/20 series small lenses as they were all junk (caused porosity). 17/18/26 seem to work fine thus far.

Oscar wrote:

Thatkid2diesel wrote:This may have been discussed on the forum before, but wondering if anyone has had much experience good or bad with Welding City. Their prices are very inexpensive for welding rod and if I put a big order together shipping is reasonable.

I've purchased consumables from there:

Tungstens 2%La: work fine
standard collets/colletbodies/cups: work fine
gas lens collet bodies: I threw away all my 9/20 series small lenses as they were all junk (caused porosity). 17/18/26 seem to work fine thus far.

I may go through with it and place an order then. I want to get a good amount of rod to start practicing again. I have a good amount of scrap steel and aluminum as I do all the IT work for a local fabrication shop. I get to raid there dumpster anytime I am down there.

Thatkid2diesel wrote:

Oscar wrote:

Thatkid2diesel wrote:This may have been discussed on the forum before, but wondering if anyone has had much experience good or bad with Welding City. Their prices are very inexpensive for welding rod and if I put a big order together shipping is reasonable.

I've purchased consumables from there:

Tungstens 2%La: work fine
standard collets/colletbodies/cups: work fine
gas lens collet bodies: I threw away all my 9/20 series small lenses as they were all junk (caused porosity). 17/18/26 seem to work fine thus far.

I may go through with it and place an order then. I want to get a good amount of rod to start practicing again. I have a good amount of scrap steel and aluminum as I do all the IT work for a local fabrication shop. I get to raid there dumpster anytime I am down there.

I've never heard of 'bad tig rod', so I'm sure you'll be fine. Technique/setup/material-joint prep is 1000x more important than having name brand tig rod.

Good to know. Thanks for the help. I may slide a couple extra items from them while I'm at it just because I'm already paying shipping. Just wanted to be sure they were legit. Thanks again Oscar.

Thatkid2diesel wrote:Good to know. Thanks for the help. I may slide a couple extra items from them while I'm at it just because I'm already paying shipping. Just wanted to be sure they were legit. Thanks again Oscar.

You don't have a LWS to buy from, or are their $$ too high?

LtBadd wrote:

Thatkid2diesel wrote:Good to know. Thanks for the help. I may slide a couple extra items from them while I'm at it just because I'm already paying shipping. Just wanted to be sure they were legit. Thanks again Oscar.

You don't have a LWS to buy from, or are their $$ too high?

For TIG rod, the LWS around here only have 1lb plastic tubes, which are ridiculously priced for the amount of rod you get. I'm thinking it's the same where a lot of people live unless the LWS just happens to provide for large companies that need large quantities.

The TIG rod prices at https://weldingsupply.com/cgi-bin/brows ... SIGNOUT::1 look great. Saw Oscar post about them not too long ago. Haven't used them yet, but probably will soon enough for some particularly thin rod that can sometimes be hard to come by at my LWS.

LtBadd wrote:

Thatkid2diesel wrote:Good to know. Thanks for the help. I may slide a couple extra items from them while I'm at it just because I'm already paying shipping. Just wanted to be sure they were legit. Thanks again Oscar.

You don't have a LWS to buy from, or are their $$ too high?

My LWS mainly carries 1lb of any given material, and the price is high. I can get 10lb of ER70s-2 or 6 for the price of 1.5lb pretty much from my LWS. I don't mind supporting them they are good guys, but at the same time I have to watch my pocket too.

Thatkid2diesel wrote: My LWS mainly carries 1lb of any given material, and the price is high. I can get 10lb of ER70s-2 or 6 for the price of 1.5lb pretty much from my LWS. I don't mind supporting them they are good guys, but at the same time I have to watch my pocket too.

I'll try to remember to check my recent $$ I paid at my LWS when I get home this PM

Yes, that would be helpful information.

Thatkid2diesel wrote:My LWS mainly carries 1lb of any given material, and the price is high. I can get 10lb of ER70s-2 or 6 for the price of 1.5lb pretty much from my LWS. I don't mind supporting them they are good guys, but at the same time I have to watch my pocket too.

Sometimes even though my LWS may charge a bit more, I don't need to pay shipping, which can also be a deal breaking on some web purchases. Very rarely do am I able to buy something and not be charge tax, so that's a wash. However, the Primeweld I purchased recently didn't charge tax for out of state, so that was a pleasant surprise. In theory I'm required to pay use tax at the end of the year.

Recently I found out I was charged about $5 higher than Oscar can get it for online, but shipping could offset that. Either way, I like to support my LWS when possible, even if I pay slightly more as I hope they don't go out of business like several others in the area have...down to a few as it is...

My LWS has the monopoly in the area as there isn't another for an hours drive. They support all of the local fabrication shops, the college, and most importantly the paper mill that the whole town revolves around including all contractors. There prices on some things are reasonable though, and I have no problem buying from them, I purchased my oxy acetylene kit from them and bought a cart separate from them as well, it was fine price.

You can also let them know that you're open to negotiate to try and give them your business, but a lot of times if they don't stock it, they won't do anything because they look up their cost, which is also a lot higher for those little 1lb packages because the don't necessarily buy in bulk, so they chicken out.

I'll definitely revisit my LWS in the future. Like I said the guys there are good to work with really good guys. I ended up putting an order together at welding city for 27lbs of wire, a mix of er70s-6, 4043, and 308. Shipping was $15. I thought that was pretty reasonable. I wasn't going to get near that amount until I saw the shipping wasn't going up very much so I kept piling it on. Prices were pretty good per pound on the filler too.

My most recent buy of er70s-2 was on 9/2019, 1/16" dia 1lb at $5.73

er316L .045" dia at $11.00 1lb on 4/2020

Purchased at my LWS

Hi Richard,,,wondering IF your lws also added a haz mat fee to the rod purchase? I have absolutely nothing close for any supplies...air gas is 40 miles in any direction, (scranton, wilkes barre,,PA), private owned sales is 35 miles for supplies or 20 miles for limited supplies,,usually gas (argon, C25). I really don't even have cell service...IF ya look on the verizon map and find that little white dot in the northeast corner in PA,,,,That's me.
Stay safe, Stay healthy,,,PAY ATTENTION.
gramps

no fee unless it's hidden

I get no hazmat fees for any consumables local or over the web.

I only get hazmat for gas, but it's much less than hazmat charged for smokeless gunpowder. For that I get hit for about $28 when I have ordered, could even be a tad higher now, I haven't ordered powder in quite a few years. You can ship up to 20 lbs. for a single shipment.

I vaguely recall around $10-$12 for a 125 cu.ft. but don't quote me on that. I don't see a receipt but if I find one I'll post.

I had a not so pleasant experience with them just the last few days. Ordered some #5 Alumina cups from them. Then tracking showed a shipping label had been created and that was it for days. Then I complained and suddenly the package had been received and was in transit - on the day it was supposed to be delivered. Very poorly packaged 3 of the 10 cups were destroyed. WeldingCity claimed shipping out of Atlanta and been shaky at best and said items could be in the possession of USPS 2-4 days before it even shows it was received. I dunno

20200518_152107 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

20200518_152256 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

@ $7.50 for the lot I chalked up as the price of education... WeldingCity eventually exchanged several messages with me trying to resolve the issue so I might give'em another try. As it were I ordered everything I needed from where I bought my welder from.

DougW wrote:I had a not so pleasant experience with them just the last few days. Ordered some #5 Alumina cups from them. Then tracking showed a shipping label had been created and that was it for days. Then I complained and suddenly the package had been received and was in transit - on the day it was supposed to be delivered. Very poorly packaged 3 of the 10 cups were destroyed. WeldingCity claimed shipping out of Atlanta and been shaky at best and said items could be in the possession of USPS 2-4 days before it even shows it was received. I dunno

20200518_152107 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

20200518_152256 by Doug Wei, on Flickr

@ $7.50 for the lot I chalked up as the price of education... WeldingCity eventually exchanged several messages with me trying to resolve the issue so I might give'em another try. As it were I ordered everything I needed from where I bought my welder from.

Wow yeah that's bad. Hopefully they make it right. I just got all my stuff in. The wire came ups and got here really fast. The other things I ordered I never got tracking for. The order showed complete. I called and talked to Wayne I believe was his name. Very nice and he did get to the bottom of it. Even called me back after sending email with tracking info to make sure I got it. Something about the shipping dept being overwhelmed. Anyways, the other stuff got here yesterday. All seemed well with my package. Now to get some time to get everything setup and welding.

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WeldingCity Update:

Since I posted earlier WeldingCity sent me multiple messages. Saying they understood how and why I felt the way I did. In the end, without input from me, they refunded all charges associated with that order. They also asked to be given the opportunity to earn my business. For me... they went well above and beyond for what in the end was an $8.11 order. So yeah... I'll try'em again. So for now I move from negative to netural with WeldingCity. We'll see....

That's great to hear. I'm hopeful everything I bought that was delivered in good condition performs well. We shall see. Thanks for the update.

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The Weldmongerstore packs their CK alumina cups nicely.

those pieces look like my luggage when I flew back from vegas...musta used the same airline. Sorry for your misfortune.