Welding Tips and Tricks

There are welders on here who started out not long after wwll. I’d love to hear recollections of what some of the very old machines people have used. Whether that be when they were modern or recently

When I was a kid, my older brother worked in a machine shop and bought a Miller Dial-Arc for our home for farm use. This was 1975 or so. We were just talking the other day and he's been using that machine as recently as last week. I was probably 11 when I first used that. That's the oldest thing I have gotten my hands on. My dad was in the Pacific in WWII but to my recollection, didn't do any welding.

I stand corrected there... After returning, he worked at Curtis Wright in Clearfield PA and build a go-cart for the older kids. He welded that entire thing, so he clearly did some welding at some point. That cart still hangs on the wall in the basement of our homestead. The frame is 100% Inconel tubing. As a kid I always marveled at the welds on that thing. At the time, that was high-end stuff.

I had a lot of fun in that cart!

I first learnt to weld on an old stick welder of unknown brand. I just remember it having a bunch of female plugs in the front and you just plugged into different ports for whatever amps you wanted.

When I did my first welding certificate test for TIG, I did my carbon steel test on an old Lincoln IdealArc SP200 and my Aluminium test was done on a Miller 330AB/P.

I have a 1969 Lincoln Idealarc (round top) stick welder in my shop currently. The oldest I have ever welded with happened to also be a round top idealarc from 1961. I used to have 1974 vintage AC-225 cracker box that my dad handed down to me.

Can't remember if I was ever allowed to try it but when I was a little kid in the 50's my dad had a stick welder he built from a huge army surplus generator mounted on a 2 wheel trailer. It was run by a pto hookup and the amperage was adjusted with the tractor throttle. At that time blacksmiths were common and personal welders were few and far between.

homeboy wrote:Can't remember if I was ever allowed to try it but when I was a little kid in the 50's my dad had a stick welder he built from a huge army surplus generator mounted on a 2 wheel trailer. It was run by a pto hookup and the amperage was adjusted with the tractor throttle. At that time blacksmiths were common and personal welders were few and far between.

That gave me a smile! I love hearing about some of the functioning rigs from back in those days. State-of-the-art stuff!

At around the same era a local farmer was selling stick welders door to door. He hooked one up and gave a demonstration. He had extra helmets for onlookers and that would be the first time I actually saw an arc weld in progress as dad only had one helmet. Dad didn't buy but carried on with his homebuilt.

I took metal shop as a freshman in high school. That allowed me to start using our Forney AC for farm repairs and various toys. Sounds like the one referred to by Mr.Payne. It wasn't a great welder. I quickly started using the pto driven machine that offered DC.

I'm not all that old, this would have been about 1984.

Cheers, Alan