Welding Tips and Tricks

I find myself faced with an interesting repair project, repairing a failed weld on a tower lattice rung. The tower is solid construction with 7/8" verticals and 1/2" rung latice, 18" face width and in a 70' self supporting gonfiguration (no guys).

When doing some work on the tower the other day I found one lattice rung weld that had failed. It appeared it was inadequate originally vs. Other types of failure. All else looks good and the tower is only about two years old. This rung is at about the 40' mark.

This is my personal tower so there are no regulations involved. I have a proper climbing harness and a Syncrowave 250 with 50' leads. It would appear I need to just grind off the hot dip galvenizing, stick weld it back (7018?) And coat liberally with cold galvenizing paint.

I'm up this tower pretty regularly so it gets plenty of inspections. Since it is not guyed the loads on the leg on a low wind day are pretty modest. Also at 7/8" solid I don't think it will get terribly hot for such a repair. Thoughts?

No reason why you can’t get it done. You can also melt some zinc stick on the hot weld to restore the galvanised surface rather than paint.
Butter it on and wire brush it.


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Please be careful! Watch the fumes from the galvanized steel and make sure to grind the zinc off were you are going to weld.
Let us know how it goes.

At 40' up I expect very good ventilation even on a 5mph wind day.

Where do I find zinc stick? I haven't heard if that but it sounds good if I can weld, chip and get the stick on while still hot. Might be a bit difficult 40' up a tower bur perhaps I can get a helper up too.

Your local welding supplies should have it.


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