Welding Tips and Tricks

2nd pic is your repair then Rick? Nicely done





(no, I dont think for a second its Rick )

Anders,
Please clean the coffee off my tablet

Smart asses..lol it made me chuckle.

Actually realized I never took a pic of my repair. Heard today they are replacing the entire dock leveler so it was nearly practice as it turns out...lol

What's bad is I believe that was done by a contractor... Still investigating but I doubt anyone will own up to it.

Sorry Rick, couldnt let the oportunity slip

As a friend says, without some ribbing now and then its only work.

Welding in a driver side floor pan ...have to replace part of a body cross member underneath ....
Put in some steel "C" channel across the bad spot....welding upside down, can't see and can't reach nothin...
Here , have a good laugh ! haha
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Rocket,
I can't laugh at you for the tungsten, cause I've made plenty, but I will laugh at you for your truck choice.

Len

Wouldn't it be much easier to do that with MIG? I've replaced several floor pans and MIG worked a lot better. Copper backing also helps with burn through.

I always weld floor pans from the inside

Had to replace the cross support underneath. Didnt have burn
Thru probs...just the upside down , outta position, lefty , couldnt reach . I dont have a mig.
I was up above the exhaust pipe, drive shaft and frame ...all blocking me. 20 with the button back cap barely fit.....good times haha

Made a few of these for some freinds sorry for the crappy pics.

WAAAAY to artsy and clean, wheres the dirt and dust?

I take it there's a shortage of T spoons at work this week?

Came out quite nicely.

Thanks Spoon flowers aren't my usual thing but for a couple of women I think I can make them

What settings are you using for the spoons? Do you have pics of the weld?

Welder kurt wrote:Thanks Spoon flowers aren't my usual thing but for a couple of women I think I can make them

I like it. Well executed. The ladies will love it.

It would sell, too.

Hell, it just inspired chillrich to make his first post here.

Steve S

I'll admit I've been sneeking on to the etsy web site. They get some unreal prices for some of the decorative metal work. I've even started to play around with the scrap art. It's no joke. Welding some test pieces on scrap is one thing but turning it into something some one will pay for takes some real skill.

chillrich wrote:What settings are you using for the spoons? Do you have pics of the weld?

Thanks guys, I used my dynasty 280 DX, 45 amps using the pedal, .045 308 filler. The easiest way for me to do them was to dab a small amount of filler on the stem section them hold the spoon next too it then blast it with a quick tack weld to join the two. After their all in position I just welded them out. The they didn't like the stainless colors so I polished the welds a little. The pics were with my I pad and the camera is lacking.

Newbie aluminum project (be afraid, be very afraid!)... Finished and installed my gauge pod in the race car, was a bit complicated and my welds ended up frightful, but I decided to not grind them down and redo the welds, just left them as is... will remind me how much i used to suck at TIG'ing aluminum back in the day (that's assuming I get better in the future... ha... I hope!)... I designed the gauges to face at a 120 degree angle for easy viewing, and mounted behind my dash bar so they don't get in the way. Came out great functionally but the welds are obvious newbie welds, still struggling with fillet and even corner welds... But practice makes perfect right? Working on a switch pod now for my halo bar on my cage (above the driver). Got it all wired up and is really easy to view compared to before (ignore the mass of wires hanging under the dash, those aren't the ones going into the gauges, just looks like it in the pic).

Oh note the small silver gauge on the right, it's an air/fuel ratio gauge that I had in a box for over a year and I forgot it was a smaller gauge face (and a light silver face too which I hate, impossible to read), so I just made an adapter piece of sheet aluminum drilled out for the smaller size and drilled and screwed it in... Not what I wanted but it'll be fine for now, not sure if I'm even going to keep the A/F gauge, it's not very useful if it's not hooked up to a data acquisition box (like a RacePak, which I don't have yet).

Nicely done, Raticus.

I wouldn't be too proud to be rocking that. Like you said, when you're welding like a pro, you can always look at it and see how far you've come.

Hey, btw, that's one giant steering wheel!


Kym

MosquitoMoto wrote:Nicely done, Raticus.

I wouldn't be too proud to be rocking that. Like you said, when you're welding like a pro, you can always look at it and see how far you've come.

Hey, btw, that's one giant steering wheel!


Kym

thanks Kym! and yeah, the steering wheel is one of the few things that's still original, that, the dash and the body... everything else is new (not stock). I love the big steering wheel, it's super comfortable, right where I want it, but with the cage it's impossible to do any work under my dash... I have to remove the seat just to crawl under there. So I'll begrudgingly be changing it to a smaller typical 13" wheel, but of course I'm not going to buy one, gonna make one... Just have to figure out how to bend a perfect 360 deg tube... probably end up bending two (or more) pieces and welding them together.

Poland308 wrote: They get some unreal prices for some of the decorative metal work

That is assuming they can sell it! I've seen the stuff too, some of it is out there like Pluto.

Richard

subwayrocket wrote:Welding in a driver side floor pan ...have to replace part of a body cross member underneath ....
Put in some steel "C" channel across the bad spot....welding upside down, can't see and can't reach nothin...
Here , have a good laugh ! haha
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Bad Tungstens.jpg

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whoa!!!! man those are some of the ugliest tungstens I've ever seen, I never knew they could get that bad! lol...

i haven't been checking out this forum lately, been a bit busy... and this is the great stuff i've been missing! ha... yeah, you need to get a MIG, TIG is great and the only thing for some types of welding, but for some things like that job on your truck, MIG is the only way to go (I'm surprised you have a TIG but not a MIG, I mean, usually one gets a MIG first, plays with that for a few years, then steps up to the TIG... you went for gold right off the bat)

I went totally backasswards, LOL. Started with TIG, then bought a MIG. Then started to do some stick welding (with the TIG albeit).

Oscar wrote:I went totally backasswards, LOL. Started with TIG, then bought a MIG. Then started to do some stick welding (with the TIG albeit).

I started with Tig never got to Mig(the mud gun) and don't tackle big enough stuff to Stick. Guess I am not a real welder!(weldor?)

I'll join the thread jack.

Started with stick but quickly realised it wasn't well suited to the thin stuff I routinely weld. Sulked for awhile, then invested in TIG and haven't looked back. Doubt I'll ever own a MIG.

Unless it's one of those nice, Old Skool MIG 15's. They're kinda cool.


Kym

Never say never. I don't currently own a mig machine. But if like me you check the prices every now and again then we'll probably both end up owning mig guns.