Welding Tips and Tricks

I'm a complete beginner at welding. I'm building a car (a Westfield for those that know what that is) and in the process of doing this I have to add bits and pieces to the frame as I go. I want to just tack these in place during the build and then when I'm mostly done I will tear everything apart and paint the frame. Before painting I want to finish the welds that were just tacked.

The problem I see with this is that things will start to rust again long before I can finish the welds. This means I need to clean things again but there will now be hard to reach places. Typically I think it will be hard to get into the corners in a lap-joint, or even worse a T-joint, for instance.

Are there any good techniques for getting into these hard to reach places? Chemicals? Spending a lot of time with a rotating wire brush?

This is all on mild steel and TIG-welding.

I like my cheap little gravity fed sand blaster. Harbor Freight, Tool King, Northern Tool and the like all have them. A 100# bag of sand (70 grit silica) from the lumber yard will clean up a lot of material for welding.

Prevention is another option. WD-40 has a new product, a corrosion/rust inhibitor spray. When ready to weld, just wash it off with brake cleaner, carb cleaner, or lacquer thinner, and blow it thoroughly dry with an air nozzle.

One thing I read on it suggests you can weld without removing it, but I'd suggest a test piece or two to confirm this, particularly for TIG.

http://www.wd40specialist.com/products/ ... inhibitor/

Two cautions...

If you use brake cleaner, make sure it says, "Non-chlorinated". The other kind can make toxic gasses if a hidden pocket of it remains in the weld zone.

The rust inhibitor must be cleaned off completely before paint.

Steve S

Sand blasting with fine glass bead with a spot blaster(looks like a small paint sprayer with a hopper on top)

I've also used Weld Aid anti-spatter, I have stuff sitting around like extra testing plates from school that have not rusted yet and its been 6 months sitting in a barn. it smells horrible too, so there should proper MSDS methods for use. I use it a lot for projects I havent decided what color they will be yet so i spray them with this first. It can be wiped of with a cloth and spray painted and it works great i never have to prime first. for your uses you'd want to use some oil and wax remover after anyways. I also use it to keep our Cold Rolled Steel from rusting too after people clean off the oil.

Thanks for the replies.

I will do prevention from now on. Even if it isn't 100% it should still make cleaning easier.
For the stuff I have not treated I will go with the blaster. Had never seen the ones with a hopper before. Found that these are not very common in my area but there are spot blasters, that I also didn't know about, here that should work the same (hanging cup instead of hopper). Good excuse to get one ....

Me? I guess I'm just old school. But hey, when you're an old fart you are expected to be old school.
Sand blaster. I'd tack my parts securely in place and then hit them with a quick coat of rattle can primer.

Then when you've finished the tear down a quick blast with the sand blaster and it's time to turn and burn!