When I was building my chassis I think I got to be a reasonable welder - I could never have made a living at it, but my welds were neat and strong (IMHO).

Three years later and I've just tried to weld up my broken front mudguard bracket - talk about bird poo! I couldn't get the MIG settings right, with all the usual wrong things happening (sticking wires, popping, spluttering, etc), then I welded the side of the join instead of 'down the middle', and ended up with welds I could break with my fingers.

Had to go and find some scrap to 're-train' myself, until I could lay down a respectable weld that could survive a severe beating with a hammer - THEN I welded my mudguard bracket...

It was as if I'd never welded before... but my angle-grinder skills have been well honed...



David

[Edited on 12/7/07 by David Jenkins]

PMSL

I had never really been much cop at welding purely down to not enough practice at frequent intervals.

I have been bobtailing a range rover at work for the last couple of weeks and have put 2 x 0.7kg reels of mig wire into it doing various bits and bobs.

At the outset i was confident in welding the thick stuff but not the thin inner bodywork or the exhaust but after a couple of days on the welder i was ready for anything and was laying down some really nice (IMO) welds on the innenr bodywork and even mananged to fab an exhaust out of offcuts of exhaust pipe.

I began to recognise when the weld pool was about to dissapear through the other side of the workpiece and when and how to manipulate the pool to get the best reults. I also became far more familiar with the settings on my machine and how much a little tweek on the wore speed can be the difference between a nice weld and a good weld that flowed with ease and was easy to direct - it was a joy to be welding near the end of the job.

I have not used the welder for a week now and already my confidence is slipping away and by the time i need to get it out again to do something on one of my own projects i may welll be back to square one

Never welded anything in my life. But I'm guessing its not like riding a bike then

Nope!

CALVINX you either get a lot of practice or you fall off your bike a lot

Caber

Check the wire feed is freely moving + use new roll of wire.

quote:

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Originally posted by britishtrident
Check the wire feed is freely moving + use new roll of wire.

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Don't worry - I got it sorted in the end.

It was purely a lack of practice, combined with me having to weld stuff that was thicker than I was used to; all the welder dials had to be re-set, requiring a lot of experimentation to get things working properly. The sort of thing where an expert would twiddle the knobs and just get on with it.

Now busy painting the brackets...

Wait 'til you try TIG welding! It's oh so easy to get it wrong, but soooooo nice when you get it right (especially ali!)!

(Calvin - yep, that does mean that I'm still loving my bulk-buy TIG! )

quote:

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Originally posted by Coose
Wait 'til you try TIG welding!

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Welding is just one of the hand-eye skills that get worse if you don't use it..... Bit like taking blood. If I went on holiday I always found when I got back that it'd take a couple of goes to find a patients vein.... Oh well!!!

I used to play golf and the more I practised the worse I got. I played well on my first round after a break then got worse and worse. In the end I improved my game no end by giving up!!!!!

well maybe the flew over the canal over to me,

repaired my enginemount this week, but hadn't welded for about 1.5 years so I was a bit worried, surprizingly it came out pretty nice.... so that might be it.

grtz Thomas

[Edited on 13/7/07 by thomas4age]