Hi all,
I've been wanting to learn to weld for ages. I spent a long time reading this site before finally biting the bullet.
Unfortunately, time has not been on my side and since getting the kit, I've had under an hour to practise.
This is a picture of my first session, where I practised running some beads along box section. After that, I joined two section of box. There's no denying that the welds look awful but they have stood up to a lot of punishment from a lump hammer to the point that I've distorted and bent the metal around the welds without them breaking - so can't be all bad
After studying the forum for a while, I decided the main problem was gas So I upped my gas output (no flow meter unfortunately and had a go on another piece of metal.
Much better welds this time but wide and thin. I realised afterwards that I had misread the power settings for this depth of metal, so I was putting far too much power in.
Very early days for me, but I'm having a lot of fun. I just popped in to say thank you for putting such great info on the site.
Also, just wanted to add that I'm deliberately welding in different directions, push, pull, and different orientations trying to learn as much as possible.
I've been wanting to learn to weld for ages. I spent a long time reading this site before finally biting the bullet.
Unfortunately, time has not been on my side and since getting the kit, I've had under an hour to practise.
This is a picture of my first session, where I practised running some beads along box section. After that, I joined two section of box. There's no denying that the welds look awful but they have stood up to a lot of punishment from a lump hammer to the point that I've distorted and bent the metal around the welds without them breaking - so can't be all bad
After studying the forum for a while, I decided the main problem was gas So I upped my gas output (no flow meter unfortunately and had a go on another piece of metal.
Much better welds this time but wide and thin. I realised afterwards that I had misread the power settings for this depth of metal, so I was putting far too much power in.
Very early days for me, but I'm having a lot of fun. I just popped in to say thank you for putting such great info on the site.
Also, just wanted to add that I'm deliberately welding in different directions, push, pull, and different orientations trying to learn as much as possible.