Hi, I've been reading the posts here and found this site really good, the mig welding demo / info pages have been most helpful.
I've spent a few hours this weekend practicing on an old car wing I removed and seem ok at laying welds on a flat sheet, overlaps and butts if there is no gap on the butt weld. Unfortunately whenever there is a small gap (say 1mm) I just burn the edges and make the gap bigger, so I have some questions:
1: Should I have a gap to allow the weld to shrink slightly on cooling?
2: If I can't avoid a gap when fitting up a butt then is there a technique / method for bridging / welding across it?
3: One repair I wish to do on my car involves filling a long but narrow hole, which someone looking at it said I should probably just try and build up both edges and then weld it up. I tried practicing welding on to the edge of a piece of car wing and it's very hit and miss whether a blob sticks there or I burn the edge away... any tips on this?
Regards,
Marcus
I've spent a few hours this weekend practicing on an old car wing I removed and seem ok at laying welds on a flat sheet, overlaps and butts if there is no gap on the butt weld. Unfortunately whenever there is a small gap (say 1mm) I just burn the edges and make the gap bigger, so I have some questions:
1: Should I have a gap to allow the weld to shrink slightly on cooling?
2: If I can't avoid a gap when fitting up a butt then is there a technique / method for bridging / welding across it?
3: One repair I wish to do on my car involves filling a long but narrow hole, which someone looking at it said I should probably just try and build up both edges and then weld it up. I tried practicing welding on to the edge of a piece of car wing and it's very hit and miss whether a blob sticks there or I burn the edge away... any tips on this?
Regards,
Marcus