Welding

[anna]

embee is right the auto mask is the best invention EVER it took me ages to trust them but they are great.

Dont forget to see about a hat too, if you are working to a budget a baseball cap on back to front will do it will save sparks going down the back of your neck!!

You will also do well to get some leather gloves as well.

I´m afraid I dont know the products that are currently on the market for home so i will leave that for the others to help you with.

Good luck.

[yorkie_chris]

Yeah and be careful about short sleeves too, the sparks are fine and you will get used to them, but UV burns are no fun.

Originally Posted by anna

You will also do well to get some leather gloves as well.

Old bike ones do?

[yorkie_chris]

Proper gauntlets better

[anna]

they might do to start with but to be honest, you would do well to get some of these......

http://www.migtigarc.co.uk/Consumables/consumables.html

you can probably get some cheaper on ebay or elsewhere but this will give you an idea of what you need.

Old bike gloves wont last very long.

& another quick nugget - if you're plugging into an extension lead with a welding plant always fully uncoil it & lay it out - or you'll get the worlds biggest induction coil, a molten lump of copper & end up trying to figure out where all your electicity ran away to.

[Dave20046]

look forward to bathing your eyes and dancing around like a lunatic when molten metal goes down your trainers...or even worse when a shower burns through your combats and gets your gooch!

[embee]

Good quality welding gauntlets are quite cheap, even very good gauntlets are only a fiver or so.
I use some Proban overalls, you really don't want to have your clothing catch fire.

Always have a suitable fire extinguisher at hand.

This forum might answer some of your questions, also this .

Originally Posted by anna

Do not buy cheap it´s not worth it, you wont be able to learn properly on rubbish equipment as you wont know what is you or what is the equipment.

Tig welding is for ali stuff so if that is what you are wanting to weld then perhaps it might be easier to learn gas welding first, its the same skill set you need but on an easier material to start with.

Gas welding is mainly used for decorative stuff, very thin steel, and is absolutely the best way of starting to learn. You learn the basics of watching your material and watching for the tell tale signs to start your weld and has a certain pleasure to it in being able to create lovely welds.

Mig in my opinion has always been a bit of a cheat, you can certainly weld thicker steel then with Gas welding however, it´s a bit of a point and shoot thing, it´s not difficult and you can pick it up quickly however, the basic skills of welding I will still argue are in gas welding.

Stick welding is as has been said above for thicker steel and pipe welding, again it´s a skill that can be developed from gas welding and is quite tricky to learn but once you get the hang of this, then the others are a breeze.

tig can be yoused for stanles steel to and normall still
mig can allso be yoused for ali to

sorry do not meen to be picky but hay lol thanks tj

[yorkie_chris]

I reckon in order of difficulty

TIG (hard) > gas > stick > MIG (easy)