Welding Wire

Yooper,

Wish I did live closer! I can always use more advice. This was my second project (the gates I mentioned) two years ago and the quality improved somewhat once I got the gas turned on! LOL...

There is an instructor who has classes at the local welding supply shop after hours. I just haven't been able to hook up with him yet. He gets rave reviews. It's a one-class event that runs about 4 hours. Now that I know kind-of what I am doing, I would get more out of it. I think the class runs $125 but you get your own machine and you are welding for the last three hours.

I need cheater lenses to find my welding "hemmit."

Gotta say to anyone out there: Buy a good helmet if you are thinking about trying welding. I was using the HF $45 on sale models and while they seemed to work OK and came with "good" ratings, my eyes hurt after a day of welding. Not good. I bought a good Lincoln Viking 3350 auto-darkening helmet off Amazon and my eyes now have no strain after a day of welding. They have slots built in for cheaters. Other than swapping out the watch battery every year, the thing is bullet-proof.

RCW,

I have a friend that welds for his business periodically. He tried to tell me welding helmets are solar rechargeable. I told him the photocell on the helmet is to trigger the darkening. He doesn't believe me. He'll learn the hard way.

Everyone please: CHANGE YOUR BATTERY AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR.

Got the latest welding project done using some of that super sweet "Eye-talian" wire. I welded up a cart to hold my tombstone welder.

The upper box was $45 new. I think it's a second but it looks and works great. I moved a lot of tools for my MIG into it. The roll-around handle is made of a section of one of my old down rods from the old ceiling fans in the living room. The side pieces of the handle are 1/4***8221; plasma scraps that work really well for all kinds of projects. The welding shop throws tons of this stuff away. The Lincoln is the AC only model but I have a MIG for most stuff. This will be for heavy material like welding on the hitch to my tractor box. For $200, I couldn't pass up a brand new stick welder.



Used ammo boxes for rod storage. The cart has a small footprint but rolls easily. Much easier than lugging it around...



Now on to the next project...

Bill,

I have only struck a few seconds of arc with this beast to make sure it works. Again, I am totally making this up as I go along but, I was able to get pretty decent welds for a newbie. For sure, this thing will test my self-installed 20amp circuit. If you can get that old welder, that would be a real catch. They only have a couple moving parts and I think the switch contacts are still available as are the ON-OFF switches. There is a fan but that should be easy to get working. These old beasts have a well deserved reputation and that is why I could not pass up a shiny new one for 30% off retail.

bd,

My Lincoln and my HF helmets use standard mercury cell watch batteries, which are not rechargeable. On those helmets, there would be no point in a charging circuit because the batteries are non-rechargeable. You would think that if they were rechargeable, they would have been fitted with rechargeable batteries from the factory. On both of these helmets, the solar sensor is a type tuned to the high UV temps encountered in welding. Both will darken in bright sunlight and when grinding if not in the "GRINDING" mode.

The reason I am trying to get the word out is, last Spring when I started a project, I had not used my Lincoln helmet in a few months. It worked perfectly when I put it away. I struck my first arc and realized my helmet never darkened. I ended up with a flash burn on my right retina. Thankfully I was welding on really low power at the time.

Thankfully, that injury has nearly healed but, it was no fun for the six months I had a spot in my vision. That is when I started researching auto darkening helmets. The Lincoln owners manual warns the user to always use the test feature to make sure the battery is good. I do that religiously now, as well as proactively changing my battery annually. The HF helmet is very very vague in any mention of the battery, other than saying "It SHOULD last four or five years." It has no test feature and your first clue the battery is toast is when it fails. Not good.

Your eyes are precious. Without them, doing anything becomes a lot harder. The get plenty cranky with normal age. No need to beat them up like I did.

Just a word of caution...

Len,

The transformer in the new Lincolns is still massive. I think the one I bought weighs right around 100 lbs. 'Bout killed me getting it into a shopping cart and then getting it into the truck was not easy. It seems at least some of the old American items are still built well. My daughter is a project nut and I expect her to get my Lincolns and hand them down to her boys. Same with my Kubota.

That is the funny thing about welding: You never realize what you can do until you start. Then, you run across things all the time that can be solved by sticking pieces of metal together.

(Just looked the specs up and it weighs in at 99.0 lbs shipped. It also requires a 50a circuit for max welding. I checked and mine is 50 amp so I should be OK. I thought I had run two 20s but they are 25's and in the AC world, you add them up. Glad I don't do electricity for a living...)

The INE wire is GREAT! Got five rolls in the cabinet!

In fact, a buddy wanted to get into welding. I found him a cheapie Eastwood MIG 135 a friend's kid broke putting the second wire roll on. Broke the plastic tensioner arm somehow. He was happy to get $50 for it and I got it working with 18ga steel scraps and JB Weld. (A friend pondered how ironic that I used JB Weld to fix a welder...)

It's basically brand new machine that sat in storage for 5 years. Got him a couple rolls of INE wire for once he uses up the Lincoln wire that came with it.