Technical On the Gas: A Welding Story

Good write up.

 

I've never tried it, but doesn't look bad to my untrained vision. My last weld project was a modular fuel pump/filter mount for the pick up. Everyone always asks me for advice for TIG but teaching people is a gift in itself that I don't possess, I just ramble and get way past the point to which just makes it more confusing. My best advice is "just do it" and it seems you're doing just that, the prettiness comes later .

 

Glad that schools are still teaching gas welding. When I took a one year welding class in 1973, the older instructor taught us gas, the younger one, everything else. The old guy, Russell, told us that gas was obsolete, and we'd never really use it. When I told him I wanted to build custom cars, and weld like the old icons did my fate was sealed..... He decided that I was an idiot who was there for all the wrong reasons. I got good enough that my 1/18 scale C cab truck that I made in class was the one he picked to enter a student welding contest. Not because it looked realistic, but because of how I made the mag wheels, and the headers on it, and all the individual parts I made.
I found out later that after you learn gas, TIG is much easier to master.
Russell was right. I was an idiot, and my future career as a crackerjack welder got derailed by stick welding pipe, the only part of the class I hated ( because I sucked at it ).
49 years later, I still need gas. That reminds me, I need to trade out my tanks soon.
Good post.

 

Great article, Joey. Gas welding is an art that most people aren't very good at...including me. But my welding improved when I finally took some good advice: don't use coat hangers for welding rod. Good luck at your school!

 

While doing the exhaust on the 39 I ran outta argon. It was Sat, it was -2 deg, I didn't want to wait as the rest of the job, cutting, fitting, bends, I was on a roll. Had full oxy/cety tanks and the old Smiths torches dear ol Dad taught me on. At least I could do some solid tacks, right? For some reason it all came back to me. The welds were falling out of the rod, temp/mix was rt on, fuckital. Gonna gas weld the whole gig. I mean really, what would Dad do. I had my moments and explosive oh shits but overall I feel like it was meant to be. I got the argon refilled in time to TIG the stainless tailpipe extensions. I still don't have the will to gas weld body parts. TIG and "soft" wire for me. Less hammer work needed, less warpage, but that was sure rewarding doing the pipes. Good stuff Joey...

 

Great story! and keep up the gas welding...it still works...

In 1989 I took some welding classes at the CC, you had to take a gas welding class and a stick welding class before you could take any of the others. Which is a great way to learn. I still prefer using a torch to weld tubes together. And I don't make it look much better than you do, I don't have the manual dexterity that it takes to make a beautiful bead.

 

I'm a dinosaur who gas welds. When I was building my chassis at a friend's garage, I stick welded it. Hadn't done that in ages. Gave off a nice nostalgic smell.

 

Got spoiled by TIG in the Air Force, but I have resorted to gas welding on a few occasions. I can still do it! Always wanted to try my hand at gas welding aluminum, but never got around to it.

 

I was surprised to learn that everybody doesn't start welding with gas, they did when I started. In fact it was brazing first, then welding. I take that back, it was soldering first, heating a big copper iron in a gas furnace in Jr High School, and using the iron to heat the metal and melt the solder. You had to solder something together that would hold water. Any leaks cost you points on your grade. When you were acting up in class the punishment was you had to sand the soldering bench. After you learned to solder, then it was brazing, then gas welding, and finally arc welding, but that wasn't until high school. Heliarc, or TIG, didn't come along until a decade or more longer. When we started to learn arc welding all we did was run beads on a piece of steel. Each student was issued about a 6" long piece of 3/16" steel, probably 2 - 3 inches wide, then you sat at the bench and ran beads on both sides of it, and you kept running beads on top of beads. The idea was to lay down as much metal as you could in the time you had. We were graded not just on how the beads looked, but on how heavy your piece of metal was. But you never got to the arc welder until you could gas weld first.

 

Solid post joey.

 

Good post Joey, this from a 71 year old retired pipe welder and night school welding instructor for 22 years. Always started them out on gas, then stick, then TIG. No MIG.

 

Joey, the traditional method is welding with coat hangers, that's what I used until I bought Tig in '72. I am soon going to tackle gas welding aluminum, and have one of the best to teach me.

 

I used to both gas and TIG weld aluminum parts, when my shop was next door to an automotive salvage yard.

They would pay me cash to recreate ears, fix cracks, etc. on parts so that hey could sell them.

Sometimes I got parts that I needed in exchange.

I was experimenting with gas welding formed aluminum body panels at the time that I shut down my shop. Never did get back to that.

 

When I was moving stuff around at home, I found the big box of metal coat hangers I started saving years ago, and forgot I had. Must be about 500, at least. A lot are HAMB material, pre '65, the ones from my parents house.
Gonna save them. The new plastic hangers don't weld for shit....

 

Marty, I think coathanger metal was still good in 72. Later they had so many impurities in them that the era of grabbing a coathanger was over.

 

1970, taking a vocational welding class where we learn gas welding and brazing first then tig and onto stick and mig.
I recall hating the smoke heat and smell of using gas. I struggled with it too but finally passed my tests to go onto the other types.
I haven’t welded any gas since.
Glad I learned it but also happier to use better methods. Great roadster love the stance.

 

I have been welding since the mid '60s and got my N.Y.C certification in the early '90s. After the cert test I told my co-workers that if I failed my test, I'm not going back to re-take it, that's how much of a bear it was. That being said, when someone asks me if I can teach them to weld this is what I tell them. Welding is like brain surgery. I can give you all the basics, but like surgery, eventually you are going to have to do it yourself. You can read all the medical books and attend all the medical classes, but eventually you are going to have to cut open someones skull and fix the problem. The only way to get proficient at welding is to practice, practice and practice some more.

 

Marty, gas welding is technically the best way for welding aluminium sheet, leaves it soft and less prone to cracking. But, that damned flux is a bitch. After I had made the ali tank for my café racer Honda, all my tools started rusting, even the ones hanging on the wall. Also, you have to clean the flux off before you hammer or you will hammer the flux into the metal, no good if you want to paint it. I bought a modern TIG with lots of adjustments and blinking lights etc, much more controllable once you find the right setting, then anneal the weld after with the gas torch. As for steel, the TIG only seems to be able to do half the things I can do with a gas torch, but in certain situations it's way better.

 

I learned to gas weld rite out of high school at a factory,...on the job training, can't beat that.
welded steel tubing on big cooling coils, that were then air tested under water for leaks.,...maybe 50-100 welds on a unit. at first not too good as as soon as you applied air pressure to the unit, you could hear the leaks before sinking into the water tanks!...but got real good at it.

bought myself a Lincoln stick welder back in the 70's, learned that by just doing it,..it was much easier since I already knew the gas welding basics.
still have my Lincoln welder, still looks like new even tho have used it a bunch.
bought a cheap wire welder but haven't used it much or got the hang of it yet.

I enjoy welding whether it's gas or stick.
thanks for the post on this.

 

Great article! I learned gas welding at a muffler shop I used to work at and thought about buying as a lad. Rod in one hand, torch in the other mirror in your mouth so you can see the top of the pipe, remember to leave a hole in the bottom of the pipe to stick the torch in to check for holes before sealing it up.

 

I, too, learned O/A welding in high school. Followed by Arc...MIG....then Tig. Then was able to learn to MIG/TIG Aluminum in my factory job at work on huge heat exchangers/pressure vessels. We're talking Miller Dynasty 700 Amps big. But the coolest thing I ever learned was Oxy/Hydrogen welding Aluminum. Its freaky....basically no flame, just watch the puddle. What a mindscrew. O/A welding is easily my favorite. You know why????....Silence!

If you want to learn Oxy/Hyd welding, I did it at the Oshkosh Fly-in. But if you have a large scale Fly-in in your area, they may have a course on the line up.

 

Thank you for the blog post! As a 65yo I took a welding course at a local community college. We started with stick welding on heavy plate that we cut out of big I beams and such with the O/A torch. Horizontal, vertical, flat and overhead positions. Kind of intimidating to see classmates younger than my children making beautiful beads while I labored at it. COVID came and messed up the scheduling and such. Was able to get some time on the MIG so I can at least lay down some sorta credible beads on occasion at home with my small machine. Great Instructors, fun to learn and have more respect than ever for skillful welders!

 

I too learned gas welding in high school auto shop. I chopped my first top with torches and coat hangers. A lot of hammered stitch welds and quenching kept warpage to a minimum.

 

And this is why you are a writer!! Great story.

 

Well done Joey! My first welding experience was with a Lincoln tombstone arc welder on grandpa's farm. He showed me some basics and then let me just weld with junk from the scrap metal pile. Years later a buddy with an Oxy/Acetylene setup showed me the basics of it, and I welded patches into the floor of my '50 Chevy pickup, using old thin steel shelving and coat hangers. Even though I have O/A, Miller Thunderbolt, Lincoln and Miller MIG and a Miller TIG in my shop, the gas is the one I enjoy the most. I'm not good enough on the TIG yet to equal what I can do with the torch but hopefully will get there someday.

 

I went to Modern Welding School (2002) Schenectady NY, Oxy-Fuel was (and still is) the first course. Oxy-Fuel last three weeks and you couldn't move on without passing.

 

I took AG when I was in high school, kind of like a shop class with a little bit of everything faming thrown in. The Teacher, Mr Karr, showed us the basics of gas welding and cutting, but wouldn't let us do much since the school only had a couple of torches and sets of bottles. Instead, we got to learn stick welding with the four Lincoln buzz boxes they had. Seems like we'd get a couple of hours a week on the machines because we had to share them. I got pretty fair with the stick. Few years later got the chance to become the crew welder on the construction job I was working when the other guy doing it quit. It was mostly welding rebar and stuff like that, but it was a good experience. I bought an old ratty Lincoln to use here at home, the case has about rusted off of it and you can't use but a few of the ranges on it, but that thing and I have welded and cut a boxcar full of metal over the years. If I have anything thick to weld, I drag out the leads and plug it up, just feel better with it than I do my Lincoln Handy Mig. I use the Handy Mig on thin stuff, one of these days I'll get me a bottle so I can use it to it's full potential.

Had a torch several years ago, somebody cut the hose and stole the gauges and head off of it, and I never bought another one. That's something else I want to get a replacement for, maybe even try my hand at gas welding again.

 

I clearly remember my night school teacher stating "you will burn your self" to the class about five minutes into our first welding lesson.
One by one we found out he was right. That was a lesson learned about 50 years ago.

 

I was taught gas welding by the body man at Jeffcott Motors where I was working in '68; then stick and Mig when I went through the Millwright apprenticeship a few years later. Have done a lot of stick welding over the years and just moved up to Tig a couple of years ago. Knowing how to gas weld sure helps when you try tig.

And... you haven't lived until someone paints the inside of your lens black... or slips an old guys cheater into your helmet... or tosses a baggy of Oxy-Acet. mix under you while you're welding.