Gas welding ???

Any tips for a guy who is about to gas weld for the first time? I'd like to learn sheetmetal, but I plan to start out on something a little thicker for starters.

Any must have 'how to' books?

What tip should I use? What type of flame do I want? what size rod? Technique?

Pretty much I'm going in to this blind. I use oxy/acy for cutting & heating, but I've never tried to weld.

thanks.

-r

 

I'd recommend getting Ron Covell's video on working with steel sheetmetal with hand tools. It's available at Eastwood or www.covell.biz.

If you've already used an oxy-acetylene torch for cutting, you'll definitely be able to handle welding.

Also check out http://www.tinmantech.com/

--Matt

 

Victor welding equipment puts out an operation manual. Read it and memorize the safety stuff so you don't blow a hole in the neighborhood!

and grease/oil + oxygen = explosion
Don't ever lube anything on a welding rig.

 

Thanks guys. Don't worry about the neighborhood, If I was going to blow it up with O/A I'd have done it long ago.

I'm pretty handy with the cutting aspects of O/A, I was just looking for some grizzled gas welding veterans to school me.

-r

 

This has to be my fav book on oxy ace. I got it a few years back in college, Its pretty easy to come buy, but if u cant find it anywhere else id try going to like an online college book store. You may even find more books that you could learn from.
and if you still cant find it. I know i can get some.

 

I did a gas welding course at night school about 10 years go, and it was a good way to go.

It sounds like you know enough to be able to pick up the setup instructions out a book, so I'll jump right into how they started teaching us.

I would recommend learning on sheetmetal - it is quicker and you don't waste as much gas !

Get a pile of strips of steel. The ones we used were 1.2 mm (about 18 gauge I think) and about 6 x 2 inches.

Start off by taking one piece of steel and run practice beads down it with the torch only. You need to look at the size of the molten pool and experiment with how fast to move the torch to get good penetration without blowing holes. Keep doing this until you can do straight beads that have even penetration on the other side of the steel.

When you have got the hang of that, get some welding rod and try running beads adding rod at the same time. You want to just dip the rod into the molten pool rather than melt it directly with the torch. When you can do that consistently, then it is time to join some metal !

Take two of your strips and start with a tack weld about 1/4 inch from one end. Move down the join tacking every inch or so. You will probably have to hammer and dolly the tacks to keep things in line as the steel moves quite a lot as it gets hot. When it is completely tacked, hammer the whole seam flat again before doing the final welding.

Start at the first tack and weld the 1/4 inch from the tack back to the edge (be ready to lift the torch away from the surface as you get to the edge, or else you will burn through). Then go back to the first tack and weld the rest.

When you are finished, you will have a pretty distorted piece of metal. What happens is the metal shrinks along the weld and distorts the remaining metal. If you hammer the seam directly on the dolly, you can stretch the seam which will remove the stress on the rest of the metal.

Normally you would only weld short sections and them hammer and dolly them before moving onto the next section, but you will probably pick up the welding side of it easier if you weld the whole seam at once.

That sounds like enough to start with. Have fun

 

you are in luck gr***hopper,i started welding gas before you were born.let me know when you want some lessons-george

 

You've gotten good advice already but this might help a little:

http://metalshapers.org/101/jkelly/index.html

John www.ghiaspecialties.com

 

Wow, you'd be crazy to p*** up an opportunity like that!

I recently started learning how to gas weld too (so I found the advice on this thread very helpful so far). One of the things I've been doing is chopping up pieces of steel tubing (fairly thin-walled) at different angles and then welding them back together.

I have a Victor setup, and recently acquired a Meco Midget... I love that thing! It is excellent for sheet metal. You can get it at http://www.tinmantech.com — I know somebody else already posted that link, but the guys there are really helpful.

Keri