Welding when you’re not 40 anymore…

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mopar head said:
Both get ground down, and tig has less heat/warpage. If you never tig before, you shouldn`t diss someone's welds. I`d put my welds up against anybody's :rolleyes:
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I am not dissing anybody's welds but I can lay a stitch better than that with a 110 mig and no helmet, been doing it for 35 years.

mopar head said:
Lamp on a hammer? there is no hammer in that pic, should probably read the post again.
They do make hoods with built in lights now, I believe.
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You will weld better through a helmet in a totally dark room, I promise, but you can not do that with a work light.
if you could get the light to fade or go out under arc, you would be golden.

RBConvert said:
That's what our instructor said too. 6010 can weld in the wind, rain, snow, etc. Perfect for off-road repairs.
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6010 and 7018 are the go to for everything if you are welding with metals outside or with scrap you do not know what the metal is.

You can weld a Chrysler bumper to a Chevy bumper and it would be one car at that point.

Weld with either of those rods in a controlled shop and you can make some very pretty welds.
 
dowboy1970 said:
I am not dissing anybody's welds but I can lay a stitch better than that with a 110 mig and no helmet, been doing it for 35 years.
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Put up a pic mig-ing 24 gauge with a .064 gap with no helmet. I call bs.
I`m a retired weldor of 40 years.
 
I am not a welder but am a or used to be Ase certified paint by and body.
We learned to braze first, then stick, then mig.
If you can not stitch better than your pic with a mig and .023 or .025 wire that is your problem and if you can not stitch without putting your tip over your stitch arc and shielding your eyes, well that is your problem as well.
 
I would never claim to be a welder, but when younger I did some "farmer style" stick. In other words some of it weren't pretty, but it didn't break

At some point I got a MIG and never looked back.

I WAS going to learn tig, and scored a HUGE heavy tig / stick Lincoln Idealarc 250/250 AC DC, that thing is huge and heavy. I still need to learn to tig. I've run a few beads with it but never got very successful, and other stuff seemed to get into the way.

I am 76 now, and seeing what I'm doing is for sure a problem. I've never had much luck trying to weld auto body sheet metal.
 
Come on people...This wasn't meant to be a contest. Lets share ideas of what worked for us to help everyone improve their work.
 
67Dart273 said:
I've never had much luck trying to weld auto body sheet metal.
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It`s the hardest metal work I`ve ever done without warping it all to hell, especially going up against 72-year-old war time sheetmetal.
I started most of my car with mig and found tig has less heat distortion.
I also have one of those big Lincolns, 300/300, great old machine.
 
I am having a hell of a time with the 6010 rod. Holy ****, that stuff is hard to get working right. MIG is so easy and far more convenient.
 
dowboy1970 said:
Thats a brazing rod friend,
Back in the day we could not afford those at times and used coat hangers!!! :thumbsup:
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Lol, strip the coating, heat it just short of cherry & dip it in a container of Borax....lay it on.....I oxy-acetalene welded everything I did on the 'Killer6'. Floorpan patches with hangers, copper-coated rod & brazing(mistake) on the rest.
 
Kern Dog said:
I spent my life as a Carpenter but have been a car guy even longer. Quite awhile ago I learned that you really limit yourself if you have to rely on others for welding things.
Old cars with crash damage or rust will need repair. You can get on the list and wait your turn or find a way to do it yourself. There are numerous times that having a welder here has saved me money. For almost 30 years, I’ve only done MIG welding. Most automotive stuff can be done with the MIG. I’m not a great welder but I do okay. This past month I started a welding class with another FABO member. This week we did some stick welding, a type that in my opinion, is obsolete for what kind of stuff that I do. I took the class to improve my MIG skills but this class is geared to exposing students to all the common welding techniques. SMAW, GMAW and even TIG. My skills at stick/arc welding are not good but improving. It was so frustrating , I would have quit but I heard that next week (week six of eight) we focus on MIG! The first four weeks were spent learning terminology, symbols, techniques and fabrication. They had us build mini-Hibachi grilles….

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They had “plans” we had to follow to cut and shape the sheet metal. The designs of the bases were up to each student to come up with.

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That was fun. The welding booths there were often busy so I MIG’d them together at home.
This week, all the work was done in the shop at the college, that brings me to the point…..
As we age, as our eyes age, first we need more light to see….then we need glasses, then thicker/stronger glasses.
I’ve found that even still with strong glasses, I often need more light than I did before. The booths at the college have a fluorescent lamp behind the work that barely lights up the stuff you’re working on. I struggled with the work today….

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We all struggled with the stick welding but for me, welding blind sure made it a pisser. The younger guys didn’t have a problem with the lighting.
I stopped at the local welding supply to see about a welding hood mounted light. They had nothing. At home, I made this:

View attachment 1716371457

It is fairly simple. Back when I was still working in construction, we often started work before sunrise and needed light to see and work. We al started wearing those LED lights attached to an elastic band with power supplied by rechargeable batteries. I just cut the bands off and screwed it to the hood…

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Once welding starts, the lense darkens for protection but before and after, a dim area makes it hard to know where to get started.
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I've been welding for almost 40 years. I made great money doing it. It's a career that can take one many places. It is also one that the more you do it, the better you get at it.
If you need more light, get a hood with an adjustable lens... 9-13 range in darkness. Harbor Freight has decent ones for $50. I need reader glasses to weld with too now. It just the age thing. Stick welding isn't outdated, it just isn't a process that would be used in the automotive hobby. Mig is the "****" for that!! Keep practicing and you will get better. If I lived closer, I would help you out.
 
Kern Dog said:
I am having a hell of a time with the 6010 rod. Holy ****, that stuff is hard to get working right. MIG is so easy and far more convenient.
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Thats why they call it "stick" welding :rofl:
 
I can’t see with my mig with the harbor freight auto helmet I have. Maybe I should try the light trick
 
67Dart273 said:
I would never claim to be a welder, but when younger I did some "farmer style" stick. In other words some of it weren't pretty, but it didn't break

At some point I got a MIG and never looked back.

I WAS going to learn tig, and scored a HUGE heavy tig / stick Lincoln Idealarc 250/250 AC DC, that thing is huge and heavy. I still need to learn to tig. I've run a few beads with it but never got very successful, and other stuff seemed to get into the way.

I am 76 now, and seeing what I'm doing is for sure a problem. I've never had much luck trying to weld auto body sheet metal.
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Been a long time since I ran a Lincoln but I always liked them.
 
Kern Dog said:
I am having a hell of a time with the 6010 rod. Holy ****, that stuff is hard to get working right. MIG is so easy and far more convenient.
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Keep at it. Once you get the hang of it you’ll find it’s dang handy. It will weld through rust, turds and all kinds of junk.
 
I took a welding/auto body course in the early 2000s, I had done some stick welding in the shop I worked at, and some brazing, but hadn't done any mig welding and I was having to do a fair bit of the work on my Dart project, so I decided to take the course.
One of the best decisions I made in a long time. Our instructor was a retired body man and he really knew his trade. I learned far more than I ever expected to and met some good people there as well. Most of the other students were better than me by the end, but I learned to make my own repair patches, and how to weld properly.
I am fortunate that so far I am not finding light to be a problem, but it can be frustrating trying to weld blind, so I finally bought a good welding helmet with auto darkening, money well spent.
 
Don't let that 6010 rod get you down kerndog. That rod is for dirty rusty contaminated metal welding. When you get to the Tungsten Inert Gas welding it will open up a whole new world of welding opportunities for you. Melting the filler like butter or just fusing pieces together with no filler at all. It is a very clean beautiful weld. I work in a factory/fab shop that builds stainless coils for very large industrial applications. There are a couple of young gals in here that make me feel like an amateur when I look at their beautiful tig welds. They do it every day in very precarious positions like it is just second nature to them. I think Syleng 1 was the poster...A huge part of it is your breathing and walking the cup. Some of these guys, and gals even verbally count when they are breathing to lay down the welds to make them more consistent. Enjoy the course!
 
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jeff alder said:
Don't let that 6010 rod get you down kerndog. That rod is for dirty rusty contaminated metal welding. When you get to the Tungsten Inert Gas welding it will open up a whole new world of welding opportunities for you. Melting the filler like butter or just fusing pieces together with no filler at all. It is a very clean beautiful weld. I work in a factory/fab shop that builds stainless coils for very large industrial applications. There are a couple of young gals in here that make me feel like an amateur when I look at their beautiful tig welds. They do it every day in very precarious positions like it is just second nature to them. I think Syleng 1 was the poster...A huge part of it is your breathing and walking the cup. Some of these guys, and gals even verbally count when they are breathing a lay down the welds to make them more consistent. Enjoy the course!
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Tig welding is a whole new realm. Aircraft quality stuff there too!
 
jeff alder said:
Don't let that 6010 rod get you down kerndog. That rod is for dirty rusty contaminated metal welding. When you get to the Tungsten Inert Gas welding it will open up a whole new world of welding opportunities for you. Melting the filler like butter or just fusing pieces together with no filler at all. It is a very clean beautiful weld. I work in a factory/fab shop that builds stainless coils for very large industrial applications. There are a couple of young gals in here that make me feel like an amateur when I look at their beautiful tig welds. They do it every day in very precarious positions like it is just second nature to them. I think Syleng 1 was the poster...A huge part of it is your breathing and walking the cup. Some of these guys, and gals even verbally count when they are breathing a lay down the welds to make them more consistent. Enjoy the course!
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If you want to see nice welds, or at least the potential for nice welds look at their hand writing.

When I started in shop class we had to write a paper on what we wanted out of the class.

The teacher didn’t care what you wrote. He wanted to see your hand writing.

As a general rule women write better than men. I was an exception to that rule.

Today?? My writing blows chunks. The arthritis has made my hand writing hit the toilet. And it shows in my welds.

It was frustrating and still is but it is what it is.

Especially with gas and TIG welding you see it a lot.
 
The next three weeks of class will be a steady diet of MIG, then the last week we'll be introduced to TIG.
 
Newbomb Turk said:
Keep at it. Once you get the hang of it you’ll find it’s dang handy. It will weld through rust, turds and all kinds of junk.
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That was the big takeaway from the last week; 6010 is the go-to for dirty metal. For Greg and I, we had to get through the stick welding part of the curriculum on the way to mig and tig.
 
RBConvert said:
That was the big takeaway from the last week; 6010 is the go-to for dirty metal. For Greg and I, we had to get through the stick welding part of the curriculum on the way to mig and tig.
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Stick welding is still very practical for all kinds of welding. A good 120 amp weld with a 1/8th 7018 rod makes for some beautiful welds as well and structurally very stout. It usually boils down to prepping the parent metal such that it is very clean and then lacing that good rod into the joint. Sometimes it's nice to just have to lay that small rod into a corner without the cup in your way.
 
RBConvert said:
That was the big takeaway from the last week; 6010 is the go-to for dirty metal. For Greg and I, we had to get through the stick welding part of the curriculum on the way to mig and tig.
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My father has a big 'ol "buzz box" (I don't know the amps, but physically it's pretty large), and when I was a 17 year old kid driving my SB powered '71 Vega, that's exactly what I would use to make "Lincoln Locker" rears out of those OEM Vega/Monza rear-ends. Pull the cover, let 'em drain a bit, maybe shoot some carb or brake cleaner at it, let it dry a bit, and then have at it! Never worried about cleanliness, and it seemed to work just fine.

Yeah, stick welding works great for nasty stuff.
 
Your blind/ugly welds look like my good welds so I'd say you're doing pretty well.

Good tip on the light. I'm going to strap one of my elastic ones on and see if it helps. If it does I'll go the more permanent route and attach it like you did.
 
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