Teaching myself to weld?

It's certainly possible to.

Mig welding forum is extremely helpful. I'd not bother with gasless I'd make sure as well I went for a full size bottle.

Machine wise what's your budget. The Clarke migs from Machine mart are good user friendly units. Next step there is R tech I'd say.

Its something id really like to learn and use, so id much rather spend money and buy something that flatters and helps! So happy to spend money.

Im retired, so i have time to invest in this learning.

Ive also been given a Boxford single phase imperial lathe, so looking forwards to lots of learning and upskilling!

Ian

Mig is straightforward to pick up, grind test welds back to inspect / test, plenty of stuff online to help. Brewery bottle is a good compromise between the massive bottles and the little disposables, and certainly used to be easy to get refilled while you wait. Auto-masks now a lot cheaper and a big help.
Getting functional welds is one thing, making them pretty as well takes more practice, especially if access and orientation is compromised.
Whats the Boxford? I got a BUD into work a couple of years back and for the money / size it's been cracking and fully paid for itself many times over.

Depends what you want to weld.

With MIG I would recommend a good machine from R-Tech. If you plan on doing thin materials (<1mm) then the minimum power is just as important than the maximum. This is an issue with a lot of the Clarke/SiP machine mart welders which are usually a minimum of 35-45A.

Gasless sucks to learn on. Adams Gas do hobby bottles (full size but not full pressure) for a good rate with no monthly rental charge. Pub CO2 gas has had additives in it for years which prevent it being used for welding. You can use it but it will splatter like a bastard if it doesn't oxidize immediately. Stainless is possible but you really need a high quality machine, expensive wire and a back purging setup.

Forget aluminum with a hobby MIG machine. Aluminum can be MIG'd but you'd need a professional machine (£££) and even then it's still hard. Easiest route for that would be TIG.

You can learn on your own (I did) but things will go much better, quicker and cheaper if you can find someone to teach you. Even a couple of 30 min sessions with an experienced welder will knock months off your learning curve.

I went to my local college for evening classes. 12 weeks on a Tuesday evening - it was great. I bought a used Clarke Mig 130 (I think) for £50, sold it 7 years later for £200!

I got an account with BOC via a VW forum for a hugely discounted price on Y-bottles (again, I think).

Its a real skill if you want to be a Pro but you can leant to Mig to an acceptable standard in a few hours.

Some of the suppliers also have try out packages / classes (but I haven't looked recently). So you get some tuition and the chance to try what you eventually buy, together with specific guidance on the settings of your machine.

I've been tempted to do this over the last year or two and as mentioned above, local college does evening classes or I think does a 1 day intro course as well on a Saturday. Reckon you'd learn a LOT more when welding on a proper course vs watching youtube videos.

A friend described MIG welding as drawing a line with a felt pen..... he's not a millions miles off the mark TBH!

I use stick more often as it's proper cheap and the stuff I'm usually gluing together would require a big MIG.  My stick welding isn't pretty but it gets the job done.

I originally bought a gasless and learned with that. Upgraded later to a Clarke 135 which is infinitely better.

I got good enough but then did an evening class which was good.

I don't do it enough so every time I go back to it, it's a learning curve.
I know it's lurking there somewhere though.

I keep fancying teaching myself to Braze.

Evenign classes (for anything) seem to be fewer and further apart these days.

My old local agricultural college used to do classes for things like this. Not sure if they are still in existence though. Do you have something similar?

JoshVegas - If you want to do brazing, Weldequip do a good Oxy-Propane setup fairly cheap. Much more accessible than Oxy-Acetylene.

https://www.weldequip.com/oxy-propane-brazing.htm

If welding at home don't forget the impact on your electricity bill!

(I don't know if you're one of those rich retirees or a poor one)

So might be cheaper to take an evening class to speed up the learning curve.

Plenty of people have taught themselves (myself included) before YouTube was invented, so it’s got to be easier now. (I’d still echo the suggestions for getting some tuition - it will probably speed the learning curve up a lot.)

MIG is arguably the easiest to get reasonable results with. It’s ideal for thinnish (1–4mm, say) steel. I’d also be ok for thicker, but a stick welder would also do that cheaper (both initial purchase and consumables). Realistically, you would need an AC TIG set for aluminium. This would also do the thinnish steel, just much more slowly than MIG - it’s a very zen-like experience! Purchase price & consumable costs higher than the other two.

Go for it!

We've got MIG at work (a school D&T dept). I don't love it. It might be me or it might be the set or it might be just what MIG is like but I find it pretty agricultural. Obviously not the spatterfest of arc but still a very unsatisfying functional experience.

If I was learning for fun and I had the time both to learn and the actual act of welding itself being a bit slower I'd go TIG. That's what I learnt on (beyond prating around with my dad's friends arc set as a kid). It's a satisfying art to learn. I put a TIG welding session alongside a wheel building session as a 'gentleman amateurs' pleasure. MIG is just point, pull trigger, grind, done - no finesse, no elegance.

"Any bugger can stick two pieces of metal together but not everyone can weld"

So said a welder I worked with who'd served his time in a ship yard. He was a big-headed so-and-so but he was blooming good. Once watched him lay a weld on a piece of steel then wash it away with an oxy acetylene torch, not a mark left. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it

@jonm81 not a lfgss alumni are you?

I'm self taught with a bit of initial teaching from coded contractors.

Personally I'd forget MIG - it's ****ing awful pull the trigger and spatter the shit out type welding. When you've had spatter fizzing in your ear you tend to go off it quite quickly.
As above TIG is the most zen thing I've ever done - it's the art form of arc control (i use a foot pedal) and filler feed with a bit of cup walking/washing. Mainly on process pipework so has to be of a good standard.

DC (for use with mild steel & stainless) Tig set is similar price to MIG and needs decent gas.

AC Tig (for aluminium) is expensive (~£6k for the Lincoln I have).

Tig can also be used for TIG brazing with specific TIG braze filler wire. I've added a disc mount and various braze-ons to a few bike frames. Also for joining dissimilar metals.
It's also useful for applying precision heat to stuck automotive fasteners or bending of steel plate etc that you can't do with MIG.

I keep fancying teaching myself to Braze.

For the love of god don't.

I don't know about oxy-propane but oxy-acetylene is lethal in the wrong hands, I've had work pieces explode and go flying over my shoulder when I was doing it at college. It honestly gave me the fear so bad I wouldn't go back to it. That was under supervision and someone checking the gas mixtures were right (allegedly), I really don't think good things would come from going solo.

Oxy propane is the very mild mannered cousin.

For the love of god don’t.

Every student in our secondary school did brazing as part of metal work in my day! All rather unsupervised IIRC.....

@joshvegas I used to browse lgfss occasionally but never posted anything.

If you're near Poole/Bournemouth and fancy giving MIG, TIG or brazing a go give me a shout.

Although that reminds me, I need to get a propane refill and see if oxygen concentrators have come back down to pre-covid prices yet...

Brazing can be done with MAPP, no need for oxy-acetylene.

No love to no-gas MIG? I had a Clarke no gas MIG151EN which was OK gassless which is how I mostly used it. It died recently, I considered TIG but the entry price is a lot higher.

I could have bought another Clarke but they've done the same basic design for 30 years (because that was when I last bought one) and I don't weld a lot, so instead I tried one of these cheap IGBT MIGs which means transistors based rather than a great big transformer.

I was expecting it to be similar to the Clarke but it's so much better, almost magical how easily it laid down a weld, better than I used to manage with gas on the Clarke. It's big shoe box size so can only fit a 1Kg reel inside, but so much easier to move and store.

Some other pointers, it's maybe more important it has a low Amp setting for delicate work unless you are welding 5mm+ steel. Some don't have separate power / wire speed settings though this may not be a bad thing. Some on Amazon / eBay come from outside UK, for mains powered stuff I prefer to buy from a UK distributor. This is the one I bought just because it was the cheapest to fit above criteria.

@joshvegas I used to browse lgfss occasionally but never posted anything.

If you’re near Poole/Bournemouth and fancy giving MIG, TIG or brazing a go give me a shout.

It's just because that's the torch recommended in the frame building mega thread. Unfortunately I am in Peebles which is a bit to far to travel!

Greybeard, I would dispute that. Silver brazing yes but it's a pain in the hoop and map gas is phenomenally expensive. Oxy propane is cheap by comparison and much hotter

Every student in our secondary school did brazing as part of metal work in my day! All rather unsupervised IIRC…..

Oh, just knew it by instinct did they? Or did they get taught how get a good gas mix and then how to get the pool to just hot enough to accept the braze but not so hot it pops?

It's not the supervision that's the issue here, it's having someone experienced enough to show you how to do it right so you don't hurt yourself or just constantly blow holes in stuff.

Remember, with one mix you have a brazing torch, with another you have a gas axe. Although the latter is considerably more fun and much easier to control it's still not much good for sticking things together.

Mig and brazing are pretty straightforward really, stick is sorcery. Especially with cheap machines and singlephase.

I'm rubbish at mig, mind, but even then I can usually get a decent join, it just looks like shit. It is basically pretty simple, and the kinks in it while they're not exactly easy, are generally pretty logical.

Mig and brazing are pretty straightforward really, stick is sorcery. Especially with cheap machines and singlephase

lol I found it completely the opposite, stick is fine once you stop sticking it to the workpiece (never tried MIG, you don't get that level of sophistication at sea). Different strokes for different folks eh?

Yeah but that's the hard part! "strike the spark", um, ok, not really sure what that means but... <sticks rod to work. Blows fuse> That transition from striking the spark to actuallymaking and moving the puddle drove me absolutely crazy, got there in the end but I don't really know how, just endless repetition til I got it right by chance I think

Gas mig is like drawing the weld on with a sharpie, and even the little cheapie machines aren't bad these days.

What do you want to weld?
What projects do you have in mind?
What budget do you have?
What work space do you have?

My son has a Clarkes one and learnt himself. He's not super neat, but a grinding wheel on the angle grinder get's rid of the rough stuff. He's made quite a few stainless exhausts for mates.

Their worse than bikes for morishness , 1 of my 5 😀

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Yeah but that’s the hard part!

Lol, better than heat heat heat heat heat rod stick heat heat bang!

If anyone can be bothered to fix it I have a Murex TransTig DC200i that has a fault. The HF works but the main arc won't start.

It was a lovely smooth machine when working.

It's a digital TIG with HF start, pulse, etc.

If anyone wants to pick it up and fix it it's your for free. (Doesn't come with torch or any leads)

Edit - new they were about £2k. Working they still sell for north of £500 so could be a bargain for one of you.

@jonm81 - what is your location?

Poole/Bournemouth area.

@jonm81 – Too far from me 🙁

Slightly off topic but adding to the brazing info. For thin-ish stuff you can oxy propane braze using a medical oxygen concentrator so everything is low pressure with no special gas bottles. The smallest returnable plumbing / camping / BBQ propane bottle is good for at least 5 frames so quite economical.

Fine for brazing but do not try and gas weld as it is unlikely to be hot enough with feeble oxycon flowrate and propane can cause metallurgical issues.

MAPP with no oxy is ok for silver solder and very small / infrequent brazing jobs.

Umm, whats the difference between gas welding and brazing? Because I was taught oxy-acetylene gas welding but mistakenly thought it was the same thing.

EDIT: never mind I googled it myself. Disregard everything I said about brazing, it was gas welding I was doing.

https://rexarc.com/blog/difference-between-braze-welding-and-gas-welding-explained/

Not only for sticking metal bits together, you can be quite creative if you've a mind to.

@squirrelking you'll break the forum with that behaviour. You made a statement now defend it to the end of days like a true big hitter.

Just dug out a photo of my first stick welding project.

Believe it or not, O taught myself from YouTube 🙂

and here is a later one I did, possibly with a gasless MIG for the dragon.

I really should grind down my welds

Well, it turns out my trusty Murex isn't broken, the lead was. Don't I feel like a prize bellend for missing that one!

Anyway, I found the earth clamp and fixed it, found an old, tatty but serviceable torch and got it all working.

So, this Sunday Nick ( @WorldClassAccident ) will be the new owner of a fully working, very nice, free Murex DC pulse TIG welder.

Nick - the only thing you'll need is argon, a regulator, a mating connector for the gas hose and whatever filler you need.

[i]Nick – the only thing you’ll need is argon, a regulator, a mating connector for the gas hose and whatever filler you need.[/i]

And to teach myself to TIG weld as opposed to the MIG I have done so far. I REALLY appreciate this and will see you Sunday.

That's peak STW niceness, top marks!

TIG is very satisfying with practice, its a steeper learning curve and coordination than MIG, but an amazing process. I love the lack of spatter compared to MIG, its so clean and precise. Also great for using different filler without having to fit a new spool, can just buy a couple of bits of wire for brazing, cast, stainless,

You will spend a fair amount of time sharpening you tungsten when learning! Sharpen both ends and have a spare sharpened. If you have time you dress them properly, for site work you get good at sharpening them on an upside down angle grinder (not HSE approved)

MIG is not quite the hot metal glue gun described, sure you can start sticking bits of metal together quite quickly for DIY, but to be able to MIG to code on the job is skilled, or weld upside down in a confined space on rusty POS with oil leaks etc.

The good welders I know dont seem to care what mask they are using, but a decent auto mask makes my life a lot easier. Depends what I am working on though, I am not burning up my Speedglass with spatter burning through crap running hot, but doing nice TIG welds its a pleasure to see perfectly.

[i]That’s peak STW niceness, top marks![/i]

I concur and he has selected a painting of his choice from my gallery as a gift in return, just for being such a nice guy. You have got to love STW for things like this.

^^ That's what I love seeing on this place, people helping each other and making the world a nicer place to be.

Learning to weld to a decent standard is very satisfying, I did it for a summer building canal barges when I was 17. Only basic welds on the whole but it was immensely satisfying seeing a pile of metal turn into something recognisable. Spent most of my time on MIG but did a bit of TIG too, sadly I didn't have the time to get good at TIG before the job ended. One of the lads I worked with was incredibly gifted, made it look like an artform and was completely wasted at that company. He'd been offered big money to work at a few very specialist companies, motorsport and aviation, but for some reason just refused to go. He did the continuous weld round the roof (25ft long) of one boat that was in for repair and the welding was so uniform and neat that the owner decided to leave it as-is rather than have it ground smooth (I was good at that part). Not usually the done thing in boating circles but he had the weld painted gold after the work was finished and it looked like a perfect bit of fine rope running round the whole boat. He liked having me there as it meant I could do the stuff that wasn't on view and he could concentrate on the visible parts and making them look amazing. Scary to think that was 25 years ago now and the old site is now a housing estate.

Thanks for your input everyone.

I volunteer for a local charity and yday i met i guy who runs Veterans Sheds in Bethesda. They have both metal and woodwork facilities and both stick and mig welders. They have a couple of coded welders who are on hand to help and instruct, so i think im going to attend there and learn from someone in person, then see where i get to!

Thanks

Ian

I thought I would try MIG welding again for the first time in about 3 years before I bought Argon, regulator, flow meter etc for the nice new (to me) TIG welder, just to see if I could still do it.

Please remember this is a cheap gasless MIG, I was never taught and I have only welded about a dozen times in my life. With that in mind, feel free to laugh, critique and advise.

I cut 4 1mm slits in some angle iron and then welded them shut. The one on the right was where I was adjusting the settings for wire speed and power as well as adjusting the settings on the auto-mask. I left it unground to show what it looks like raw. The other three have been ground down but the weld stood a little proud of the metal on each.

I had the power quite low so I could see how far through the metal the weld penetrated and as it was only just over half the thickness I decided to fill the cuts fromt he other side too. These seemed cleaner and better so I guess that 8 practise welds showed improvement.