welding and education, schools of thought Options

[golden2.0]

So I just recently purchased a car and after reading all the rebuild posts I have decided to strip the car down and (with the blessing from my wife) to take a crash course in welding. If I am going to rebuild, I want to do it correctly. I found a school with small class sizes but they told me that they concentrate on mainly stick welding (which I have done before). The question I have is what is the best method of welding these cars back together? Seems that TIG is preferred. My past large welding project was using brass rods and a torch to rebuild a 67' mustang, I don't think I want to use that process for this current project since it requires a ton of heat...it worked, but it wasn't pretty.

Any in-site on type of welding to learn would great. I want to make sure I ask the right questions from the school before I sign up for their classes. Don't want to waste money on school if it is not going to specifically help with my project. I figure I can have the car done by the time my little boy is 16. He is almost 2 now.

[Andyrew]

Mig welding is much prefered due to the fast learning curve, the ability to weld dirty (rusty) metal and the ease of welding at odd angles.
There are some great youtube videos out there that can teach you or you can post up your beads and well help you.

Your best bet is to get a 110v box from Lincoln, Miller, or Hobart. Put .030 wire in and use gas (75/25 is fine).

Go to your local steel yard and grab some scrap of varying thickness (16 and 18ga will teach you the most..)

Test out your welder by laying 2" beads at all the different voltages and wire speeds and learn what does what. Try pushing and pulling your weld gun, try welding vertically, try upside down, try blind, drill some holes and weld them up without a backing piece.

Youll learn the most from experience.

[BeatNavy]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/agree.gif) 100%. Stick welding is more for construction projects (e.g., pipe, I-beams, etc.). For home welding it is sufficient and perfectly good to get what Andrew recommends. I have one of those 110v Hobart Handler setups that works very well for any project I have. It took a fair amount of practice to get up the learning curve, and nothing beats experience of practicing on 16/18 ga sheet metal (at odd angles, bad lighting, etc.).

[LowBridge]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/agree.gif) .. also Hobart has a super refurbished program with what are basically new units

Hobart Refurb

[Bartlett 914]

I would avoid the cheaper flux core welders. Cheaper but lousy welds

[stownsen914]

+1 on MIG. Pretty easy to learn and good quality welds. TIG is a great method (so I hear anyway), but it's apparently harder to learn, and the equipment is substantially more expensive. MIG will do everything you need for a 914.

As for brand, do as suggested above and get a good one, and use gas shielding too instead of using flux core wire. Poor quality welds are not worth the couple hundred bucks you'll save buying a low-end welder. Check out the factory reconditioned Hobart. I've had a Hobart for many years and am quite happy with it.

Scott

[MMW]

Stick with a name brand welder, Miller, Lincoln, Hobart. They all make good units in the 140 amp range. Not only are they good quality but if you ever have any issues down the road service & parts are available. They also hold their value better than the off brand units. A 110 volt mig will work for auto body type stuff which is all you should need on a 914. .023 or .030 wire & 75/25 gas is good. Stay away from flux core, it has it's place but it is not for auto body. I'm just backing up what was already said.

Schooling for stick welding will not help you much. Find someone local who comes recommended & see if they will "tutor" you, either free or for pay. Usually a few hours instruction by a pro will get you off & running. The biggest thing about learning by yourself is you don't know what mistakes you are making. Most of the time is in the prep work. Properly fitted & prepped panels will make the welding part so much easier.

Two great places to visit are "welding tips & tricks" & the Miller welding forum.

Cleanliness is key to a good weld & to much heat can be your enemy. Once you learn from someone then it really is just practice, practice & practice.

Some guys love auto darkening helmets, the more expensive ones are really better optically than the cheap ones. You get what you pay for. Lens shades, if adjustable use the adjustments to find a sweet spot for your eyes. If it is non-adjustable you can buy different shades, same thing with trying out different ones. If you are older they make diopters/magnifiers for helmets. These are like reading glasses, if you need them use them, it really does help.

[mb911]

Hobart handler is the way to go. just an FYI SMAW (stick welding) use to be the standard proper repair for sheet metal with 6013..

I can't believe that the school you were looking at was only teaching stick.. I have taught at a local tech college for the past 16 years (welding instructor) and we teach the 4 basic processes. Oxy, Stick, Mig,Tig

[mbseto]

I took a class many years ago and felt it was worth it for these reasons.
You get immediate answers to your questions.
You get access to a variety of equipment, so you can try out some different things.
Plenty of stock/scrap is provided to practice with.

Cleanliness is key

This. I find I spend most of my "welding" time cleaning and preparing to weld. If it's not clean, your welds will be bad, period.

[rightpedal]

The advise so far is spot on. I have a sp125+ by Lincoln. It is a step above the Home Depot model better drive mechanicals. Here is a link for you. Don't let the title through you Robert goes into a lot of what you will need to know. Go through the whole thread the guy is a genius.

Good luck with the project

Steve

http://www.bangshift.com/forum/forum/bangs...g-a-bead-roller


Here is Roberts build thread. In the first page he does a pretty good job of showing how to weld panels without warping or more to the point minimizing/mitigating warp.

http://www.bangshift.com/forum/forum/bangs...-wagon-progress

[Mueller]

I might get flamed for this...

I think there are more repairs done with MIG for home and professional.
TIG for new(ish) fabrication, that is my experience at home.

I have a 110V older Century, if I was to get a new welder I'd look into an inverter style for a few $ more and possibly 220V.

The important thing for sheet metal is finding a welder that allows you to dial in the slower feeds and lower current.

Tons of great videos out there, but nothing beats practice and making notes of what worked and what didn't work too well.

[golden2.0]

Wow, tons of great advice and direction. I thank all of you for taking time to write out your thoughts and opinions concerning my post.

Seems like no matter what I do, the main thing is to situate some good gear and just practice. Also, if I am interested in a school, I should probably keep looking for one with more variety or just find a willing teacher to give me a crash course.

Thanks again! Lots to review and learn.

[Andyrew]

I took a metal fabrication/welding class in jr college for fun, your local JC might have one for ~$100 and itll be many nights..

Lots of metalurgy to learn about and understand, helps but really its all about practice and experimentation.

[Porcharu]

I have a MIG a TIG and Oxy setups, they all work for most work. TIG is the cleanest most controllable method but it takes skill and practice, MIG is pretty easy and you can be welding in a few hours with decent results, Oxy acetylene is probably the absolute best for sheet metal as it makes nice soft welds that can be metal worked easily. Problem is you can warp the shit out of panels if your not careful or just don't have the knowledge. I love my tiny little Smith 'Aircraft' torch, it makes welding up tanks and such a joy.
Like said above CLEAN metal is probably the most important thing in welding. Clean on both sides and fitted tight makes for nice welds.

[golden2.0]

For each car I work on I keep a log book to keep track of the work that I do. I have taken plenty of prepnotes from this post alone which is great. I was reading over my notes tonight and my two largest bullet points logged today were:

1. Clean metal only.

2. Flux core is garbage.

Thanks again everyone. I can't wait to get started.

[rightpedal]

Any course in metal work is a good thing. Most stick classes are geared to plumbing/pipe fitter. There is very little practical that transfers. A lot of the basic theory transfers. If you can find a more general course.

My project will be transferred to the work space after new year. You are welcome to come on up to Annapolis and help weld/grind/hammer repeat.

Steve

[Amphicar770]

MIG is easier to learn but TIG welds are soooo much nicer. You can buy an AlphaTIG (made in China but highly rated) for $800. I picked up a nice Miller MIG during one of Zoro's 30% off sales. That, along with Miller rebates made it a steal.

As for training, check out McPherson College's summer workshops. For about $1,000 you will get a week of stick, tig, mig along with metal shaping. Excellent class that is almost all hands on.

[Spoke]

I learned to MIG weld on my own by asking friends who weld and videos online.

The one thing I learned way too late is to allow the patch or whatever you're doing to cool once you start welding it on. I managed to shrink my car about 1/8 inch by not allowing patches to cool before proceeding with the weld. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

[marksteinhilber]

So I just recently purchased a car and after reading all the rebuild posts I have decided to strip the car down and (with the blessing from my wife) to take a crash course in welding. If I am going to rebuild, I want to do it correctly. I found a school with small class sizes but they told me that they concentrate on mainly stick welding (which I have done before). The question I have is what is the best method of welding these cars back together? Seems that TIG is preferred. My past large welding project was using brass rods and a torch to rebuild a 67' mustang, I don't think I want to use that process for this current project since it requires a ton of heat...it worked, but it wasn't pretty.

Any in-site on type of welding to learn would great. I want to make sure I ask the right questions from the school before I sign up for their classes. Don't want to waste money on school if it is not going to specifically help with my project. I figure I can have the car done by the time my little boy is 16. He is almost 2 now.

My $0.02: I restored my first 914 with a $80 flux core 90 Harbor Freight welder. I should have bought my current Eastwood Mig 120 for $299 back then. But the car came out great with minimal bondo over the few repairs that I needed to do. The cheaper the welder, the more grinding and rewelding is needed to get good fusion of the materials. What all the others have said is true, but not cost friendly. If you're not going to do multiple car restorations, then you don't need to spend $500 or more for the brand name Mig. The Eastwood 120 has a dial for the heat or amperage setting as well as the wire speed, comes with the gas regulator and works with either 0.23 or 0.30 wire size. The 0.23 makes welding thin sheet metal a little easier with less heat. grind away all rust to clean metal and prepare all butt joint edges to a V or at least a half V. Tack and let cool. Don't put too much heat in any one spot when welding sheet metals, so just add to existing tack welds a few seconds at a time. Same with doing rosettes to simulate spot welds. find settings to make a nice rosette in just a couple seconds, then repeat by counting to get the right amount of filler and heat each time. Bigger holes in the top metal for rosettes make sure you get fusion to the bottom sheet. I'm a mechanical engineer and was trained to inspect welds, qualify welders, and approve weld procedures for high pressure boilers and vessels, but my own welding experience is limited. So I have watched the Eastwood videos, applied what I know about welding, metallurgy, and shipyard experience, and then played a lot with my Mig to fix all kinds of rusty areas on two 914's. Rusty sheet metal repairs are quite different welding than welding 1/4 plate or angle iron to handle structural loads. But the multiple layers of sheet metal that make up the longitudinals must carry structural loads, so those welds are much more critical; than just fixing rust holes on the body. Try fixing some rust holes on some junk body parts first, then on your car, and then work the unibody frame areas. Much of the trick is figuring out how to graft in good pieces harvested from donor cars, or cut from complete repair panels. Not every repair needs to be a replacement of the entire panel the way the factory built the car. On a concours restoration, maybe so, on most 914-4s that will be driven and enjoyed, fix in a sound, but economical fashion. here's an example picture.

[BeatNavy]

What all the others have said is true, but not cost friendly. If you're not going to do multiple car restorations, then you don't need to spend $500 or more for the brand name Mig. The Eastwood 120 has a dial for the heat or amperage setting as well as the wire speed, comes with the gas regulator and works with either 0.23 or 0.30 wire size. The 0.23 makes welding thin sheet metal a little easier with less heat.

I generally agree. I would maybe quibble on whether to spend the money and get a good setup or not (hopefully you WILL use it for years and for other projects). But he's right about practicing on sheet metal and using thinner wire. .23 is good for body, more cosmetic, work. .30 for more structural repairs. It's pretty easy to throw down a bead on 1/4 inch thick metal on a bench with good light. It's significantly harder to do that with sheet metal in a corner when you can't see (or get an easy ground point).

Where in VA are you? If you're at all near northern VA you I can help as well. You've probably got too much info at this point, I imagine.