As long as we’re passing along cool online projects today, we thought we’d share another fun fund: Miller Electric’s “Dream It. Weld It” lists a number of cool projects with step-by-step instructions. Most of the projects are quite practical, including make-it-yourself tools like a bending brake, a portable weld table, and air tool storage rack, and a trailer dolly.
We’re really starting to see an upturn in the number of press releases piling up in our mailbox… It must be the holiday season! While you’re digging out the Christmas lights — why wait ’till Thanksgiving? — Lincoln’s been cooking up a new inexpensive MIG welder to keep you busy through spring: the Power MIG 140C.
The 140C’s designed to run on common 120V household current and can operate either as a true MIG unit with gas or as a flux-core rig, so it’s a good match for your garage shop. But it also offers some high-end features such as a cast aluminum drive and continuous voltage control. And in case you’d like to try your hand welding some aluminum, Lincoln’s offering an optional Magnum 100SG spool gun made specifically for the Power MIG line.
We’re seeing some gas-ready packages starting at around $600 online. Ho, ho, ho.
Street Pricing [Froogle]
You should own a set of pipe clamps. Sure, they’re not usually the first clamps you reach for — especially if you’ve got a few of the new trigger clamps around the shop. But when you finally end up needing to clamp something really big together, you’ll wish you had pipe clamps.
And kudos to Irwin for their clutch system that lets you use these clamps with whatever 1/2″ or 3/4″ pipe you happen to have lying around — no threading required!
This isn’t a tool per se, but it will help you use the ones you already have. If you haven’t wandered over to the Miller Welding website recently, you might not have found their great “welding library.” It’s a compendium of tips ranging from the obvious buyer’s guide to some incredibly useful descriptions of techniques.
For the professional welder, they also discuss some of the economic issues involved, including how to keep your costs down and make the most of the tools you’ve got.
If nothing else, this site is worth a bookmark solely for their “Welding Dictionary,” which serves as a great reference when you’re reading other texts. Best of all: It’s free.
Welding Library [Miller]
Back when we originally wrote about them, we promised to check in with Hobart and let you know where you can find these great gloves. Well, we’re a bit late in doing so, but here ’tis:
You can buy these gloves at most farm supply stores, such as Northern Tool and Tractor Supply, as well as through a variety of other retailers. We didn’t see them listed online, but Hobart assures us that they carry them. If you aboslutely, positively can’t find them locally, try giving Hobart a call at 1-800-626-9420 (their customer service line) for help locating them.
It’s rare that we really gush about a product, but this is going to be one of those times. We’ll probably be embarassed about it in the morning, but tonight we’re gonna unabashedly tell you: these gloves rock the house. They’re easily the most comfortable and useful welding gloves we’ve ever used. We think our name (in the post title) is better, but Hobart calls them their “Premium Form-Fitted Welding Gloves.”
A while back we reviewed Industrial Press’ great book Welding Essentials: Questions and Answers. The focus of today’s review, Welding Fabrication and Repair: Questions and Answers is essentially a “sequel” to that book, covering more fabrication techniques than welding processes. There’s some overlap between the two books, but not much.
Fabrication and Repair picks up where Welding Essentials left off, beginning with an overview of the most common fabrication hand tools and their applications, including various measuring tools, power tools, clamps, pliers, and jigs. This will be handy for anyone who’s just getting started, though even seasoned pros may have seen others using a tool and wondered what it was and how it works. From there the book moves on to common materials and finishes, some of which we’ve seen and used and some that we haven’t. For example, a huge section on pipe and tubing explains how sizing works, common practices, and many, many ideas on how to create joints as needed.
Fabrication and Repair’s “basic building blocks” chapter truly shines with explanations of many common techniques, such as how to miter or notch material for rectangular frames. As an example of how intuitive this book can be, it not only offers a wide variety of suggestions in terms of steps you can follow to improve the chances of a frame being welded square, it explains (with pictures!) how to use adjustable wrenches to bend the frame back into square if you have trouble.
Later chapters also cover all kinds of practical design and repair techniques such as: how to layout part cuts to waste the least material, how to use your welder to remove a frozen bolt, and even how to build a small stand for your handheld torch.
It’s hard to explain in a short post how incredibly valuable this book can be as a reference. Since we’ve had one around the shop we’ve picked it up to reference fastener types, to find an easy method to weld wire mesh to a frame, to determine how to weld up a cracked beam, and to figure out the strongest design for a horizontal bracket.
Trust us: If you’re fabricating — either professionally or just for fun in your home shop — this is a book that should grace your shelf. We found it available from a variety of sources starting at around $30.
Marlow, Frank. Welding Fabrication & Repair: Questions and Answers. New York, NY: Industrial Press, Inc., 2002. ISBN: 0-8311-3155-1
Street Pricing [Froogle]
We’ve been doing quite a bit of welding lately, and we’ve got a number of “how-to” features coming up on the subject. In the meantime, though, we’d like to share with you one book that we’ve found to be of significant help in the learning (and reference) process: Welding Essentials: Questions and Answers by William Galvery and Frank Marlow.
They tackle the simple and advanced concepts involved in welding via a very friendly “Q&A” style format, indexed in the front by welding type and process for easy reference. These questions really are “frequently asked” — they tend to be closely related to the questions you find floating around in your head while considering the welding process.
What makes this book particularly useful is its significant depth. It answers a lot of questions about the welding process, but it also answers other procedural questions not generally addressed by non-textbook publications. For example:
Q: Are all oxygen cylinders painted green?
A: Absolutely not. Frequently, oxygen cylindres are painted green or have a green band, but the only sure way to determine the contents of a compressed gas cylinder is to read the adhesive label on it. This lable is required by law and should not be removed. Do not go by its color as there is no color code. Unlike civilian industry, the US armed forces do color code their cylinders.
Besides the most common welding techniques such as oxyacetylene welding and cutting, SMAW (stick), GMAW (MIG), and GTAW (TIG), ‘Essentials surveys other less common techniques such as electron beam welding, electroslag welding, friction welding, and laser beam cutting and welding.
‘Essentials also covers some welding planning techniques such as those required to control distortion — there’s a whole chapter dedicated to distortion — and those required to read welding diagrams.
All in all, ‘Essentials offers a broad overview of welding and is a great book to have on your shelf if you’re a casual or pro welder. It’s like having a very experienced pro sitting there on the shelf waiting to answer your questions at any time of day or night.
The version we reviewed is labeled “Expanded First Edition! Now includes an entire new chapter on ‘Fabrication and Repair Tips.’” Indeed it does. Industrial Press also offers a whole Q&A-style book on the subject titled “Welding Fabrication and Repair.” Look for a review here in the near future.
Street pricing starts around $30.
Galvery, William, and Frank Marlow. Welding Essentials: Questions and Answers. New York, NY: Industrial Press, Inc., 2001. ISBN: 0-8311-3151-9
Street Pricing [Froogle]
When you’re fabricating, you need clamps — lots of clamps. They play a key part in the process: design it, measure it, cut it, clamp it, weld it, finish it. Locking grip type clamps are great for quickly clamping an item to the welding table, but sometimes you just need more distance between the jaws.
The most common tool used in those cases is a C-clamp, but it stinks to wear out your arm cranking (and cranking and cranking) to get one set for your needs. Bessey’s clamp, however, features a slidingarm that lets you quickly position it close to the size you need, then crank to provide gripping force. They claim it’s “9 times faster than a C-clamp,” and we’d tend to agree.
Bessey’s clamps are drop-forged and electro-galvanized for durability and feature a heat-treated, high carbon threaded screw to resist welding splatter. They come in medium-duty, regular-duty, and extra-heavy-duty flavors ranging in size from 8″ to 60″ (nominal opening) and can be found on the street for between $15 and $300.
Heat Treated Steel Sliding Arm Clamp [Bessey]
Street Pricing [Froogle]
In yesterday’s comparison post we gave you the information you need to select an entry-level flux-core/MIG welder for your shop. In today’s follow-up, we’ll walk you through using one of the welders from the comparison to build an inexpensive game chair to make playing GT4 or Forza a lot more fun.
This project was completed entirely using Hobart’s Handler 125 EZ, which sells for around $380 on the street and is targeted at novice welders (and people who just want to get the job done). With a project materials cost of around $80 (and considering the $40 rebate Hobart’s currently offering on the unit) you could buy the welder and build the chair for around $400 — about what you pay for much lesser chairs out of the back of magazines.
Or, if you just want a game chair, you can win ours. Click for details. (Much, much more after the jump.)
You can’t turn on the Discovery channel anymore without seeing someone welding, and we’ve received a number of requests from readers asking for more coverage of the subject. So, ask and you shall receive: we did some research and discovered that it’s a lot easier to get started welding than in years past. Flux-Core and even MIG welders are easily within the range of the beginner, and offer the ability to quickly reach a point in the learning curve where you can build some fun projects.
In this post we’ve rounded up fourteen “entry-level” flux-core and MIG welders to give you an idea of what to expect when you go shopping. And look for a combination “hands-on” and “how-to” tomorrow where we build a project with one of the welders included in the comparison. (Lots more after the jump.)
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