One of the things you will find is that if you weld 40 hours a week and only take pictures of your best, it will seem like you’re the most perfect welder. This is many people on instagram and even KZfaq. I know I have plenty of pics that could easily make me look like a top tier welder, but I don’t see much value in doing that (and it’s stressful to try to keep up that). There are people out there that can achieve near perfect welds every time, but you will most often find them welding things that make it very easy to weld perfect. Welding on 8in pipe with tig and walking the cup is much easier to get a perfect weld on that exhaust under a car in a driveway. Being a great welder has more to do with caring enough to get skilled, and going back to fix mistakes. I know it can be frustrating when you watch other people make things look easy. You just have to remember that it’s a skill, and it takes practice to get better. You can (and will) get better at any skill you want, it just takes time and practice. Obviously when you don’t see fast improvement it can be discouraging, but you need to look at where you started to where you are today. Practice a bunch, and then look at where you are in a few weeks in comparison to now. You will see progress (even if it’s minimal). Regardless how much or little progress is made, you will be closer to your goal. Just like a 1000 mile hike, You can’t try to run the whole thing non stop, you won’t make it. But you can walk it a bit at a time and anyone can get to the end😀

Where have you been when I first got into welding a few years ago? I am a hobbyist welder and only do small time fabrication at home. Would like to see a video of how you would go about welding thin square tubing and what rod. I wish you all the best and Thanks for putting out these videos.

The hardest part of learning to weld is doing the tedious part, aka a lot of practice making simple beads. The better you can weld simple beads on plate the better everything else will be 😀

That’s great news. It does suck repeating the same thing over and over. However once you master the basic the impossible becomes possible. Very few things that most people learn require as much practice to really master. Hand writing, playing an instrument, and welding are all very similar is this regard. If you keep up the good practice/work you will find you will progress fairly fast. The key is to be smooth, consistent, and don’t let frustration/failures discourage you. If you can get through the failures/frustration you will become skilled.

It’s all about building skills 👍👍

I will have to dig those out and talk about them. Great idea 😀

100% 😀. It’s so hard to come back from a bad root. It definitely pays to set yourself up so it’s as easy as possible, any reduction in the chance of a mistake is a good thing.

Glad you’re learning. There are many ways to deal with contraction due to welds. “Doping” the weld joint so that as it shrinks/cools it moves into alignment is what I most commonly do. Rigidly clamping the weldment so that it doesn’t move much helps, but is often difficult to do. The truth is for much of what most people do, you typically only need a single pass and the material has enough give that odds are things will work out with minimal movement. For situations that movement is very undesirable it is a must to have a very precise fit up, and not put excessive weld material down. This is especially true of stainless, it moves probably 4 times as much as steel. Speaking of that, generally speaking the poorer of a conductor of heat the material is the more it will move when welded. Aluminum moves very little, but is an excellent conductor of heat. Stainless is a poor conductor of heat and moves a ton.

No problem and I am glad to hear you're learning/working at learning to weld, that's great. The miller 255 is a beast of a welder and will serve your use well, especially with heavy plate. Based on needing to weld 1inch square bar to 1/4 or 1/2 plate, you have a bunch of options. You could stick weld it with 1/8th or 5/32 7018 rods, both of those sizes would get the job done with strength. You could also tig weld it if you have the tig torch. That would easily do the job but it would be slow in comparison to mig and stick. For wire you have a few options. Short arc mig (basically lower settings with c25 gas) will struggle on that thick of material, it will have poor penetration. Because that welder has so much power you could run spray arc (basically the same wire as short arc mig, but run with a different gas blend like 90/10 or 95/5 argon/co2 and at much higher settings). I dont have any videos on spray arc but its not that hard to do, with the right gas blend and settings. It will penetrate that thick of plate and produce very strong welds. A easier option would be dual shield flux core in .045 wire. Dual shield often uses the same gas as short arc mig (c25) and produces very clean/defect free welds. It's far easier to weld with the wire than spray arc (since dual shield welds uphill easier). Not knowing where you are for skill, and based on you needing to weld thick metal, I think dual shield would be the way to go. Its just as easy (and easier in some cases) as gas shielded mig, it will weld that thick of material without issue, and it will make good looking welds. Since you have very thick material you can run hot settings and not worry too much about things like melt through. You want to focus on being consistent in movement and smooth in travel speed. Its definitely doable, I think dual shield would be the easiest way to get to welding thick stuff with minimal practice.

Thanks for the kind comment, I am just happy to be able to show stuff clear enough to help people out 😃

Great tip. A bit of a longer arc certainly would have helped me flatten the beads out a bit. I am so used to running 1/8th rods that I don’t need to do that on that it’s a learning curve with 3/32.

Thanks for the kind words 😀

Practice makes perfect 😀. I think I might actually weld that whole thing out and cut it to see what’s inside. I could always use the practice 😄.

I haven’t done one but you definitely can tell the difference between beads. I will be doing some coming up for a video. 😀

For 7018 I love esab 7018 prime rods. I have ran probably 20lbs just doing videos lately and a few repairs. It runs 100% consistent, batch to batch and weld to weld. For 6010 I like Lincoln’s 6010 5p (red rod) and their 5p plus (grey rod). For 6013 esab or Lincoln’s is ok. I also like Washington alloys rods but they are far harder to get around here. If you’re running into slag entrapment are you running 6013? It’s very easy to get it with that rod (even I did in some of my videos). When you see slag entrapment you need to either go up 5-10 amps as a start or run more of a drag angle to hopefully push the flux back so it doesn’t get ahead of the rod.

@@makingmistakeswithgreg honestly sir, I just ran a 7018 for the first time the other day lol. Ran awesome tho. I mostly use 3/32 6011 for tacking, and same in 1/8" for welding. If I could use 6010s I would. I'm cleaning up my parts, as well as running newer electrodes. But just today I picked up a box of 7014 for tacking perposses, it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Anywho, thank you sir, and I'll be getting some of the esab rods to try too.

@@andrewbradstreet4218 7014 tacks pretty good. The welds it produces tend to be a bit odd/lumpy for me. If you’re getting slag inclusion with 6011 something must be wrong with the rods. They do take more heat than 6010 so don’t be afraid to run them hotter than you think they need. They run like a 6010 they just need a bit more amperage. The esab 7018-prime rods have a graphite tip which instantly starts the arc with a new rod. That makes sticking starts a thing of the past. Even harbor freights 7018 has a graphite tip, and those run decent (great practice rod, I still prefer Esabs prime). The main thing I like about 7018 is how the slag comes off easily. 6010 is a bastard to clean the slag off of. If your 6011 rods are running rough, take 2 of them and dip them in water and let them dry to the touch and try running them. If they run better the rods probably lost enough moisture that the flux is starting to fall apart. The flux has much higher moisture content than many other rods. If all else fails try a different rod too.

Like you said pipe liners have a control box, and it’s pretty much needed because they have to weld overhead, vertical up, and flat on everything, sometimes all on one rod. Without some form of adjustable amperage they would have a hell of a time getting things to run right. For home use (and without a helper to man a control lol) I find that machines with adjustable hot start help a lot. By having hot start on your starts aren’t cold, and everything runs better. The end of welds can run a bit hot, especially if they are ending at the edge of a plate. Experience will help a lot to keep from blowing the end off of a weld. Downsizing rod on size will also help with this, because the amperage is lower. Believe it or not some tig welders that can do stick actually can use the foot pedal to control amperage. Generally it’s cheaper imports, and how effective it is I am unsure since I have never used one that could. Some stick welders can also pulse which will help with keeping heat input lower at the last 1/4 of a weld. It’s something that with time and experience you will adapt to. It’s also why I tend to tig anything 1/8th or 3/16th and under and only stick weld thicker plate.

@@makingmistakeswithgreg thanks, good information