Trev you must be psychic. After spending several months practicing welding with a basic A/C flux core welder - fine for learning the basics but useless on sheet as it has a 60 amp minimum - I have just invested in a DC only TIG setup 20 - 200 amp range and about to start the learning curve. Your tips are therefore invaluable for the bodywork jobs I need to practice for. Wish me luck !

I have blown so many panel end welds Trev, now I know why. Love that rod tip over the edge of the plate

You’re the best Trev! Perhaps the most instructive sheet metal working channel on KZfaq.

Thank you for the tip of hanging the rod over the panel edge. First time I have seen that one. I learn a good bit with each Blog. Thanks Charlie

Absolutely fantastic tutorial, I've got the same TIG from RTech and this series will help me improve my slightly dodgy TIG skills!. Thanks Trev

Wow, never knew the Tig weld is softer then a MIG!! Learn something every day!!

the tig arc is incredibly hot, almost instantaneously something beginners fail to appreciate.

Enjoyed that. Liked the punishing strength test!

Always well worth watching your videos Trev, you are a great instructor! I've been using straitened wire myself for some TIG work since around 1985 at the suggestion of the late Ron Fornier, you are much like Ron in so far you have immense knowledge and practical experience that you are gladly willing to share, only the real pros are so open with a secure mind.

Lovely interview, sort of a window in to your world, nice to see The Baking Bird van again, looking forward to seeing more videos of her progress.

Excellent - really looking forward to the aluminium one. Looks like I need to add a new TIG to the shop list now.

Think mild and stainless no probs without filler, its aluminium that needs filler. Good video using basic set up because there are multi process sets which do MIG/stick and basic TIG (DC only and usually lift start) so the technique shown can work with basic kit, but of course its better to have a switched torch , and as you move on, pulse feature . Yep- we have been conditioned a bit by the "stack of dimes" stuff by expert welders, your hammer test shows it doesn't need to be "weld porn" to be a sound joint.

Trev that was Amazing mate I've been restoring my healey sprite for the past few years and it's coming to the end now but it's all been mig welding but I've got a big healey as my next project and I think I'm going the off the tig , I've been watching your vids for a while and learnt so much ,just a big thank mate 👍🏼👍🏼

Never less than amazed, always inspired !

Thanks for sharing Trev!

excellent tips with the welding wire to set the edge without blowing through! thanks Trev, awesome yet again

Very well done demonstration. I'll probably be coming back to this one when I finish getting my equipment together. Thanks for sharing!

Mig welding 25 year's, have to get a Tig welder. Thanks Trev!!

Trev another tip to tell others about is to use thin mig wire as filler rod when tig welding thin panel steel. Hope this helps others.

Trev, another great video. I'm a self taught welder. I run my own communications business where I have no choice but to be the mechanic, welder, body guy, or whatever presents its self. I found your videos while repairing my van from road salt damage. Thanks for all of your awesome uploads. While watching this video I seen something that I kinda figured out on my own. I'm glad to see that its actually a thing to not use filler in a tig weld. I noticed just while playing around, learning that I could just kind of wash the two pieces together. I've also washed over old ugly welds to smooth them out a bit. Now that I see someone else do it, its reassuring. Thanks again.

IThanks for the demo. I have have a small mig but been contemplating buying a tig too. Sure does a nice job.

Thanks Trev, great video. I have the bigger brother welder still getting to grips with it so looking forward to your tips and tricks.

I’m so glad you got a gig mig to show us..

I definitely had my "AHA " moment, thank you for another excellent video.

R tech is a good company to deal with, another great video, Trev.

Yet again you've shown me something really useful ... I've not seen that method for testing a weld before. But as ever, once you've seen it, you can't quite understand why you didn't do it that way in the first place. Thanks!

Great video Trev , being new to renovation projects will be following these next few blogs with great interest

Nice clear and simple. Thanks a lot Trev

Thanks for this. Been watching your channel with great interest for a while and really enjoying your content. I have just had to repair my old MIG welder again, and have been pondering the HF start budget TIG set I found in a junk shop. With your TIG welding tips and tricks basics I think I will stop dithering and get a set of consumables, and a bottle of argon, and see if I can remember how to TIG weld again. It has been nearly 30 years since I I learnt to TIG at college. If I take to it well, I may well justify investing in the same R Tech set up you have. Thanks again, Alfred

great work trev , had a tig for years but never used it so will now give it a shot after this

That’s was great including reading the article too. Thanks for sharing! Van’s looking schmicky!

Cool technique tips that I will definitely apply with my powertig welder.

Good Day Trev, That was a great proof of concept , I do the same thing but I use .023 Mig wire as a filler. nobody in the world makes a panel joint as tight as you do . Thanks for taking the time to make these Videos Pete M

Good stuff Trev! Cheers, Doug

Wow, that was awesome, I've always heard that if you didn't use filler rod, the weld would crack. You blew that myth out of the water, great video.

Great demo !

Great video Trev. Great job welding and explaining the settings. Cheers, Jeff.

Trev ... I really like your style & your work.

Nice subject. Thanks a lot Trev.

Wow, impressive strength in that weld.

Great video Trev

I have read the interview - the van looks fantastic already. I hope one day I can try your coffee! All the good for you and your family!

Good morning Trev, once again a very informative video. Lots of tips, tricks and techniques. I like your tig info, very useful and as always clever and simple to understand. Thanks and take care.

Great video thanks once again Trev

Mental! Astounding butt weld. 30yrs with MIG, gotta take the plunge and get a TIG

Mate your too hard on yourself.. i was gonna mig weld my patch panels and now you have just convinced me to do exact same as you have done in this video... Thank you so much

Thanks Trev again great vid

Thanks for the vid!! It’s a great helmet, I have one also. Excellent field of vision. Brilliant product without breaking the bank💪🏻

The first time I have seen TIG welding....very very interesting Trev...MIG is my normal mode.

Last bit of welding I did was the deck on a john Deere lawnmower. Pretty thin stuff, and did it on an arc welder. Wish I had a tig or mig

Very interesting to see Trevor thank you

This is a timely video for me Trev, as I am looking to upgrade to a TIG as well (re previous comments on You Tube) Great info for a dumb galah like me. Looking forward to more videos.

Thanks Trev, good information, AHa -filler rod on the edges!

I jumped into tig 7 years ago, and it has been a worthwhile adventure. First efforts with butt welding sheet metal were not nearly as good as you did here. I'd like to get a copper heat sink with a magnet to hold it tight on the back. My machine is an old style 240V professional Lincoln transformer, but I do envy those who have the new inverter devices that can run on 120V.

All the respect and the Grateful to you

Physical considerations aside, the big thing about filler rod is that it helps the welding, it's not just more metal! Our typical MIG wire for example is full of deoxidisers, and silicon and so on. It's definitely not the same as using some stray wire (coat hanger wire!). I have used "tie-wire" and coat hanger wire, they both work but there's a lot more sparks and a lower quality weld for sure. It's much worse with aluminum, some alloys show a lot of shrinkage cracking, and I think are almost impossible to weld w/o filler since every bead will have a big crack right down the middle! Someone here has mentioned using MIG wire for this; there's a little gadget called TIG PEN I think? You hold it like a pen in your off hand, and it feeds MIG wire toward the weld. Haven't actually got this to work yet, but it's made exactly for what we see here, and I think it WOULD work for someone who had, ah, more steady hands than I do!

Many years ago, not sure why, but I was shown how to butt weld panels together with gas, and a cold wet rag, but using .8mm mig wire as filler rod, I use the same method with a tig only without the cold rag. Don't know if you've tried that, but seems to make the weld better, and stops Pitts. Yes more to clean up but only I tiny bit. Another great video Trev, nice to see you have a good Tig welder, I have the big one ideal for chopper frames!!! 260amp only trouble is you need 32 amp supply, but RTECH are so easy to talk to. Great job Trev.

THANKYOU once again ,lm so looking forward to the aluminium instruction video as you Trev are a great instructor . Once again thanks

Another great vid Trev...… hope I can master what you are showing me

Thank you. I use a MIG welder, but, would like to eventually have a TIG welder. The welds are cleaner, softer, and done faster.

Gracias por este video con subtítulos en español me sacaste de muchas dudas que tenía gracias trev eres el mejor

Thats pretty fine Trev . . .

Need more of this lesson

Nice work, and awesome study. I've sure made a few tests like that, and all new data is superhelpful. Everyone called me crazy when I broght a hammer to the stuff I've spent so much time making nice and flat. I went and got a Esab Sentinel A50 last year, expensive, but well worth it for those low amp aplications. What I've learnt is that if you can reach from the back, you should hammer and dolly as you go, like when the steel is hot, like when MIG welding. I figured out this is super awesome for another reason then setteling the steel and releasing tention. Like when the steel is hot, it will release the hydrogen as well, like the fizz out of a soda pop, so if you agitate it when it's abowe like 200 celcius, it will make the weld less porus as well. I read a study on that, but it was about stainless, it still aplies for normal steel in the sense of purety and microscopic pores. The surface of the structure will have a crazy lot to say about cracking it, like cutting glass, so like a polished surface will have noticebly more strength then a slightly thicker one with edges, or even scratches. When you get a nice and even surface like that, it is perfect in that sense, and it looked like it just cracked slightly in one of the pores. Like if it's on something that need the strenth, you can just re-heat that, and tap it as it cools down to relive the tention from the steel and knock out the hydrogen at the same time. You can get 0.8mm tigrod, but you probebly need to special order it, 1mm will work fine as well, but I've done just fine with 1.6. The 70s-6 makes the back of the weld most pretty acording to Jody over at welding tips and tricks here on youtube. My cars are less then 0.6mm being old VW's, and I think I ran a tad under 20 amps before I started pulsing. I didn't do full runs like that until I felt comfortable with the pulsesettings. Think I run about 50/50 with like 10% off current (don't think there are many machines that can run at 3 amps, and finding settings is both personal and equipment dependent), and I dab on the first pulse, and melt it into the steel on the next pulse. When you pulse you can get closer to 30 amps, when I've put down a rod on there, I sometimes pulse up to 40 amps to make sure I boil out all the unpureties, like if I dip the tungsten or otherwise notice unpureties in the weldpool. Think I run the gas at like 8 or 9, and I use a gaslens with a number 6 cup I think. Gaslens makes the coverage much better, because the flow of gas is evenly distributed. I got a gaslens so I could use less gas, but it will let you use more gas as well. Like if you turn up the gas the covrage will get worse because there is to much pressure or something. Well, I just forgot to messure my gas flow, and figured it was better with a tad more gas. I welded outside this summer, and windy was no problem. I had to get better at overhead as well this summer, and turnes out it can be done with a lot of practice and proper settings, but it didn't feel that good having that weld pool over my junk, knowing how little it takes to burn through. The van is looking great BTW :D

I bought a cheap (Chinese/Italian) welder from EBAY a TM200 HF for about 140 gbp about 2 years ago, it works great having built stainless exhaust pipes ,loads of sheet metal work and even stick welding various fabrications , the only drawback is no AC so it wont weld aluminium but for not a lot of money you get a working machine .

great info thanks very much.

As mentioned - the Ah ha moment when you showed the wire on the panel edge! Noted for future use !

A great tip to pass on is matching the tungsten diameter to the sheet thickness. If you have them the same it is much easier to weld. Use a filler rod the same or slightly less then the sheet as well. Mig wire is good for this.

Sheet metal workers of old would nearly always use the fusing run technique when butt gas welding steel or aluminium panels, followed by a light hammering to stretch/flush the welded seam; further shaping or wheeled would then be applied as required. Very experienced 'sheeties' would weld along a seam without tack welding along the joint due to problems of distortion. This would commence with the two sheets touching at the start of weld and the free end separated by a considerable gap, as welding proceeded they would use their free hand to manipulate one of the two sheets (the second sheet being held by some other means) to control the amount the sheets were pulled together by the contraction of the solidifying weld pool. Not easy to describe or do, but very effective when done by an expert !

TIG welds are just as malleable as gas welds, and far easier to work compared with MIG and MMA. I was brought up using O/A starting in the ‘60s and only now trying TIG. Will be doing a butt repair to my NS Austin Seven Ruby door lower section that had a horrible UNSEALED lap joint repair. Your video is just what I needed to give me the confidence I needed, BUT I still keep dipping the **** tungsten. Thanks Trev 👍

Another majestic video Trev. I also have a TIG welder from R-tech in Gloucester - can recommend anyone considering purchasing such a welder, that they first consider them. Lots of good info from John over at doubleboost you tube channel if more evidence is needed. I'm welding over the weekend on my Porsche - so will be "stealing" Trev's settings...

Nice, good info I appreciate it. Please keep it up

nice, I like the way you handled the edges I will probably start doing like that. I have my own way, which is to shove a little extra filler as I approach the edge to make sure my puddle is big and then just back up a little. but I think your way is better, I'm almost positive your way is better. thanks for the lesson.

Well trev you tempted me to buy a new tig welder and of course I bought the R-tec ac/dc rig looking forward to welding aluminium.

I have both. I picked up a tig welder for aluminum. I like how tig does not spark and spatter like mig.

Hi Trev, another great vid mate! welding without filler rod is known as welding autogenously, but I guess you know that. I normally get great results with the gun size dropped down to a WP 9 with a stubby gas lenses with 1.6 mm tungsten. Keep it close to the work but welding without filler rod always leaves a very slight crater. Keep it up Trev we love blog mate.

Beautiful work. This his how half wings and rear arches should be welded in.

Great job. Unbelievable strong weld for without filler! Would be great for body worrk.

Como sempre usa paraíso das ferramentas

Thanks. Appreciated.

"Isn't where I wasn't " love it .😁

r-Tech welders are the best quality UK sets you can buy. I have this TIG/MMA and one of their MIGs.

At 5:00 or so, I thought, I HOPED that you were going to make a tack IN TO the hole in that washer! It seemed like a new world opening up. As it happens, I have some heavy copper strap ("bus bar") that has holes in it every inch or so, and was just imagining clamping that down and making all the tacks in that way. Good job, in any case, I just got a little excited there.

Ace Trev really interesting

I like the intro music, I saw the credit you gave but it sounded more like Isaac Hayes Truck Turner. I love your content Trev. Keep em coming.

If you ever get the chance, spot welding (possibly plug ?) would be a wicked topic to cover Trev. I'm about to embark on a 64 Mk1 Mini rebuild and have heritage front wings and outer A panels to fit. Rest of body (sans 1 door skin and Speaker-holed :( rear parcel tray) is mint. Seen a few other videos of spot welding panels but your tutorage is next level... and very logical. Cheers for the channel... Mint!!!

U are certanly very skilled

buy both if you can afford it, they both have their place

Very nice

Standard Whitworth Gauge is still in use GOOD!

Bugger. Now I want one

I’m just about to start getting down to the nitty gritty of welding shut the massive hole I cut out of the back of my project van. I wanted to use tig, but had been persuaded to mig. I’m probably going to reverse that decision now. Only issue is that I will be welding outside so might same shielding gas issues as you.... time will tell. Subscribed, can’t wait to see the next. Between you and this old tony you have my KZfaq tied up nicely :)

Been looking at buying an R Tec tig but wasn’t sure if I should get the 160 or 200a, you’ve just answered question.. cheers once again informative and fun to watch

Good video trev. More tig welder videos especially on using the pluse function.

Очень хороший тест спосибо за видио

nice weld, nice tig machine, wonder if they have that sort in Aus...Thanks again Trev.

So that is why it is called The Baking Bird

Máquina de solda muito boa

I have tried your trick starting the arc on a filler rod but all to often it didn't work for me and I ended up with a big hole. What I found to work reliably for me is to clamp a little piece of sacrificial sheet metal to the ends so that a T-joint is formed. Now I can start the arc on the sacrificial metal piece, use some filler rod and I don't blow a hole. When I am done welding I cut it off.

Very helpful - straight to the points -- AhhHa indeed. Thanks!