Couple more rust questions...

[rusty ol ranger]

Yeah, definitely have to be careful with welding. Really you should try not to breath any welding fumes but short of wearing a respirator all the time, it happens. Most of my welding is done outside and I try not to blast myself with fumes. I’m also alert to the things like galvanized, zinc, and Phosgene gas. I’ll use brake cleaner to spray off parts sometimes but I let it dry really good and always use the non-chlorinated stuff. Lately I’ve been experimenting with using denatured alcohol for wiping stuff down.

Grease and oil presence will contribute to the splatter problem when welding. Any contaminants will cause excessive popping. Flux core wire splatters more than gas shielded to begin with. The cleaner you get where you’re welding, the better. They say arc welding with 6011 rod will weld through a cow pie… but that doesn’t mean that you should weld like that.

The beauty of metal is that if you burn through or screw something up, you just grind and weld to fix it. Cut a piece too short? Just weld some more back onto it. Way easier than working with wood.

After doing some reading and looking i think my problem is two fold based on what my previous welds looked like....

I set the amps to high and i go to slow with my hand.

 

[bobbywalter]

with thin shitty metal you have to trigger the shit out of the welder...stay hot as you can and use short bursts, eventually you will be adjusting heat with stickout. just watch you stay 5/8 to 3/8 range. often you will be laid over almost instead of a 15-30 deg for normal thicker metal penetration. this gets the wire adding metal out onto the sheet that wants to vaporize.

wont be pretty. but will work perfectly.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Sheet metal welding is a series of tack welds spaced about an inch apart. If you can access the back side then hammer and dolly work to stretch it back out. The heat from the weld shrinks the metal. Then back around with more tacks right beside the last ones, with a slight overlap. And more dolly work. Keep at it.

 

[scotts90ranger]

The better the welder the less frustrating, to a point... if you have one of the stupid 90-100A transformer units from HFT they work but take some getting used to... and adjusting settings wrong but with sheet metal it's what works not what's "right"

My last filler metal for body work was from the top of an oil drum that I cut off for my scrap barrel, one side was clean and the other the paint didn't take much to get off... I've worked with the side of a washing machine before and that coating (on both sides) is stinky when burnt... conveniently I was just making a pan for the dishwasher so it didn't matter and I was just cutting it with a grinder...

I agree with all of the above, working with metal is much less critical than wood...

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Unless you have the elusive "wood stretcher"...

 

[scotts90ranger]

Unless you have the elusive "wood stretcher"...

I'm pretty sure they're in the same aisle of the store as the aluminum magnets...

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

I'm pretty sure they're in the same aisle of the store as the aluminum magnets...

Muffler bearings, concrete stretcher….man, that store has to have all the good stuff…

 

[bobbywalter]

and they never run out of free blinker fluid.

 

[ledmircyy]

Are there any non-metallic materials that can substitute for these?

 

[bobbywalter]

Are there any non-metallic materials that can substitute for these?

glue in composites or make it with fiber glass.... lots of options.