Welding Practice

Before I can weld a cage, I need to be able to make really sound welds. There are lots of arguements about the proper technique, but one thing everyone agrees on is that you need to practice, a lot. I called up a local welding expert and asked if he knew of a good place to get some scrap metal. He graciously offered to give me some of the scrap he has lying around. L&K Welding, Inc based out of Castle Rock Colorado, is a small welding shop that Russell DeRoche runs from his home. It looks like he takes on just about any project, and is an extremely nice guy. If you want to know more, check out his website at http://www.landkwelding.com/

I decided to start today by just laying a bunch of welds on 1/8″ steel stock. I tried different things like pushing and pulling the weld puddle, adjusting the wire feed speed, adjusting the tip angle, adjusting the electrode length, and moving faster or slower. This is what that ended up looking like.

I am not going to comment on the quality of those welds because I am just not sure. I look foward to the opinions of other experienced welders.

Then I worked on some butt welds, which, in my opinion are not very good at all. I didnt get much penetration and the weld has a really high crown.

The last weld was the best, but still eh. I will to cut up some metal so I can practice more of those welds. Then for kicks, I welded some angle steel to a flat piece of steel, both 1/8″ thick, and once the weld cooled, I put the piece in a vice and bent it back and forth until it failed. That let me see where it was failing. The first few showed that I wasnt getting enough penetration, but later on the metal started breaking off outside of the weld, which I took an improvement.

 

Thats all for now. More tomorrow!