Anything welding

I'd focus on learning how to hold and feed filler wire with your weak hand. Learning the torch is one thing, but properly feeding filler rod in the other is just as important.

Learn to feed filler wire and move your torch on flat steel; adjust as needed and learn to use your pedal for heat management. For stainless steel especially, it's easy to overheat the metal to get filler to lay in, thus creating a large heat affected zone. Start by using extra filler at the beginning of your weld.

 

What are you repairing with stainless?
Zim

 

On another note, bumper porn coming along.
Zim


Mocked up the center section today and will finish it up in a few days. Rain coming in from Texas.



Sorry about the finger. LOL

 

Speak for yourself!

 

What your trying to do is one of the hardest welds to make in thin material.

With Tig 59 minutes prep work 1 minute Arc time.

If your determined to use the Tig Process get some copper strips to use as heat sinks and clamp to the joint .

You need to clean the front and back of material

Good luck

 

3:35a and I'm not sleepy so I guess it's time to go practice on some sheet metal!

 

Swapped spools to .024. Setup a couple practice sheets with the bottom part gapped a bit to imitate the gaps on some sections of my bedsides. After three rounds I got it to where no light showed through. Not perfect but I'm happy with my first time doing 18g sheet metal so I immediately started tacking the bed back together

 

looks Good !

I am sure you know do lots of stitch welds don`t get things to hot in one spot bounce around.

 

Cracked body work at the air intake. Probably not the best job for stainless, but I figured I'd give it a shot. Worst case I have to cut it all out someday and have a professional fix it for me?

Oh, and thanks for the suggestions regarding the copper backing layer, I'll give that a shot next time! Switching gears to cutting and bending the repair panels before I run out of material.

Yeah, slowly getting the hang of the foot pedal. So easy to wind up with a stubborn ball of filler instead of a bead. Really enjoying trying tig though, it's so... controlled.

 

Thanks for looking out!

 

A tip that was given to me by a body shop guru when bobbing my bed (that I ignored because I'm impatient) is to add a backing strip behind the seam, maybe 18 gauge or something. That way there's a little more meat back there so you don't blow through as easily. I wish I had listened because the seam was sucked down a bit and took a decent bit of body filler to level out.

 

These are awesome for butt welding body panels. I have a more expensive brand and the HF version that they’re the same thing really. Really great to get the panels aligned. FWIW, I originally learned to weld when I was restoring muscle cars and it was 99% welding in patch panels. That experience taught me a lot when I finally started building sliders and armor. I only found out later that body work was way harder for a beginner to start with.

 

I was thinking of using the leftover bed pieces for some seam backer strips but I thought that would be cheating good to know that is an approach that people take!

 

Yep. I used those this morning for my test pieces.

 

I've even used them on pieces 1/8" thick too.

Untitled by Michael Halat, on Flickr
Untitled by Michael Halat, on Flickr
Untitled by Michael Halat, on Flickr

Super handy clamp.

 

Same. When I make full top plates for sliders I’ll join two pieces so that the top plate is one continuous sheet. (It’s cheaper to buy 4’ long sheets of 1/8” than a full 8 footer.) it kinda bugs me when top plates are made of several small sections of plate.

 

Do you remember what gauge the 2nd gen bedsides are? First gen pickups are 18g.

 

I don't actually know but I do know it was incredibly thin. 18 gauge sounds about right.

 

I might go measure the two later to see if there is a difference.