[TheForge] Welders

[theforge@mailman.qth.net]

Regarding welders I would like to put in a couple of good words for that 
Hobart Handler. I suspect Adam may be pulling our leg a bit on his tie ins to 
weiler but in truth, it is the darling of my small shop. 

Mine is about 11 years old and I have yet to do a pennys worth of repair. 
Every morning I fire it up and it works perfectly. And I use it in the most 
gosh awful way. That is, I use it with flux core wire and no gas. I have it 
mounted on a a Red Ryder childs wagon and I drag it wherever I want...even in 
to downtown Philly where I plug it into the clients site with a 50' extension 
cord and use it to weld up 3/8" gate brackets (with multiple passes) or 
whatever. 

If you are going to do some serious welding on which health and safety may be 
a concern then there are other and better alternatives. But for so many of us 
that do mainly decorative blacksmithing, etc., I would urge you to seriously 
look at one of the little 110 volt welders.  They have much to recommend 
them. 

You can do a lot of welding with a $400 ac/dc stick welder and a $400 110v 
welder. I would like to have that Millermatic 250 for $2000 but one has to 
draw some lines somewhere.  

Kindest regards

Don Plummer