[TheForge] Stick welding question]

[RIES NIEMI]

For thin gauge steel, I really like to tig weld. It's true that if you buy a
new, ac/dc tig welder with all the bells and whistles, it will run over 3
grand. But its quite possible to put an air cooled scratch start tig torch
on any dc stick welder, and do perfectly acceptable tig welds with it for
only a few hundred bucks. My torch cost about 150 bucks. I already have
argon tanks and flowmeters around, so I just hook em up, but if you had to
buy both of them it still would be under 500 for the whole package. We use
this setup frequently with gas drive welders, on both mild steel and
stainless. We also use it in the shop when we need two tig welders at the
same time.

Recently had a job where I had to weld some railing components in a finished
library building, right before the grand opening. The carpet was down, the
hardwood handrails were already sanded and finished, everything was already
finish painted.
We parked the welder outside, ran the cables in, and just had to lay down
one little welders blanket, about 3 feet square, right where we were
working, as extra insurance. No sparks, no slag, no smoke (and a good thing
too, as the fire alarm was already on and we would have set it off big time
with a stick welder. The city would have been muy p-oohed if we had set
their new library on fire before it even opened. )
The tig welder was quick and surgical. You do need to know how to tig weld
the right way before you learn how to scratch start, but it isnt hard and
gives much better looking welds with no cleanup than using 6010.