I'll throw something in from left field ... a good ol' oxyacetylene torch. Here's why:
To do good quality welds that look good and can be trusted using stick/MIG/whatever takes a lot of practice. If you plan to do a lot of welding and are willing to invest the time and effort to get good enough to consistently make trustworthy welds, great, go for it, get a good quality welder.
But ... if like me welding is just a very occasional thing but you want those welds to be good, this is where the oxyacetylene comes in. For ugly welds that I'm not depending on for safety, great, I torch that baby up, grind it down bit, and I'm good. But for welds that have to be trustworthy and/or pretty, I use my torch to tack weld everything in place, then I bring it to a real welder to lay down the final beads.
Other advantages of a torch welder:
- You can anneal metal with it for bending and shaping
- You can heat treat metal to make it harder or softer by annealing then changing how you quench it
- You can cut metal with the cutting torch head
- You can braze or solder
Can't do any of these with that stick/MIG welder, and with a little practice you might actually get good at laying down a proper bead!
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"A ship in the harbor is safe ... but that's not what ships are built for.
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