Thread: Welder
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  #10   IP: 66.235.54.72
Old 01-13-2018, 02:30 PM
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wristwister wristwister is offline
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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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