Indispensable. There are welding and brazing jobs that gas is the only good way. As mentioned above, I wouldn't build headers any other way. Deepened my Dual Range Hydro with gas. Repositioned the filler tube and slanted the pan on the Cruise-O-Matic MX for the Mysterion clone with gas. Built these headers with gas.
My very first "hot rod" was a '50 Chevy pickup, which had surprisingly rust free sheet metal, but the floors were badly rusted I think because of the pig shit from the farmers boots eating through the metal. I had only welded with an old Forney Buzz Box before, but a buddy had an O/A setup and showed me the basics. I cut up a 55 gallon drum to replace the rusted metal, grabbed every empty wire coat hanger out of the house, and proceeded to replace the rusted bits of the floor. It looked like ass, but was solid and didn't leak. Mostly I use MIG now, but have a Victor Jr. O/A setup that I use when I need to heat and bend heavier pieces, or braze.
If you want your sheet metal warped just drag out your torch and give me a call, I can really screw it up, Gas welding is a art much like all phases of building cars but to master the craft it takes years of practice. I will continue to use a mig welder, it is far more forgiving for someone that doesn't use it day in and day out. HRP
I enjoy gas welding for some reason! Lol Most of the time on thin stuff. I learned how to gas weld over fifty years ago and have used coat hangers, baling wire(a lot) , barbed wire, any wire with success. Usually because I could find or didn’t have the store bought welding rod. I have always liked most kinds of welding and love to braze. I hope to try Tig before I croak! Bones
Gas welding should be the first type of welding you learn if you want to be a welder. I am a certified Tig welder of SS pipe. I can tell you gas is the best way to learn control. When I retired Mig was just coming out(yes I'm old) and I had very little experience with it. I hated it also! I guess Mig has it's place but I know when I Tig something I can tell if it's a good weld while I am doing it. JM2cents
I would gas weld more often if I could afford tanks. There is no place around me close that leases tanks any more. yes it takes practice. I learned when i was very young long before I ever picked up a stick welder and even longer until I ever tigged or migged anything. I still prefer to gas weld body panels and exhaust.
I really lucked out on my tanks. A welding supply company here at one time offered 99 year leases on tanks to farmers. A friend sold his farm and I bought out his lease. The time left on his lease will probably outlive me. They don't offer this anymore.
I hadn't gas welded anything in many years. I got my nailhead running and had an exhaust leak. I thought it was either the flange between the header and exhaust pipe, or the header and head. After taking everything apart numerous times I found that the header manufacturer forgot to weld the little piece between the four tubes at the collector on all sides. I was going to have to weld down inside the collector so I got out my torch, did a couple of practice welds on my bench, and proceeded to weld the two seams they missed. Back in the day I built a number of sprint car headers so it was like riding a bike, it came back quickly.
I've not been without a oxy/acetylene setup for decades, but honestly I don't recall the last time I used mine? But I'd never let it go just because when I need it, there's nothing else that will do what it does as well.
O/A was the first I learned, and today I own O/A, stick, mig, and tig, and also a plasma arc cutting torch All have there place in the hot rod and fabrication worlds. Another tool I haven't seen mentioned in a long time is the carbon arc torch, It uses an AC welder and 2 carbon rods arcing back and forth to each other to create a tremendous amount of heat. Really saves over the cost of O/A when heating and bending heavy metal.
That was the first tool I ever bought. In the old magazines, that was used in a lot of the tech articles so I knew I needed one. Didn't even own a car yet. Pushed the welding cart home. Sent from my SM-T350 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
My oldest Brother bought an O/A torch from Montgomery Wards in 1961, it was a quality unit, made by Harris. His 4 year stint in the Navy, taught him a lot about metals and welding, he was quick to teach his 12 year old Brother to gas weld. I bought my own set in '69, and gas welded the light metal stuff, until buying a Tig in 72. Now that I am shaping and welding aluminum, I have an expert who is going to teach me the art of gas welding aluminum, as I purchased a new Smith, aircraft handle and tips.
Neither have I, possibly because we don't have them here. But O/A is relatively forgiving when it comes to what filler you use and how clean the metal you weld is, so it's no surprise that people on a budget has used whatever steel wire they have on hand as filler wire. The first time I O/A welded stainless I used stainless bicycle wheel spokes for filler, later got a pack of stainless TIG wire instead.
Coat hanger is all I used to use. I bought my oxy-acetylene rig when I was 17. I was to broke/cheap to buy rod.
All welding requires mucho practice. The 'I bought a HF 110 v mig yesterday and can't wait to build my chassis tomorrow' threads make me wince. Your investment in practice looks to be paying off! If you were to try TIG with your OA experience you'll be like a duck to water, but not suggesting TIG is better, just different. Chris
When I was growing up watching my dad gas weld exhaust, I’d always assumed a coat hanger was the only possibility. Used to piss my mom of. . But exhaust isn’t structural, so I don’t think it’s an issue My neighbor, who passed a few years back, had a tractor and 30 acres of land. He planted almonds. Probably in the 40’s or 50’s. He built all his equipment (discs, loader, scraper, etc) with O/A. I remember looking at the welds and it looked like they were done with -insert welding machine- I’d have never known it wasn’t a factory built implement
My favorite is the soft iron wire used by concrete guys to tie the rewire and rod. Really soft! Hammer and dolly work on those beads is really easy and grinds better. Not at all like mig or even 'real' filler rod. Down side is it needs to be cleaned with an alcohol soaked rag to get the processing oil off. Just cut off a convenient length and drag through the rag and weld. Also, can't let it get wet or it will rust, and that doesn't weld very good.
Tig vs. O/A is wasted on me I have O/A welded for many yrs but not steady in yrs. So I thought I'd pick tig up easy, nope, nada, still trying to get the hang of it. Its that foot feet thing along with feeding the rod that keeps throwing me off ! But now most of all my welding is mig...
Not sure those were a good idea, the stainless TIG wire worked so much better. Pic of a stainless muffler included, before and after repair (but w/o the reinforcements I added). Speaking of creative choices of filler "wire", old piston rings are made of high grade cast iron, and works excellent as filler for O/A welding cast iron. Here's a test I made on a scrap moped cylinder probably 8 years ago or so, I knocked off an ear on the intake flange and built it back up using piston rings out of a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine. I'm thinking that HAMBers may want to weld busted cast iron more often than they want to weld stainless, so it might be a more useful tip than the spokes.
I learned to O/A weld mostly from a peer in high school. I first tried it in HS metal shop but when I got an after school job building VW exhaust systems, I really learned - we were paid piecework. Fast, sound and pretty or you don't get paid for it. My buddy Steve got me the job and trained me. I also perfected my stick welding there. I've always done headers and exhaust systems with O/A, flanges with stick or TIG. I used O/A to chop my '33 coupe, '32 coupe and '32 tudor plus my friends '34, that was just how it was done then, no one had a MIG or TIG. I took an adult school body and fender class and I was the only one who had ever gas welded. I learned to gas weld aluminum when I had to make a new "chin" for my '54 Austin Healey. It was very rewarding to recreate that front apron and do all the aluminum welding myself. I recently soldered a new bottom onto my neighbor's antique tractor oil can. Quite a versatile tool to have in the shop.
I learned gas wlding in high school auto shop and chopped my first top (48 Ford pickup) with coat hanger and a cutting tip...there was some warpage Years later, I learned "hammer welding" from Brent Vandervort (before he moved south and started Fat Man Fabrication) when we chopped his '33 Tudor.
I tried the coat hanger deal once but the damn plastic kept melting too fast, and it didn't hold for shit.....
You can warp the work if you are not careful about stitching, but the beauty of the gas welding, is that the metal is maleable and easily worked back into shape with a hammer and dolly. You can also use a torch to stretch or shrink panels after you have banged out a dent. You can't do that with a MIG or TIG. Don't get me wrong, I love both MIG and TIG welding, but gas still has a place. Bob
Took a welding class at the J.C. Way back when in hopes of learning arc welding. A whole semester of running beads with a torch. Always had a torch for heating/cutting but didn’t gas weld for years. Picked up a Henrod a few years ago and its the tits for sheetmetal and brazing
Learned O/A welding in High School. Welding sheet metal with a jeweler's torch and no filler, strictly a fusion weld. File the parts to fit snugly, start a puddle and push all the way around in one pass. No tacking and hopping back and forth.
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