Technical Do you ever use your stickwelder anymore?

Mine quit working a few years ago so I got rid of it. I really wish I had another one because I miss it a lot.


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No. All my welding rod went bad. I love my wire feed. 1957 Trindel

 

I use my arc welder quite often on heavy stuff. Still can lay down a pretty good weld with one.
All those years of hard facing grader blades made me get better. Sitting there for 8 hours at a time burning rods will make you better.

 

Me too. Also use my oxy/acetylene for thinner stuff, headers and such. And my Chinese plasma cutter for most all cutting. MIG wire-feed bead is a lot harder than base metal, use other types of welder when I want to grind, sand, and otherwise finish weld.

 

I have to count on my Hobart 180 amp AC welder- or do nothing.
I added some heavy current diodes a while back to allow dc welding, but the Hobart I bought in 1967 or 68 is still being used or I would be at a standstill.
Occasionally will gas weld, but arc is used most often.
I lay down a good mig bead in welding class, but those cost money.
Would love to TIG someday, but it's never in the budget.


WHY BE ORDINARY ?

 

Mig on most stuff got a 110v miller sidekick with gas that works good on thin stuff
And a 220v Powercon mig welder for heavier gauge.


Gotta question why do most “industrial welders and fabricators still use arc?
Cheaper? Easier?

 

Stuck in time I'd say.

 

My son-in-law has been a certified welder for about 10 years and does it all for the company he is employed by, I'm going to give it to him if he wants it. HRP

 

I have a tombstone Lincoln that was my great uncle's welder. He had a salvage yard and used this machine in that yard through my childhood, and when he passed my grandfather inherited it. I inherited it from him and have been moving it around with me ever since. It has a boatload of lead on it and more heritage and patina than you can shake a stick at, and I have not struck an arc with it since my grandad died. I suppose I should try it out at some point, after a good once over, or at least find a way to display it in the shop. It has surely welded some awesome hillbilly junk together in it's time.

 

Like some of you I fight the "can't see a Damn thing!" Syndrome when welding sometimes but one of the best things I did was I ordered a large lens clear view auto helmet from Eastwood, it's the best 100 $ I've spent for a tool in along time!

There's no real green tint either on or off welding. Another big plus is the large window, I can wear my peepers on my head and use them with the helmet so I don't need a cheater lens in the helmet and another biggy is I can adjust the darkness of the lens which helps with by bad eyes immensely. If it's dark out & not much light coming into the shop I can turn down the lens, if the suns shining thru the Windows I can turn it up.

After about a month with it I can't figure out how'd I'd live without it!

So you gents with less than perfect eye sight I'd guarantee you'd grow to love one of these helmets pretty fast

 

Back lighting (brighter light than whats lighting your project in front causing a reflection on the back side of lens) is an issue also.

 

Arc is useful for working on thicker stuff that you cant always clean completely.
Mig is shallower and the metal has to be clean.
Arc runs a much hotter 6,000 degrees, and can get a better melt into the really thick stuff that no matter how hard you try, you still can't get everything super clean. Stick welding will tolerate more rust in the tight spots and still burn into it better than a cooler mig will.
Mig is great for thin and medium stuff you can clean first.




WHY BE ORDINARY ?

 

I hadnt touched a stick in 20+ years (lots of mig and tig) but in HS I could roll a very nice looking bead. Recently, I had to weld some cleats on my trailer and my friend had a Miller 225 diesel (never useds a self powered unit before) where my trailer was, so opted to fire it up. It all came right back.....wow the welds looked really nice after chipping the slag. Great penetration and was really impressed with how easy stick was and what a great job the welder performed.

I have a few nice stick welders....sitting....new. I should of been firing those up years ago.

~JH

 

It’s because when it just gotta hold, as in high pressure pipelines that move flammable liguids and nuclear plants, they want the best. Mig has trouble passing X-ray, I guess. Because they all use arc welders. Not all fabricators use arc. The company I sold products for used MIG exclusively with no problem, but we weren’t handling nuclear shit tho...lol


Bones

 

I have had a Tig since '72 and Mig since '77. A while back I needed to repair some split welds on a pair of 35-36 housings. Wanting them to look original, I stick welded them with a stinger that hangs on my Lincoln 300/300 Tig machine. I also use it to repair cast iron and steel pieces with nickel rod, from time to time.

 

Add in 'faster' and you've got it. For thicker material, you can lay down a lot more weld material faster and easier with stick while still getting good penetration. That's really the issue with MIG and TIG; it's tough to get good penetration on thicker material with them, and it usually requires multiple passes. I limit my MIG welding to 1/8" or less thicknesses, anything thicker I use the stick welder. I will vary rod size, under 1/4" material I'll use 3/32" rod, 1/4" or over I'll go to 1/8".

I worked construction for 30+ years, a fair amount of it was industrial. Watching a pipefitter weld a critical process pipe joint (say a 12" diameter with a 1" wall) with the sometimes-required TIG, he'd be at that joint for a week at least; pass after pass after pass until the 'V' was completely filled. The same joint if arc was acceptable, about a third that amount of time, maybe less depending on what rod size the engineers approve.

 

Same here, I have an old tractor too. Massey Ferguson. I use my old stick welder for bucket repairs. Stick has great shielding when outdoors. Other than that, it’s MiG or Tig. My Miller Tig also has the ability to stick weld and is really smooth with a lot of settings such as DIG. But the Toom Stone is much easier to bring outside for the tractor. I have it mounted on a 2wheeler.


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Oldest son is a certified welder,
He says mig stands for maybe it’s good
I got him started in welding a long time ago, now I don’t weld at all, he told me to quit tacking things together, I’m ruining his welds.
He told me to quit when I put down a nice bead, but totally missed thr crack!
Joints,pencil marks all look alike to an old man

 

Stick welder huh, really I’m just about to the point where I don’t use the mig anymore tig is great. Guy a couple of doors down from me builds dragsters, showed me how to tig i was hooked.

 

Bones, you and I have had the "Broken heart and the crack of dawn" conversation so, out of everybody who has commented on this thread, you will be the one most likely to understand what I'm going to say. It makes no difference what the process is, stick, mig or tig, if the amperage isn't right and the weldor can't see, control his/her speed and hand motion, the weld isn't going to be worth a damn. I am a retired Boilermaker and have had to test and qualify for jobs all over the country.

Somewhere, I've got a stack of paper that says I'm​

pretty damn good. ​

I've built water towers, tank farms, welded boiler tubes with the Boilermakers, pipe with the Pipefitters and structural steel with the Ironworkers. In every case, the job was done by whatever method the welding engineers determined were necessary. Most pressure welds, tube or pipe, will call for one or more tig passes with the interior of the tube filled with argon to keep oxygen and hydrogen from the weld. Usually, the joint will be welded out with stick with the electrode size determined by the thickness of the material. If we were building water towers, tig or mig would not be the way to weld because of the difficulty of keeping a shield gas around the arc. Stick would be the way to go with the first pass being E6010 to penetrate and burn out any dirt, rust or mill scale that could get trapped if using E7018. A good cleaning with a power brush and the weld would be finished out with E7018. Then we would go inside, arc gouge the backside of the weld to clean metal and weld it out. At least 10% of the weld joints were X-rayed. Any weld that had inclusions was cut out, re-welded and the seam was X-rayed for 10 feet either side of that joint. I have two different wire feed machines, one for mig and one for fluxcore, two different gas machines which I use for stick and, if the occasion demands, I can use to power the house if the electricity fails. If I were doing production work in a controlled environment, mig would definitely have an advantage over stick. On rusty frames, E6010 followed by E7018 is the ticket. New or very clean sheet metal needs a controlled environment. I've attached a couple of pics of a frame splice I just did. After fitting up the joints, my first pass was inside with 6010. From the outside, I ground the joint to clean metal and ran one pass of 7018. To further strengthen the joint, I fishplated the inside 4" on either side of the new piece. Using stick made it quick and easy. I apologize for the length of this post but I've looked closely at several of the welds I've seen on here and been amazed, not in a good way, by a number of them.

 

I use my Lincoln buzz box regularly. Can lay down a pretty good bead sometimes. Got a Lincoln Handy Mig 120v machine, have never used anything but flux core wire in it. Was going to buy a tank from Tractor Supply and do the exchange program with them, but they quit doing it. Way I work it’s impossible for me to get to a gas supplier through the week, so for now it’ll be flux core. Only use it on thin stuff anyway, prefer the stick on thicker materials.

Really, I’m a better grinder than welder. my welds are usually ugly, but they hold....

 

I like using it for heavy materials.
Works great for anything larger than 1/4 in thickness.

 

The last time I used the old Lincoln tombstone ark welder was about 2 years ago, doing cast iron. I don't do much cast iron here.
Nearly everything is done with my Miller 251 sporting .035 wire. Most of what I weld is 1/4" or thinner. 20 gauge sheet metal is a challenge with .035 wire. Everything I weld gets cleaned first. I like welding shinny metal.

I also have a large face automatic helmet. I clean the lenses at least once every day, that sure helps these old eyes see. I also have a battery powered trouble light shining on the weld area if there is not enough natural light. I've also found being in front of the weld (as compared to looking at the back side of the mig gun) improves seeing the bead and makes a much nicer looking bead. Gene

 

When my daughter was 13 (17 years ago) I taught her how to weld with my Lincoln cracker box. That might be the last time I used it. This makes me want to dust it off and burn a few rods..... if any of them are still good. LOL

 

A good friend of mine died suddenly about 1984 and his wife gave me his brand new Miller mig for finishing the job he was working on. I have only used the stick once since then. I built a lot of stuff and never had a weld fail.
For guys like myself who have terrible eyesight, there is a neat little lite made by Steck mfg, that works wonders.

 

I have an ancient Montgomery Ward stick welder. I don't know how old it is but I've used it for 30+ years. I have a 110v mig I use for small things. Nothing I'd bet my balls on. I stick welded my sidecar 10 years ago and so far no welds have broken.

 

Some have mentioned it in passing, but I think it needs to be said explicitly : Stick welding rods can go bad over time, especially if storage conditions are not optimal. Some types of rods should be stored in a heated oven! The last time I tried to use my old Miller 225, I grabbed the old rod case with some rods that had been in it for at least ten years. I literally could not strike an arc. I initially thought that there was something wrong with the machine, but a trip to the hardware store and some new electrodes solved my problems. These days, I only buy the rods I know I'm going to use in the near future.

 

word^^^

 

The 195 amp Ward's stick welder I bought 50 some years ago was relegated to the storage shed not long after I moved about 30 years ago; hooked it up once since then to weld some deck support posts, suspect that was the last welding it will ever do. Kinda sad, thinking back, did a lot of hot rod stuff with that machine.

 

Yeah, my uncle was a welder, and he is the one that beat into my head that if you didn't take the best care of your electrodes, you couldn't do a good job.
Here is a link regarding electrode care.
https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-ca/support/welding-how-to/Pages/storing-electrodes-detail.aspx

Bob