BXProject

[Bx Bandit]

See I rekon the left hand weld on the top piccy and the weld on the bottom are very good! Not that I'm saying I'm any better on the rhs welds in the top piccy mind. BX thin stuff was damn frustrating to weld. I use only co2 as well but cos I can't afford/use enough of argon to afford/justify it.

[Philhod]

See I rekon the left hand weld on the top piccy and the weld on the bottom are very good!

Now thats what I told him but he explained that they were opposite sides of the same welds. The top ones the weld and the btm ones the over penetration.
Basically that means he was going a bit slow, with slightly too much juice, but well good enuff for what he's doing.

[Bx Bandit]

/\ Me thinks you are referring to Vanny, but I'm referring to Matt Underscore Underpant's photos!

[Vanny]

Hmm, i see the point of correctly referencing pictures now

That full size bottle of argoshield i have was £25, delivered, in Liverpool, probably off the back of a lorry.
It's a BOC bottle, and fortunately i should be able to get it swapped out for free, if i ever use it!

I also have a short bottle for putting CooGar in at some point, easier for transport.


Oh, the regulator for that bottle was only £20 delivered, not the prefered sort (slow responce for the on flow reading), but does the job for me. No practise tonight, been doing home work

[Philhod]

Sorry Bandit. When I replied. Matt's posts and others + pics weren't there, or I missed them

Not bad that Matt. The outside corner on the first pic looks like you came downwards with the gun square on to the work
That is ok as you are neither pulling or pushing. Note that it's only ok on sheet, if you're working on thicker materials
you must weld vertical up as you get little or no penetration going down.

Simple flow meters cost a tenner and are all you need, get one.!! Turning it up till you get no spatter results in a flow rate of about 25 ltrs per minute. which is ok if it's windy but otherwise very wasteful. At best setting you should get quite a bit of spatter with this process.
Co2 is ok but Argoshield or Cougar 5, do produce far better results across the board.
What's yours Vanny, an extra gauge on the regulator?

The weld on Mat's second pic looks much neater but has a lot of stops and starts. Once your job is tacked you should try to keep the stops and starts to a minimum, easier said than done, I know, but something to aim for.

If you pull Doc, with the gun angled away from the arc, even with the adjustments you make the penetration will be less than 1/2 and you risk losing the shield, with the usual results.

The optimum technique for downhand, flat butt or HV is; hold the gun square with the run, angled back from the direction of travel between 40 and 60 degrees, going L to R and opposite for left handers of course. try to keep the end of the shroud about 10 to 15 mm from the arc.
When welding any other position on thin stuff it's best to keep the gun square to the work in both directions allowing you to move up, down or sideways. You can allow the shroud away from the arc up to 40 mm,to see in awkward spots especially OH, but turn the gas up to 20 ltrs /min.
And lastly, these notes apply when welding other materials such as Aluminium or Stainless (all) but you MUST use pure Argon for these. Here endeth the 1st lesson

[docchevron132]

I've been on Coogar 5 stuff for ages, I'm using the big off bottles that weigh as much as the moon!

That said, pure Co2 used to be my only gas, and it worked well enough..

Distance from shroud to arc has always been a problem for me, moreso as the arm degenerates, I just can't keep the fucking torch steady, before now it's gotten so bad I've used a spot weld shroud and literally dragged it across the piece since I was too cold / weak to hold the torch with any degree of accuracy.
It's a bastard this getting old shit huh...

[Philhod]

Know what yer mean mate.

A trick I saw once was, a little arm welded to the shroud with a little wheel at the end??
couldn't have been much use for anything but downhand or possibly HV though

Are you using a full size professional gun like wot Vanny has??

There is a smaller version that takes .6, .8, and 1 mm, like wot I have.

It will even take 1.2, but gets a bit hot. Ok for stitch / space welding.

[Philhod]

Just a thought Doc. If you are using full size bottles, make sure they are secured properly. I know it is an inert gas but if it falls and knocks your gauges off, it can make a hell of a mess. [stud]



This is for any would be fabricators out there.

Some of you may do this already but, if you have an awkward shape to fab up, make it out of kelloggs box material first and stick it together with masking tape.
Try it in, make any adjustments to the cardboard then use the patterns to cut your expensive metal.
Saves lots of time as well as money. Also, if you are making a section up from several pieces, tack them together where they go. Then take them out and weld them off the job, then the whole piece goes in and gets welded to the job

[docchevron132]

Yeah got a full size gun, but I had a little fucking hobby MiG thing with a ickle little thing on it, struggled just as much with that really.
There's two things that go on really, one is that actually gripping anything leads to pain within 5 minutes (wankings a nightmare!) and it's that weak now even holding my arm up holding nothing for more than 10 minutes leads to being all but useless...

Erm, yeah, I *should* secure the bottle, but, er, well, you know me and H&S.....

I used to use cardboard to make templates, but these days I literally just get some metal and keep hacking it about til it fits, which actually takes longer and isn't as neat as making templates, but ya know....

[mat_the_cat]

gripping anything leads to pain within 5 minutes (wankings a nightmare!)

I wouldn't have a problem...

[docchevron132]

Course you wouldn't mate, you've got a nice bird at home to do it for you!

[Philhod]

I think he meant it's less than 5 mins

When you are welding on thick stuff, (like filling up a 60 degree single V on 2 and a 1/2" plate)

you have to continue as long as possible. A technique I used was to use both hands. RH on the handgrip and the other you can vary from holding your own wrist to holding the gun just forward of the handgrip.
It does help for quite a while

[Vanny]

Fucking get in there my son, i always use card templates for complicated sheet stuff Glad i'm not the only one.

Docco, you sure its the bigger Euro torch? the 1x and 2x sizes are fundamentally the same, 6mm thread for the nib, the 3x sized looks identical and is slightly scaled up, but weighs a fucking tonne and takes 10mm thread nib. Just thinking that if you do actually have a 3x EuroTorch then you could down grade to the light weight Euro!


Phil, i dont understand your question, its an argoshield bottle, the two guages, 1 is bottle pressure and one is flow rate which would normally be a floating ball type guage (ball is quicker responce


My bottle is well secured, 5mm chain, but my uncles place had a bottle let go many years ago, it was pretty much empty and being changed, but it left rather large holes in the walls and killed various machines.

[Philhod]

Yes, that's what I meant. It has a bottle pressure gauge then a regulator gauge shaped flow meter.

But that's overkill for this thickness, a cheap floating object flow meter is well sufficient.

A couple of years ago, in one of my garages, the foreman was using the bottle key to turn the oxy bottle off

There was a fault in the neck. It blew out the gauges, releasing all it's pressure instantly.
The gauges became a gold spray on the wall, complete disintegration. Jason got 1st degree burns on the back of his hand
2nd on his forearm and 3rd on his neck and the side of his face. The quack said if he had been 6" nearer he would have been on a slab.
It was a faulty cylinder that had missed it's test date that cost BOC rather a lot of money.

And Jason won't go near a cylinder now. Even though I said to him, look at it this way. What are the chances of that happening again??? You would run out of noughts

[jonathan_dyane]

Dangerous stuff!

I remember some years ago a friend of the fathers giving me a lesson on welding with oxy-actylene. He got me started then went off to tinker with something else with the parting words: 'if you get a flashback you will realise immediately what has happened. There are no flashback arrestors, so you'd have to move quick and turn the bottles off with the key, but mind, don't run because you'll not outrun it...'

Needless to say my next purchase was a pair of flashback arrestors...

[Philhod]

Don't bother with the bottle keys, just grab the gas tube fold it on it's self and squeeze. The backfire will go out immediately. Shut the gas bottle off and leave the oxy on for a minute or two, to cool everything down.................... simples.

The only time to go for the bottle key is if the oxy feed catches fire when cutting ( which it does occasionally if you are a dozy cunt)
It rips back very quickly under the oxy pressure.

If it gets back to the regulator it usually blows out, but VERY rarely the cylinder can explode, with absolutely devastating consequences. quite exciting

[jonathan_dyane]

All good clean fun

I'm sure he was trying to put the shits up me too, and he certainly succeeded...

Wish I'd learnt oxy-acetylene first, I might have perfected it, but instead I messed on for a couple of afternoons making a mess, then gave up and went back to MIG...

[Philhod]

Shit's up you or not, it was all true doing it professionally, you ALWAYS follow the rules.

The process to learn 1st should be Oxy Acetylene. Everything happens quite slowly and it requires a fair degree of skill
and hand eye co ordination. The second one should be MMA or Stick welding. This process enhances those skills and requires much practice to become skilled.
MIG comes next and if you are reasonably proficient at the previous 2, you will learn to put decent weld down in a day.

Finally if you need precision welding with a clean finish and little distortion TIG is the way to go.
This process requires probably the most practice to achieve good welds and builds on skills learned in the first process.
It's very similar actually, with slight technique changes and happens a lot faster.

I've been teaching this pattern for the last 18 years.
To achieve a Level 2 award in each process, you do test pieces 150 mm long in flat butt, HV, They must achieve a nick and break test also a cut through, polish and etch test.

If you produce your test pieces in 6 mm plate, the tests will cover you on thin sheet up to 10 mm. and you get your first coding of BS 4872 ( or whatever the new euro number is)
To take this further, you do another set of tests in 3/4 plate and include a test in OH and Vertical up.This gives you a Level 3 and your first ASME listing at Lloyds Registry.
Further tests (X-ray) in pipe and tube root and fill welding ( 2 processes MMA and MIG) and you will achive ASME 9.
This is top dog and will pay you £ 2000+ a WEEK at todays rates.
I was on this when I left the industry in 1991...Well £800 a week, which was still a lot of money then.

[Vanny]

Update from today

Zinc primer is on order, should be here next week and i can start welding in new metal. Don't want to start welding in if i have no way to protect the new bits from rust!

Today has been mostly about cutting out repair patches and cutting the rot out of the car, with the ideal of making nice simple shapes, didn't exactly go to plan! The inner wing was rotten in a strip about 1" along the wheel arch lip, it was pretty obvious that if i was to cut this rot out straight away i would have nothing to use as a reference for new panels. So first things first, out with the cardboard and pencils, trace the arch onto a sheet, cut this line out, transfer the shape to the new galv panels, and cut the shape into the galv;



Obviously its not the arch void (shown above) that i need, but the other side. Some handy work with a craft knife, some more cardboard, back out with the grinder and i had a repair patch. Okay it took about an hour to make this patch but mostly due to a lack of marking implements, almost the second i finished making up this panel i found my marking chalk Just for reference i'm using 2mm galv panels as it was what i could lay my hands on, and i'm making all cuts with a 1mm cutting disc. I'm then using a metal working flap wheel to tidy the edges (be that remove flashing or re profile to fit).

Anyways this is the repair sections for the outside of the inner wing, comprises a flat plate and a new lip;



I offered these pieces up to the car then tacked them together. Then i dropped the lot, on a hammer, cracked the tacks and they fell apart, bum. But there was enough weld to be able to match them up and re tack them on the bench (which is what you can see below). Having wooden bench i simply battered some nails in to hold the pieces and duly burnt holes in the work top, oops. Just need to bring some steel down to make a welding surface and all will be right!



Now that i had a repair patch with a lip that is true to the original i could start cutting out the rot. I considered leaving the original lip, but that was just getting silly trying to preserve a twisted rotten piece of tin, so it got the chop! This is the top side of the wheel arch hole;



The next picture below is the underside of the same hole, you can see where i have peeled back the stone chip before i go welding, this will all be replaced once the panels are in!



I also tackled the hole in the inner wing panel above the strut. The same repair panel will cover this, but i was concerned about the structural integrity underneath. You can see there is no stone chip in this area, i guess the assumption was that the wheel arch liner would protect the metal. It doesn't stop years of mud and salt getting up above the liner and eating through the paint. Fortunately i've got to it in time and a quick sand back should see it good for the remains of its life. I need to get a suitable brush for the drill to get in there though. Here is said hole;





I finished off the day by making templates for the arch patch to go on the inside. I'm getting good at this cardboard stuff. I've redrawn these templates onto a giant piece of card to aid making up patches for the other side. Hopefully the NS will be a bit quicker, then i can weld the front slam panel back in. I'm happy that the car will be back on the road come Easter, tis not as hard as it looks all this welding stuff!

[Philhod]

tis not as hard as it looks all this welding stuff!

You havn't done any yet!! What you've been doing up to now is Fabricating. That's the thinking / planning part of the job and requires far more wider skills that mere welding. Welding is a pure handskill and as such just requires practice.

The longer you take planning making accurate patterns and making up sub assemblies, the more professional job you will end up with. You will learn quicker ways to do things, extra tools to help and a great sense of satisfaction when you improve on what was there originally.

Get yourself a pair of bullnose tinsnips for a start and a decent pair of dividers.
A piece of plasterboard for your bench to tack up on saves ruining your bench top.You can draw layout's on it too.
Small tinsmiths magnets are cheap and a good way of workholding while you tack up.