Gunsmithing welding question

[Pester]

Hey folks,
I know this is not exactly a smith question but you always come through for me so I am going to ask....

I am not a welder however I TIG a lot. I want to weld up a bunch of oil pipe for some pasture fencing so I borrowed a engine driven welder to get started . When I went to my local welding shop I told the guy that I was going to try to learn to stick weld and he said I had to change the settings on my auto darkening helmet because stick welding is brighter.

Is that true? If it is by how much? Clearly I am ignorant on anything outside my normal weekly hours spent a the bench TIG'ing little parts together.

Thanks in advance.....

 

[TxWelder35]

Professional Welder here. I weld everything on shade 10 unless I’m welding with Higher than normal amperage.

 

[midwestoffroad]

I usually run Tig a setting higher (11) but mig and stick ive aways ran 10

 

[adam21584]

try it and find out i do everything with a #9 lens mig stick and air arc.

 

[Healy]

I’m not a pro but I’ve used them all, spend a few hours welding tig and you can get a hell of a tan

 

[pyplynr]

Yup shade 10 in the pancake for me. Have an auto darkening one for in the shop.

 

[Duc]

10

 

[Ware'sTacticalFirearms]

Shade 10 works fine. If it’s drill pipe, it’s usually magnetized so you’ll have to wrap your ground around the pipe. 1/8” 6010 5p+ rods work fine unless it’s gonna see much abuse ( catch pen, etc ) then I’d use 7018.

 

[Hobo Hilton]

I am a retired welder. A #10 shade lens is a good all around lens. As mentioned, if you are using drill pipe (from an oil well) it is going to be magnetized just from rotating in the Earth. That in itself is a challenge. Best if you get your procedure all worked out on some mild steel plate or angle iron. Post a photo of the material you are using, a photo of some of your practice welds and a photo of your welding machine and that will help us to give some more specific pointers. A very general statement - "If the fit up is excellent, a trained monkey can make the weld"...

Thanks,

Hobo

 

[Blue Sky Country]

Semi-professional welder here. Constitutes about 70% of my current job duties. Entirely SMAW with 6010, 6013, and 7018 rods. I bring all of my own equipment down to respirator and other PPE. I usually run about 10 or 11 on my Lincoln Electric auto darkening helmet.

REMEMBER: The brightness setting on your helmet regulates the flow of visible light for comfort only. ANY good welding helmet outfitted with the proper glass and window material automatically blocks 100% of any UV and infrared light that is the main danger to your vision and the primary cause of arc burn. When you are choosing your brightness setting, test it out on a piece of scrap metal and make sure that you can see your puddle as you are moving the rod down the line.

If you weld, whether professional or hobby, and no matter what percentage it encompasses at your job, I STRONGLY recommend having a copy of Hobart's Guidelines for SMAW manual saved onto your phone. This free 28 page PDF booklet includes everything that you need to know about SMAW welding. Especially helpful are the charts concerning proper amperage to electrode size and type. Even someone with years of experience like me might suddenly experience a brain fart once in a while when I am using an exotic electrode that I did not pull from my sheaf and the chart instantly lets me know what I am dealing with and what setting I need on my inverter. All of the folks that I have trained for work in my department now has this manual on ready mode...

No direct link available. Open page below and select right side box for SMAW booklet:

Stick Welding How-To | HobartWelders

www.hobartwelders.com

 

[Blue Sky Country]

I’m not a pro but I’ve used them all, spend a few hours welding tig and you can get a hell of a tan

That is why I am completely covered when I am doing it. Even in hot places. Flame resistant long sleeved jacket or shirt. Anything neck and up is shielded by the respirator and the helmet. Appropriate gloves also. Ultraviolet light can cause cancer from long term exposure and a SMAW arc burns hotter than the surface of the sun. I have seen photos of arc burns on the neck because someone did not use proper shielding or decided to be a "badass" and not use any PPE... I have not gotten any burn or flash related injuries at any point in the years that I have been welding.

I prefer to only be a badass while at the shooting range... NOT at the workbench or at the job where I am dealing with equipment that can roast my ass inside out in 2 seconds flat. I have a rule in my department too. No PPE, no work is being done. Period. I'll shut the power breaker switch if one of the guys is about to use power equipment without proper protection.

 

[Blue Sky Country]

Hey folks,
I know this is not exactly a smith question but you always come through for me so I am going to ask....

I am not a welder however I TIG a lot. I want to weld up a bunch of oil pipe for some pasture fencing so I borrowed a engine driven welder to get started . When I went to my local welding shop I told the guy that I was going to try to learn to stick weld and he said I had to change the settings on my auto darkening helmet because stick welding is brighter.

Is that true? If it is by how much? Clearly I am ignorant on anything outside my normal weekly hours spent a the bench TIG'ing little parts together.

Thanks in advance.....

If you are doing fences, and I assume you are dealing with quite a lot of yardage and outdoor work which involves moisture and dirt, I strongly recommend a stick rig with a E6010 mud rod. You don't even need to polish or remove rust from the workpieces with that setup. 6010's are called 'penetrating' rods for a reason. TIG, to me at least, is much more suited to precision work. Stick on the other hand, gives you the advantage of 'plug and play', wherever you find yourself at...

 

[Pester]

Great. Thanks guys and it sounds like 10 is a good starting place.

I am not welder........ I just TIG some super clean mild steel frequently. Just me sittin' there welding small parts. That doesn't make me a welder so thanks for your patience with my questions.

All the information is helpful. I am going to do a small set of turn out pens first so the perimeter fence is about 100'x400'. Once I have that I will cross fence into 100x100 or 100x200. After that I have a 300'x500'. And after that, if I can come up with the time, I will do a 20 acre pen. But not likely this year for that 20 acre one.

Tomorrow I will start to practice on clean mild steel to see how far I get and try to post some pics. All the help is really appreciated.

 

[Claybuster715]

Seems like oil field pipe is easy to come by around here and iv welded quite a bit of it over the last few years ... biggest deal is get a GOOD fit up. It's not paper thin wall but with a poor fit up it's tough to not fall through. I like to run 7018 on most everything but for pipe I find it easier to turn the welder up to around 100-110amps and run 1/8" 6010 down hill with a slight whip. Welded a couple hay feeders together and a sucker rod tree stand this way and it works well. Like I said, fit up is key!

 

[mdonnr]

All depends on your eye sensitivity to light when it comes to helmet shades. You can get by running a lighter shade with Stick/SMAW cause there is smoke/fumes to filter the light. Tig/GTAW may depend on how reflective the material is and there is no smoke/fumes to speak of to help with the light filtering.

 

[Blue Sky Country]

Seems like oil field pipe is easy to come by around here and iv welded quite a bit of it over the last few years ... biggest deal is get a GOOD fit up. It's not paper thin wall but with a poor fit up it's tough to not fall through. I like to run 7018 on most everything but for pipe I find it easier to turn the welder up to around 100-110amps and run 1/8" 6010 down hill with a slight whip. Welded a couple hay feeders together and a sucker rod tree stand this way and it works well. Like I said, fit up is key!

Do you always keep your 7018's in a heated kiln around 250°F or so? That seems to be the one thing which seems to create two groups of 7018 users. One group insists that you must always keep them baked or you are fucked and they always say the same on various welding forums. Me personally, I run normal, 'cold' rods that I always keep in a polymer rod guard so they are almost never exposed to even ambient humidity, and I have not gotten any bad welds out of them. When we do code work at our job, or on projects where commission people are guaranteed to come and check paperwork and the state of things, we got portable rod ovens stocked with 7018's that we take with us wherever the jobs are located at. Otherwise, most of the other shit that we do are non code required and does not involve high tension/critical components and 7018's right out the box has never gave us any problems. When some of the members of the 'other camp' post doom and gloom on some of the welding boards, I often ask them: "So... When you buy 7018's from the hardware store, are they already being kept in ovens that the guy has to extract for you?..."

 

[Claybuster715]

Do you always keep your 7018's in a heated kiln aroubd 250°F or so? That seems to be the one thing which seems to create two groups of 7018 users. One group insists that you must always keep them baked or you are fucked and they always say the same on various welding forums. Me personally, I run normal, 'cold' rods that I always keep in a polymer rod guard so they are almost never exposed to even ambient humidity, and I have not gotten any bad welds out of them. When we do code work at our job, or on projects where commission people are guaranteed to come and check paperwork and the state of things, we got portable rod ovens stocked with 7018's that we take with us wherever the jobs are located at. Otherwise, most of the other shit that we do are non code required and does not involve high tension/critical components and 7018's right out the box has never gave us any problems. When some of the members of the 'other camp' post doom and gloom on some of the welding boards, I often ask them: "So... When you buy 7018's from the hardware store, are they already being kept in ovens that the guy has to extract for you?..."

I dont weld for work I just piddle around here at the house and minor farm repairs and fabrication. That said, iv never ran a 7018 out of a rod oven. I have discovered that a 7018 Hobart from TSC vs 7018 Lincoln Excalibur from a local weld shop are 2 totally different rods. The Excalibur and esab atom arcs are just plain easier to run and aren't a whole lot more expensive. To answer your question about the ones from a hardware store being in an oven it's my understanding that as long as you put a "cold" rod in an oven for a day or so to bake the humidity out it's the same as always being in one. Often times I run into porosity on my little projects from water and or oil in the steel that I didnt sweat out first.

 

[HayStax]

You’re gonna have fun getting started on that project but 6010 5P+ will make it much easier to learn. You can weld the devils butt crack shut with that rod!

I’ve been building quite a bit of fence lately and the handiest thing has been my Hypertherm 30 Air plasma cutter. Much more efficient and handy than a torch for coping posts and cutting lengths down to size

 

[Ware'sTacticalFirearms]

Another thing I forgot to mention is paraffin, most of the 2-3/8” that I’ve seen has pockets of it if not slap full of it. If you’re using a chop saw be sure to get that stuff out of there. A shop hammer and some elbow grease will break up the slag and paraffin inside, it sounds crude but it will save you some headache I promise!

 

[Blue Sky Country]

I dont weld for work I just piddle around here at the house and minor farm repairs and fabrication. That said, iv never ran a 7018 out of a rod oven. I have discovered that a 7018 Hobart from TSC vs 7018 Lincoln Excalibur from a local weld shop are 2 totally different rods. The Excalibur and esab atom arcs are just plain easier to run and aren't a whole lot more expensive. To answer your question about the ones from a hardware store being in an oven it's my understanding that as long as you put a "cold" rod in an oven for a day or so to bake the humidity out it's the same as always being in one. Often times I run into porosity on my little projects from water and or oil in the steel that I didnt sweat out first.

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To answer your question about the ones from a hardware store being in an oven it's my understanding that as long as you put a "cold" rod in an oven for a day or so to bake the humidity out it's the same as always being in one.
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Yep, that is actually exactly what we do at the job. We keep a considerable amount of 7018, 7024, and the 60's in our stock. The 70's are always kept in their original packing, sealed and unopened until we need to break one out. Once opened, the rest of the container goes into properly labeled rod guards. The 60's stay in cardboard boxes, as long as the place is relatively dry. The thing with "low hydrogen" rods, is that their main enemy is moisture. If you can keep up to 99% of ambient moisture away from them, you are GTG. Other than that, I have not noticed any discernible difference between running properly stored "cold" rods, or one that came right out the oven. For safety, store all electrodes in rod guards and they will save you from potential future headaches. The 60's and 70's that I use in my home shop are all kept in air and water tight plastic "quivers" with a few packs of silica desiccant tossed in for good measure. When we cleaned up our stockrooms at my previous gig in the wake of the massive clusterfuck left by Hurricane Sandy, we found a lot of electrodes which had been immersed in water for days. Not just regular water. Salt water. None of these can be salvaged, not even the ones that looked "all right" and we had to chuck all of them.

Another good thing to carry with you when you are prepping to weld is a Bernzomatic butane microtorch. It comes with an excellent hot blower attachment that I use to blast dry all surfaces after I degrease and clean them. I have found out the hard way over some time that just wiping down the surface of the workpieces with a dry rag is not enough. Roughened surfaces still retain invisible pockets of water or solvent that does not manifest itself until after the weld has been done.