get a shade 9 pipeliner lens and a pancake hood. 160$ for the set and you'll never get any sunglare coming in the back of your hood. and if u cant see what you're welding with a shad 9 then you shouldnt be welding imo.

best advice i could give you is just practice man. get as much time under the hood as you can and you'll start seeing your beads get prettier and prettier. there's no #1 super secret to making perfect beads your first time, just gotta get that muscle memory fine tuned. Consistancy is the key to good...

try a whipping motion, start your puddle then flick your rod forward about a half inch or so and then back to about 1/2 way through your puddle without losing your arc.. pretty tricky at first but once u get the hang of it its not bad at all. the first puddle should cool by the time you get back in ...

not the best way to go about it but sometimes if you you really can't see shit except the tip of your rod you can let your arc out a little bit just to get a peak at your edges. if your quick and direct you shouldn't get any spatter. just lengthen the arc for a glance. Shouldn't have to do this unle...

i got a new mask and it REALLY helped my visibility but since that's probably not an option... have you tried putting new lenses on yours? i wouldn't test without brand new lenses inside and out. Also you might turn the shade down some if that's an option on your mask, not too low though or you'll s...

whats the problem with using a non dedicated grinder? i ground a lot of steel with the same one that i used to sharpen my tungsten.
is it just that filings with a low melting point get on your electrode?

don't mean much but my welding instructor told me that some pretty tasty radiation is given off when sharpening these things. just wondering if tht's true or not?

i got the inferno too. pretty sweet shit for a welding helmet. love this thing, it makes my old helmet laughable.

i did tig welding stick welding and oxy-acetylene welding in highschool, one thing i remember distinctly was that with oxy-acet and stick welding they were very firm in saying they didn't want us to ever weld a closed container. not sure if this was because of explosive dangers or what just remember...

hey guys got sick of waitin for a reply so i sucked it up and bought a miller elite for 350 bones. Spent an extra 7 on a magnifying glass just for shits n giggles. holy waffletwats guys this helmet is the shit n a half i cant believe how much better it is than my old one. I can see SO much better, b...

hey rick just curious hows the batteries on those? my last hood was an astro nothing fancy but i never had to replace the batteries once, and it didn't have an on/off either which was nice.

i'm not much of a tig welder but i did use the machine at my highschool about once a week to fix something for a teacher or student. i remember having the same problem you're talking about, a large area of the aluminum seems to get a layer of cracked dark film on it and the whole thing will just sor...

hey guys i'm gettin ready to buy a new welding helmet and i'd really appreciate some input. My last helmet was an Astro. i think the model is ansi z87, not sure its always been a good helmet but no1 around here sells the correct size of cover lense for it so i have to trim the edges every time i wan...

hey guys just a quick question on 7018, what would make it spit and sputter and not catch a good arc? dono if my rod got wet or what but even runnin flat that shit just keeps dropping fuckin dingleberries and not making a solid arc. wasn't having this problem at all 2 weeks ago. no rust or slag on t...

Hey man, what i do to fit up pipe is get a long piece of angle iron and weld it to my bench or put it in a vice, anything you can do to get it to stay stable, then simply lay the pieces of pipe on it and they should fit up just perfectly. If they don't then it's because of a dent or something sticki...

If you're going to use the 6010 but your hole keeps opening up u might try to whip it so you don't keyhole too big. What i mean is get a puddle then in a quick motion flick your rod forwards about an inch and then back and build another puddle on the old one. 6010 solidifies super quick so you shoul...

thx a bunch again for the advice. My problem is my CWI want's me to cap in 1 pass, not sure why so i think it's gonna have some sag to it no matter what when i do a bead that wide, i guess as long as i don't have any undercut and it's a solid bead i won't worry about a little bit of sag. Seems inevi...

Hey man tried out your advice but it seems to be impossible to get a bubble wide enough to cover the entire cap area without turning it up hot enough that it would sag horrendously. So far my best looking beads have been weaved. Continued to get fuckin pissed off today because no matter what i try t...

Thx a bunch for the advice OrbitalX, I'm welding 3/8 inch thick 4" pipe with 3/32 6010 (sometimes1/8 depending on the land they machined for me) rod for root and fill then 1/8 7018 for cap. I'll try your method out tomorrow and post how it works out for me. I have been weaving all my caps which...

Don't really know all that much but i was just talkin to a buddy who is welding pipe on the oil rigs in North Dakota and he said he was lookin at goin to Alaska till he found out that they're havin a lot of trouble with grizzlies up there, guess theres been like 7 or so welders eaten on the pipeline...

hey folks im gettin readdy to take my pipe test here in a week or so and everythings goin great, roots good fills good caps fine except on 2g and the overhead section of 6g im still gettin some pretty bad sag. Not gettin too much undercut though just a lumpy bottom end of my 7018 cap pass. I've trie...