Welding Tips and Tricks

I haven't been around because I moved, and then Hurricane Irma screwed up my life. I have not had time to put a 240 circuit in my new shop, so no welding. I am back today with questions about stick.

I have a bush hog that needs to have a weld replaced. The apron is loose on one corner, and it flaps around. It will eventually break the next weld up the line.

I have no MIG right now, and TIG would never work on this filthy thing. That leaves me with stick, which I have never done. My TIG machine (AlphaTIG) will do stick on 110V. I am hoping it will be powerful enough for this job, at least to hold it until I get some real power. I would be welding material around 3/16" in thickness. I would describe it as a lap weld. I need to lay down about 1-1/2".

My main question right now is this: is E7018 a good choice? This is a dirty piece of farm machinery. I can grind off the old weld and clean up the area fairly well, but it will not be anywhere near TIG clean.

3/16" will weld very nicely with 3/32" 7018 with the prep you describe. 85-100 amps, adjusted to taste.

Practice first, weld after

To add to Dave's post, if you have not done any Stick welding, if possible, orient the weld so it's flat to you. It's much easier to learn to stick this way than to chase a horizontal weld. And 7018 will NOT weld downhill, only vertical uphill.

Almost forgot - stick is awesome!

When you get more power, you'll love 1/8" and 5/32" for laying down metal.

Even bigger rods just pour metal down

Thanks for the help. I have nothing whatsoever to practice on, so I may have to use the grinder to clear away my crap beads so I can start over.

Tonight I ground off two fractured welds that were in the way. It turns out the apron is not merely broken, but bent, so when you pinch it back together to weld it, the deck of the bush hog tries to sit on the location of a former weld. There is no way in hell I can bend the I-beam the apron is made from, so I'm going to have to weld it back about 3/16" away from the original position. At least it won't flap.

I have a generator, and I'm waiting for an adaptor cord to come in. I could use that to fire up the MIG, but I would only get about 20 amps input. I suppose that would be enough.

I guess I could add a couple more welds, between the originals.

Sorry to hear about your Irma troubles.

Do you have a 220v clothes dryer circuit you could tap into?

Yes, but I haven't been able to get the tractor into the laundry room.

Chips O'Toole wrote:Yes, but I haven't been able to get the tractor into the laundry room.

Oh, THAT old excuse.

I've been fortunate in that I've had a window in the laundry room to run an extension cord outside, forgot that might not be the case for everyone.

I just moved into a house that has a fantastic workshop, but the shop is about a hundred feet from the house. The washer and dryer are in a dedicated room that has no windows and no exterior doors. I can't wait to get 240 in the shop.

People say stick is the easiest way to weld. I will have to take their words for that. I succeeded in fixing the bush hog, but the welds are atrocious. I plan to grind them back and try again, but right now I need the tractor, so I let it go.

Second photo is from a distance, to show the nature of the repair. The first one is up close, to show the heinosity of my welding.

I thought the stinger was connected to the foot pedal, so I laid the electrode on the bush hog and turned the welder on. When I picked it up, I got the first welding flash of my life. Okay. It's always live. Good to know.

I stuck the electrode about 400 times in four inches of welding. It was difficult to keep the arc going. I don't know if I had the welder on the best settings. I used AC and about 60 Hz, based on something I saw in a video.

Anyway, it does function. It's nice to know l can use the AlphaTIG on 110 when I have to.

Try DC electrode positive. Depending on what rod your using. Also if it has a hot start function set it for about 10 amps, that should help with the sticking on startup.

Unless they changed the newer models ( I have an older model year of the same welder different sticker ) when switched to stick mode the output is always DC whichever way you have the AC / DC switch so frequency does'nt do anything either- not sure if the pedal does anything on stick as I never tried before - bit surprised you had so much trouble - possibly when run on 110volts the OCV on the welder is too low for the rods you have - again never tried as we don't have all your power troubles here - only have 240volt - some rods are worse than others - be interesting to try your rods on a different welder to see if they're the problem - glad you have it done even if it's not perfect - main thing is it's fixed - bit of grinding & some paint probably no worse than some of the factory welds these days !

I got the AC idea from a Youtube in which a pro used AC with an AlphaTIG. I assume he knew what he was talking about, but who knows? I got my machine in March, I think.

I kind of wonder what would happen if I ran a Lincoln 240V MIG on 110.

Maybe newer model years can do AC stick - I will double check mine but I'm very sure it does'nt - they do keep changing bits up each model year as people that actually weld tell them about all the messed up stuff they make - biggest mystery is why they keep on with that retarded POS toe pedal thing - I seen virtually the same bottom half casting with a really nice normal pedal on top of it - big cast aluminum thing with a heel rest - looked just like many old school truck air brake pedals - was nice to use & it came on another brand cheap Chinese import so they do make them out there - I meant to write down any numbers off it to try to find if they can be bought but forgot - bloke that owns it has moved away & I lost touch so can't even ask what make the welder was - I never stick weld with mine so I don't mess with controls but I showed a bunch of people how to get started with various imports & I would say on stick mode turn every knob you don't need to zero - some Tig function knobs produce freaky results if left on - as to the 240v mig on 110v I imagine if it's transformer based it will still work but halving the input voltage will likely half the output voltage so expect very little performance / heat - an inverter based will either work fine if intended to be dual voltage or switch itself off with an error code for out of range input if designed to be 240v only.

set it for stick, 2T, DC, and make the electrode positive. set your amps to 90, or preferably 100 if the machine will do it without popping the breaker, and just drag the rod. No need to hold an arc as a beginner with 7018. It will still make a half way decent bead if you just drag it. Nice and slow, let the puddle fill in.That machine should do OK with 7018 on DC electrode positive. DO NOT use the foot pedal, flip up the switch from TIG to stick.

I hit a stump and snapped one of my crappy stick welds. I needed to get the bush hog fixed, so I gave up on stick for now. I now have an adaptor to hook the MIG up to my generator, so I used it.

The generator's 240 output is not much greater than the MIG's draw, so I didn't turn the voltage as high as I could have. I made multiple passes and did what I could, using .030" wire.

Because the metal is distorted, I could not bring everything together properly for welding. I even used clamps and a farm jack, but the gap would not go away. My desperate solution was to build the lower surface up with weld until it approached the upper deck. I don't know if that's kosher, but I had to do something. I added extra welds. I am tempted to grind down the entire seam on both sides of the bush hog and lay continuous beads down.

The gap between the deck and sides is probably 3/16" in places. Pretty bad.

I suppose I should snip and grind that wild piece of MIG wire I accidentally stuck in there.

Lots of times doing repair work on something that was bent and broken badly or severely corroded requires extra build up until you can bridge the gap. Looks ok from here.

Looks OK to me - a ( small ) gap is your friend for mig welds except on very thin material as mig is notorious for cold starts & lack of fusion - it has the lowest heat input of most processes - if the gap gets too big then just lay a bit of rod in there to help bridge it - but really 3/16" is not big enough to worry.