More Welding

The book I read to research this post was The Welders Handbook Revised by Richard Finch which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. If you just want to learn the basics to the different types of welding & maybe want to do a bit of welding yourself this book is perfect. One word of caution start small & definately don't do anything that's structural like a key part of a motor car until you are more experienced & preferably after maybe doing a course at your local college. To start do things that are ornamental or relatively simple things like brackets. There are 2 main types of welding for the beginner which are mig or metal inert gas, & tig or tungsten inert gas. With a lot of mig welders that are good quality you can buy an attachment that allows you to do either. Mig welding is quite distinctive in that it leaves quite a stubbly strong joint & that type of joint is often used decoratively on things like motor bikes. Something you can do in welding is temper steel & you can buy a special heated rated chalk that you mark the steel with & then it disappears when it reaches that temperature. Another item you might want to invest in is a spot welder, the starting price for a steel spot welder is quite low but aluminium ones are $50,000 & aluminium has a higher melting point so don't be tempted to use a cheaper one on it. If you buy a mig or tig welder buy at least one that is 175 Amps & one that will use a decent size core stick the thinner ones are often harder to obtain as well as limiting what you can weld. Before welding always thoroughly clean the area including & around the joint. This will probably mean using quite a coarse sandpaper & in severe cases using phosphoric acid in the form of rust remover. Use caution in using anything like a grinder or electric sander as it will thin the metal so make sure it's not structural. One final bit of caution get tuition especially before using anything like oxyacetylene as it can easily blow up in fact at the very least I would find an experienced welder who will show you the ropes before welding.