PEAK PUTTERS

I have some sheetmetal that needs welding on my car, as well as a bunch of gun welding projects that need to be completed so I decided to set up a cheap Tig welding rig. If you have a DC capeable tig welder it's really easy to set up.



My Dad's old Lincoln AC/DC stick welder:





124CF Argon bottle I bought last night at Oxarc in Pasco (130 bucks for the filled bottle - a really good deal)

Locally it was $250 for just a 80cf bottle - no gas...





Power and gas hookups for the tig torch. Real easy.





WP17 Tig Torch with gas valve and adjustable head:






Here's my second attempt at laying a bead. My first attempt was a giant crater in the metal as I forgot to turn on the gas......

65 Amps, 3/32 Tungsten






That worked out so well that I went straight to adding in filler.

75 Amps w/ filler:




4th bead at 85 Amps:




I'm still a bit shakey, and I have a lot of technique issues to work on - but this was way easier than I thought it would. Gonna go collect a bunch of scrap metal and see if I can't get anything actually welded together.

That is nifty as heck.

Sweet! I've been eyeballing the harbor freight tigs for awhile so I can start fabricating chassis and parts for R/C crawlers. What's your investment so far sans tombstone?

White trash wrote:Sweet! I've been eyeballing the harbor freight tigs for awhile so I can start fabricating chassis and parts for R/C crawlers. What's your investment so far sans tombstone?

With the Argon bottle I'm just over $300.

Argon Flowmeter - $65

Power Adapter (for the stick welder to clamp on to) - $5

Torch - $65

Accessories - $45 (New gloves, stainless wire brush, 3lbs of various filler rods, 3 different sizes of tungsten and adapters, and various gas nozzles)

I'm impatient.....



Didn't have any sheet metal to practice on so I grabbed up one of my old projects that I attempted to assemble with a mig welder back when I was just starting to weld.

It's a British WWII Sten MKIII:




I gave up on this thing probably 4 years ago and ground out most of my old welds. This thing is made almost entirely out of <1/16" sheet metal.

Did this with 1/16" Tungsten at 45 amps with a piece of 1/16" filler rod:



Not great, but one of the reasons I picked this project in the beginning was that these things are well known for their ugly welds. Authenticity calls for a bit of slop. I think after I clean up all my old welds, and sandblast the whole thing it will look very close to an original gun. I'm having way too much fun.

hm, thats neat now if i only had better power in the garage id be snooping for a ac/dc machine

its is easy to built a cheap Tig welding rig if you have the necessary tools and materiel to work on and you have all tools and equipment so it wont be difficult for you
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