1937 Ford Pickup

[vht]

I velcroed an led light to my helmet, it helped a lot. It gets in the way sometimes under a car mig welding so I got one of those head band deals I'm going to try. They are like $7 at Rural King and I really like them for a work light so figured I give it a shot. If it works ill spend the $30 to get one where you just wave your hand past it to turn it on or off.

 

[kenny c]

Newest addition to the welder fleet. I’m starting to get the hang of it but welding 18 gauge into the roof. I’ve been practicing for 2 weeks. Very slowly getting better.

 

[dutch]

Looking good Kenny. Looks like your panel fit nicely in there. My advise would be to place the tacks a bit closer , hammer everthing nice and even, wire brush as clean as you can and then weld in passes as long as possible. Most of the distortion comes from the "cloudy" heat affected zone. The short welds make for an uneven distortion which makes it really hard to get straight.
I do realize it is not as easy as it sounds when welding old metal...

 

[kenny c]

Thanks Dutch. I’m a long way from perfect. I will try that on the other half of the roof. I still have to spend some time on the rear joint on the drivers side first. I had mig welded that and it is taking some time to fix it. The welds are so much easier to hammer than mig.

 

[Old Iron]

I'm with Dutch
I do the same thing on length of tig welds.

 

[kenny c]

I forgot to mention. I'm using a piece of 1/4 copper plate as a backer on the underside of the roof and I'm only using .035 filler wire. the backer helps withe the thin spots of the original roof material it is real thin and for filling holes

 

[dutch]

whenever I blow a hole in a long weld, I just keep going and fix it later. Way better heat control.
I hardly ever use tig on old metal because it is so sensitive for contamination. I love gaswelding sheet metal but the downside is the heat. I never hammer mig welds, just grind the down ( weld only! ) and call it a day.

 

[DozerII]

035 wire is real heavy for sheet metal, I only use 023.

 

[kenny c]

I will try .023. and see if it helps. Thanks guys

 

[kenny c]

Are we talking .0233 for tig? or mig? I use .023 for mig.

 

[DozerII]

.023 for mig, I need to pay attention

 

[kenny c]

That’s ok. I just appreciate someone trying to help. I thought I was doing ok with .035

 

[bob w]

I use .030" MIG wire for everything.

 

[dutch]

I use metric wire... works great...

 

[kenny c]

I have a hard time converting from inch to mm

 

[Old Iron]

I just Google mm to in and use the calculator

 

[Tripper]

In love my Miller mig & have had it for about 15 years, great machine, also have a Miller plasma cutter! That should give you great service for a long time, nothing like having good equipment!

I use .023 for sheet metal & .035 for thicker stuff!!

BoB

 

[dutch]

.030 for everything here. 040 for the heavy stuff.

 

[kenny c]

With mig I use .023 in the miller 130. .030 in the miller 210 mig machine. and anything from .030 to .045 in the miller 350p. I'm still trying to figure out the tig stuff.

 

[gene49]

While my welding shop was open, most of the wire my Miller saw was .035 wire, and it was used for everything from 1/2" metal to 22G sheet metal. It was too much of a pain to be swapping the wire gauge all the time.
After retirement, I switched over to .030 wire. I have a roll of .023 here, but couldn't feed it fast enough to do thicker material with the weld beads I was looking for.
The .030 works much better for sheet metal then the .035 did, but not as easy as the .023 was with the light gauge sheet metal. The .023 was just at the end of acceptable for 1/8" metal, the .030 is a good compromise with most of the stuff I'm doing these days.