Quote:
Originally Posted by milt
You can't teach yourself to weld....properly and totally safely. I don't care what others may say.
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I never took a welding clas in my life, but I have taught a few friends to weld. I would put my thin wall chrome moly tubing tig welds up against anyones. It is all about learning to recognize proper penetration and avoiding undercutting. I learned at a young age how to stick weld at a friends house. Later in life, learning to mig weld was simple. Anyone can learned to make non critical welds with a mig weld in short order. Tig welding and oxy/acetylene welding takes much more practice, but once one understands the theory of proper penetration it can be mastered thru practice.
Unless you take a welding course taught by someone like mb911 or maybe a custom motorcycle or hotrod builder, you will probaly not be taught all the little nuances that will help you weld thin sheet metal or thin walled tube structures. These can be mastered by some serious practice. Learning how to weld two 1/4" plates together in a class, is not the same skill needed to weld the typically thin sheet steel or thin walled tubing that car guys typically want to weld. Unless you know someone that can help you initially with this kind of welding, IMO, you are better off just buying an old fender or two at a junk yard and cut it up and start practicing on it until you can make decent welds. I think most who become dicouraged with DIY welding at home, typically do not take the time to practice enough on scrap in different positions and after 5 minutes of practice, they try to actually weld on their car and end up with a mess, so they give up.