Welding Question

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haydenfox

Fire Starter
Original poster
Feb 6, 2011
34
10
Tampa, FL
I have no experience welding but figured I would give it a shot. I'd like to run a few beads to fill some gaps and seal some leaks. I'm also going to use angle bar to put "rails" in the CC for diffusion plates and a baffle. Since the CC is a thin oil drum and the angle bar is much heavier how can I go about doing this without burning holes in the drum? I'll be using a MIG welder since it seems to be the easiest for a newbie. TIA
 
Gonna be hard for a newbie to weld thick material to sheetmetal. You will blow thru that sheetmetal and wish you never tried it. can you drill holes and use bolts instead? Then later, when you have become a good welder, you can come back and fill in those holes.
 
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Gonna be hard for a newbie to weld thick material to sheetmetal. You will blow thru that sheetmetal and wish you never tried it. can you drill holes and use bolts instead? Then later, when you have become a good welder, you can come back and fill in those holes.

Probably could for the rails.
 
I agree to concentrate on the thicker metal and then jump over to the thinner gauge for a quick wire spit. Practice, practice, practice, before you go for it. I assume your miggy has adjustable wire speed? Have good clean grounding spots for your miggy's grounding cable. Speaking of......today I was welding up a battery hold down bracket for my '50 chebbie truck. It's been awhile since I welded last and it showed big time. Oh well, no one will see the finished product.
:eek::eek::eek:
 
"Drill 3/8"-1/2" holes in the drum and plug weld to the angle."

If you can do this method, you can weld the angle bar to the barrel.
Same technique, applying the arc to the angle bar letting the puddle wash onto the thin material.
An old boilermaker at a coal fired electric generating plant told me when I first started welding to use a MIG machine to begin with because home MIGs were just a glorified soldering iron anyway. He butt-welded some of our cable tray with a 5p rod and the weld looked like it came from a factory. cable tray is about the same thickness as a steel barrel.
I have a Miller MIG bought when building a dump body, never use it, always pick up a 7018 rod with a Miller 333 stick machine, can weld just about anything.
 
Definitely keep your arc on the thicker metal! You can also tack the angle to it on both ends, then take a small propane torch and heat the thicker metal up. That should help a bit. Practice on something similar first before attempting the real thing. Good luck!
 
Plug welding as recommended by bob-whie suggested is a very good way to go. I did a lot of that when I was replacing panels on our vintage M00stang. There are a lot of you tube videos on welding which will help.
 
Since your weld will not be structural, you could do a series of tack welds to build the thickness on the sheet metal then run a solid bead. Perhaps look at youtube videos of autobody welding. They do multiple tack welds moving around the piece to prevent the heat build up from warping the metal. If done right the seam will be air tight and sort of resemble a bead. Sand if you like. You can also use copper or aluminum on the back of your weld to act as heat sink and prevent blowout. Depending on the temp of your CC you might also want to consider brazing ( soldering with brass), it wont be as strong as a solid weld but your not melting the base materials.
 
Good morning

Since you don't state what metals you're working with or whether they are dissimilar metals it's a little hard to be sure that I really understand the issue. And, at least for me, the pictures aren't visible.

With that said, I suspect that your primary concern would be to get them smooth enough to be easy to clean and sanitize the area.
 
No problem. FWIW, a friend calls reviving old threads "necro-posting". I've been guilty of it n the past.....
 
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