Relatively Decent TIG Weld, at Last

I must share my joy with you. Today I did a few TIG welds that were not completely, utterly pathetic. They were merely not good, and that’s good enough.

I got a TIG in March, and I have been fighting with it ever since. For the last two or three weeks, I’ve been trying to weld aluminum, because it’s easier to find locally than clean steel. Aluminum is hard to weld, because it melts very quickly. You have to do all the things you do with steel, much faster. Not easy when you can barely do those things slowly.

My usual metal supplier doesn’t stock pickled and oiled steel or cold-rolled steel. These are the best types of steel for TIG practice. Pickled and oiled is hot-rolled (cheap) steel which has been treated with acid and then oiled. The acid takes off the non-conductive oxides that make welding difficult, and the oiling prevents further rust. Cold-rolled steel is steel processed at lower temperatures than hot-rolled; heat cause scale to form, so cold-rolled doesn’t have scale.

I tried various lame methods to get scale off of steel, and this week I decided to try vinegar. You put your steel in it, and you take it out the next day. It didn’t sound promising, but I did it anyway, and it worked. The scale fell off, along with the rust. Today when I got started with my practice, I had four pieces of scale-free metal to weld. I hit them with a wire wheel, and I was off.

Here’s a photo of my last two beads. I practice by offsetting two rectangles of steel and lap-welding them. The offset gives you a long lap joint on both sides.

I didn’t have major blowouts or crashes. I stayed on the path pretty well. I didn’t weld anything to the table. I didn’t blind myself or drip molten steel on my leg. The weld is a little crooked, but that’s something a little practice will fix.

I’m hoping this is a decent weld, with good penetration. To check, you have to cut your weld in half and etch it with some chemical or other. I haven’t looked into that. I had the welder at 156 amps, which is high for 1/8″ metal, and it seemed like it was barely enough. I’m wondering if something was obstructing the current. You need current for a deep weld.

This is a big load off my mind. I felt like it was going to take me five years to do a simple TIG weld, and I wondered if I would ever be able to weld delicate work, which is 95% of the reason for buying a TIG. Now it looks like I’m over the hump. I should be able to continue to progress.

You probably don’t care about this, but I’m thrilled to death. Most men can’t weld at all. Most who do weld, MIG weld very badly. To do TIG marginally well is a big achievement, and if I ever get good at it, I’ll have a skill so valued I could conceivably rely on it for income if I had to.

On to the next challenge. I hear people are looking for a cure for cancer.