Recommend some good welders

What I liked about the TIG welded stacks is that the damn handle didn't come off in the press. :mad:
 
jdm61 said:
What I liked about the TIG welded stacks is that the damn handle didn't come off in the press. :mad:
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Haha, yeah, that does seem to be a problem for some. I don't put handles on my billets anymore because of the rolling mill, but when I did, I always beveled the edge of the handle before welding it on, cranked the welder up for heavy penetration and made two passes, usually would burn through the handle material on restacks before the weld would fail.
 
Salem made a good call with the Millermatics, like the 252..I burnt miles of wire through a millermatic 251 at work..211's are solid little welders too. For most work involved in bladesmithing a good mig like mentioned will work great..
Now that said if I had to have just one machine and especially for the price it would be a AC/DC arc welder..I grew up with one and passed my first test with an very,very old Hobart.LOL, it had a dial on the face as big as a dinner plate.
We have two welders in our home shop. A small 140 Lincoln that's a dang good little welder. Its easy to transport around the farm and if you know what you are doing will do a lot of work.. Then we have a Hobart stickmate ac/dc arc welder..It will burn up to a 5/32" rod but we mainly use 3/32" rods around the shop.. For building say anvil satnds,swage block stands,make tables etc it just plain works and we know for strength and penetration arc is were its at for me in my shop.. It will also run a scratch start TIG set up.
 
Claude Bouchonville was the guy who I saw using the big TIG machine and he used a press and a rolling mill for damascus and the handle stuck. He had gotten to the point where he only used his big air hammer for forging blades to shape. I do the same with the beveling the handle and had very bad luck with my crapy little 110V HD Lincoln flux core machine and not much better luck on the handle front with my neighbors 220V 50A gas shielded wire rig.
javand said:
Haha, yeah, that does seem to be a problem for some. I don't put handles on my billets anymore because of the rolling mill, but when I did, I always beveled the edge of the handle before welding it on, cranked the welder up for heavy penetration and made two passes, usually would burn through the handle material on restacks before the weld would fail.
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Yeah, my rolling mill is a bigger unit, not the little mcdonald style ones you see often that you can use with a handle welded on. Mine, and the bigger ones friends have, all pull the billet straight though, and thus you can only weld a small nub or similar on the end and use tongs, as it's necessary to have the entire work piece evenly hot. Sucking a cold handle through would be bad for the rolls at a minimum. It changes the overall methods, but is invaluable from an efficiency standpoint. I can usually get 3-4 passes per heat, with pretty heavy reduction per pass, and consistent thicknesses over 2-3' long billets at finish. The only limitation is usually the forge length and how heavy a billet I'm willing to swing around, which trust me, gets tedious in the 30lb range.
 
I know that this thread is a week old so im not sure if you are still in the market or not.

Both Miller and ESAB make small portable multi process(GTAW, GMAW, SMAW, or MIG/MAG, TIG, and Stick) machines that are full light duty industrial models. These are near perfect for shop work and can still handle small heavy jobs. Also i believe it is Thermal-Arc makes a small multi process machine that runs very nice and is a lot of machine for the money.

If you are looking for full industrial machines don't overlook ESAB their new stuff is very high end and tends to cost a little less than Lincoln or Miller.

Feel free to PM me if you have questions. I have had the chance to use most of the equipment over the years. Also i have gone down your path before and will do it in the future. Lol. When i taught it was one of the exercises i gave the students.
 
javand said:
Yeah, my rolling mill is a bigger unit, not the little mcdonald style ones you see often that you can use with a handle welded on. Mine, and the bigger ones friends have, all pull the billet straight though, and thus you can only weld a small nub or similar on the end and use tongs, as it's necessary to have the entire work piece evenly hot. Sucking a cold handle through would be bad for the rolls at a minimum. It changes the overall methods, but is invaluable from an efficiency standpoint. I can usually get 3-4 passes per heat, with pretty heavy reduction per pass, and consistent thicknesses over 2-3' long billets at finish. The only limitation is usually the forge length and how heavy a billet I'm willing to swing around, which trust me, gets tedious in the 30lb range.
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Any photos ?
 
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For me it was easy to decide on a stick machine. I don't do enough to justify keeping argon bottles around for tig or a wire machine. That said I'd love to have one at times. I have worked as a welder though and am pretty much disgusted by most cracker boxes. I can and have used them, but after using a good machine the cheap ones tend to be irritating. A lot of times I just weld up a stack of damascus, weld handles on billets, ect. Other times I need more, like when I built a treadle hammer, or modified a trailer, or other sundry projects. If I was serous about a sideline in welding or making machinery I'd go with a MIG, and would love to have one, but the convince of switching different rods and rod sizes for different projects outweighs me having one. Not to mention I don't really want to screw with an argon or CO2 bottle.

I wanted to try a Longevity inverter welder, DC only, but they kept pushing the delivery date back, waiting on a container from China. So I got a Lincoln Invertec V275 and never looked back. Not cheap, but a lot more durable than the china inverter welders. The Longevity does have a decent review, would have loved to give one a work out. I worked with a guy from South Africa, he was a rig welder, and he had one of the china inverter welders at home and loved it. He did mention the first one crapped out due to grinding dust and such, next one he just made a point of blowing it out every few days and it's been going strong for several years now.

Seems to me the main difference between the Longevity and the Lincoln invertec is the durability and ease of getting parts/service. Probably the same with all the China welders. All I can say about the Invertec is that it's DC only, so no AC rods, and it's extremely smooth, a lot smoother than any AC/DC machine with a rectifier that I've ever used, including the Lincoln Idealarc. Only thing that comes close is the old Lincoln DC only with the flat head gas machine, and those are hard to come by down here. Best part is the amp range, I've used 1/16" rods to 1/4" rods. It is expensive, but I'm so glad I got the runaround on the Longevity and got the Lincoln machine instead.

A possibility is a Harbor freight stick welder. They have a little AC only machine pretty reasonable. I tried one and I guess I got a bad one as it was impossible to adjust the amps, and would barely burn a rod. Other's have gotten then and giving good reviews. It'd be good for light duty work, if you get one that works right. It's only 199$, so you take your chances with a dud or a good one, but it should work as well as any of the cracker boxes, only thing is I'd be worried about being able to get parts.
 
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