TIG Welding

[wsm41bn]

How hard is tig welding to learn? i have done Arc and MIG but never tig

[JimmieD]

TIG takes 3 things: good eyes, steady hands & good left/right coordination. If you have ox/acetylene skills it's nearly identical in process. You're just using a tungsten arc electrode for the heat source and a shielding gas. You normally feed a filler material with your weak hand and hold the MIG 'torch' with the strong hand, but sometimes you can just weld the parent materials with no filler.

I surprised myself as I'd never done it but had bunches of actylene brazing experience. After I figured out I had to take off my distance specs to see what the heck I was doing the results were excellent, and very easy to do.

Miller and others offer some combo welders, like DC stick/TIG that are real handy and there's at least one smaller machine that has a CC/CV setup that can also run a wire feed in addition to the other two processes, all in one unit $$$$$$$$$$$. Vapors are harmfull so watch out for that....

[Gordon Maney]

Take an adult education class at your local community college. You would likely have a lot of fun and learn some good skills.

[wsm41bn]

I think i will end up doin that after i move

[JimmieD]

Take an adult education class at your local community college. You would likely have a lot of fun and learn some good skills.

Ah, yes! I fully agree with that. I've been welding since the 60's, a long time and a great deal of experience, and yet I had to post here with elementary questions on use of an acetylene cutting torch! Supervised instruction can't be beat and also teaches some safety tips that we might miss otherwise. Best idea!