Technical Old wives tales or not

[bugsymike]

Quite early on I bought a set of brake spanners which included the open ended one for doing that adjuster behind the steering arm on the Minis. It, the set, consisted of two single hex tube nut split rings, one metric and one imperial - at that time British Leyland (or whatever they were calling themselves at that time) were doing "funny" things with tube nuts and you could never be sure if you were going to need a metric or imperial tool - I remember particularly the allegro which had metric on one end and imperial on the other Maybe metric on the rear and imp on the front? Memory is dull though. Also there was a full ring double ended square to fit adjusters generally and the mini one, at the bottom of the picture with the open end on one end and a hex to do the rear cylinder bleed nipples:

View attachment 417120

You'll notice I'm sure that they are Williams Superslims. The Factor I bought stuff from in those days was into Williams tools in a big way and I bought quite a number of that brand from him and very good they are too. This set of 4 spanners was marketed as suitable for Austin/Morris vehicles. The open ended tube nut spanners I keep with my everyday tools and use them frequently but the two bottom I'd pensioned off a long time ago and put them in one of my "geriatric" tool boxes. I was determined to find them for this photo and as I was routling around I also came across a set of very well worn Superslim metric open enders which I must have bought at around the same time - Didn't know they were in there! Surprise surprise though, nestling at the bottom of the compartment were the two FIAT branded open enders:

View attachment 417121

You'll notice they are 10,11 and 13,17 in size. by far the most common sizes especially on the older cars. They must have been from one of the FIATs I've owned over the years, can't think which one though? Or they might have been from my friend's 500 or another friend's Mirafiori? back in the day when manufacturers thought you might actually have some chance of sorting a problem at the roadside.



For a number of years, especially when I was teaching the welding evening classes - yes I did welding as well as the car classes, really only ever saw Mrs J for an hour or so at bedtime and at weekends in those days - I had a half size BOC cylinder for the (MIG 5%) and also half size oxy acetylene cylinders too. They were kept in my garage at home and I very foolishly tried to get my insurance company to give me cover. Silly me! They just about had a heart attack so I got permission to keep them in the school workshops where I taught the evening classes. Being only half size they were easily transported - but still quite heavy to lug in or out of a vehicle. However most of my students, not surprisingly, wanted to learn MIG/MAG or MMA (stick) and the demand for Oxy acetylene dropped away to just about nothing. So I dropped the gas welding part of the course, returned the cylinders to BOC and carried on with just the MIG cylinder. When I stopped the evening classes I kept the MIG cylinder for a few years but it was a silly expense paying rental to BOC for a cylinder I used only occasionally so I gave that one back too. So now I only have the ability to use the stick welder, which, if I say so myself, after all these years, I'm not too shabby at using. But if a big enough job comes along on thin metal, I'm going to get a no rent cylinder from SRS (my factor) who keep them in stock as many of the local garages use them. Although I still have the regulators, torches, hoses etc, I doubt if I'll ever have oxygen or acetylene cylinders again - although I have been looking at Oxy MAP just of late, more for applications like you describe above than for actually welding. I believe Oxy MAP is pretty marginal temperaturewise for welding anyway?

When I was making an adaptor plate approx 5/8ths inch steel plate to fit the Fiat Ducato 2.8 engine on to a Volvo Penta Sterndrive for my boat, I first tried a 3 phase 415 volt Cebora plaasma cutter and it was unable to cut all the way through , so I used the old scrap yard "gas axe" trick, bottle of oxygen and a bottle of propane with a cutting torch, that soon sorted it out. I know some one is thinking why have such a thick adaptor plate, owing to the odd shapes of the two lumps I was mating together and also for it to act as the starter mounting it was the right thickness for the job, nothing wrong with a bit of overkill now and then .

 

[porta]

When I was making an adaptor plate approx 5/8ths inch steel plate to fit the Fiat Ducato 2.8 engine on to a Volvo Penta Sterndrive for my boat, I first tried a 3 phase 415 volt Cebora plaasma cutter and it was unable to cut all the way through , so I used the old scrap yard "gas axe" trick, bottle of oxygen and a bottle of propane with a cutting torch, that soon sorted it out. I know some one is thinking why have such a thick adaptor plate, owing to the odd shapes of the two lumps I was mating together and also for it to act as the starter mounting it was the right thickness for the job, nothing wrong with a bit of overkill now and then .

Every mounting on a boat is overkill, but actually looks ‘natural’

 

[vexorg]

I first tried a 3 phase 415 volt Cebora plaasma cutter and it was unable to cut all the way through

They are dangerous things when first trying the plasma cutter. It's great for thin metal, just zips though it, then you hit something a lot thicker and molten metal sprayed back at you isn't recommended.

 

[bugsymike]

They are dangerous things when first trying the plasma cutter. It's great for thin metal, just zips though it, then you hit something a lot thicker and molten metal sprayed back at you isn't recommended.

I have had several over the years, mostly larger three phase ones , the cheap modern invertor 13 amp plug ones do only seem capable of car body type thickness, which is ideal if that is all you need. That last one I bought was 415 volt on a 32 amp plug, from a auction of a Penryn company working for the fishing industry so I had hoped it was capable and it certainly worked OK , but not on the thickness I was asking it to do, whereas the "gas axe" oxy/propane did the job. I agree same as any welding type jobs full face mask, leather gloves and apron are the order of the day. I learnt along time ago gas welding Austin 1100 trumpet panels inside the front wings with hot weld dropping down my sleeves and burning my elbows.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

When I was making an adaptor plate approx 5/8ths inch steel plate to fit the Fiat Ducato 2.8 engine on to a Volvo Penta Sterndrive for my boat, I first tried a 3 phase 415 volt Cebora plaasma cutter and it was unable to cut all the way through , so I used the old scrap yard "gas axe" trick, bottle of oxygen and a bottle of propane with a cutting torch, that soon sorted it out. I know some one is thinking why have such a thick adaptor plate, owing to the odd shapes of the two lumps I was mating together and also for it to act as the starter mounting it was the right thickness for the job, nothing wrong with a bit of overkill now and then .

Nothing wrong with a bit of "overkill" it's often why an older vehicle can be relatively cheaply brought back to life and is strongly to be recommended with the old horticultural machines I mess about with.

Cebora - pronounced Chebora I'm told? My MIG is a Cebora Pocket Turbo 130. It's the same machine rebadged as Snap On and was sold out of their vans (for more money) and an excellent machine it is too, had mine for a long time and the only problem I've had is with the switch in the handle itself which controls the wire feed, It's not a very robust design and needs to be dismantled about every 2 years and have it's contact faces cleaned with some fine grade emery, then it's good to go again 'till the next time. The rest of the machine has never even "blinked"! Can't remember when I bought it but I've had it for a long time.

The other excellent welder I have is the first one I ever bought. It's an SIP Topweld 140 stick welder. bought in the early 70's. I've made and repaired shed loads of stuff with it. Welding up cultivator chassis, making my own small (5ft x 3ft) unbraked trailer and many other projects. The only problem I've come across with it is that because it's a machine at the cheaper end of the price range (I was an impoverished and ignorant youngster when I bought it) it's transformer windings are aluminium. If I was buying again I'd go for one with copper wires. In fact the aluminium core works very well but has a basic flaw. I found this out one day when welding with it and found it getting increasingly difficult to strike the arc. This got worse until one day I gave up using it, thinking it was knackered, and parked it under my workbench where it stayed for quite a number of years. Luckily I had access to welding gear at work so just used that. Then when I started doing the evening welding classes I found that many of my students were wanting to learn on machines like it - I encouraged people to bring their own machine in with them and learn on their own machine because these cheaper machines can be quite different to use, especially regarding striking the arc which depends on having a good open circuit voltage and can be quite marginal on really cheap machines. So, as some students hadn't yet bought their machines, I hauled the SIP out from under the bench and set about finding what was wrong with it. It turned out to be very simple. A friend at work who was a professional welder (north sea pipes) helped me dismantle it and we found the connection between the aluminium windings - which were formed into "eyes" by bending the wire round - and the steel output terminals was poor due to a build up of corrosion ( I now know this was an electrolytic reaction between the aluminium and steel of the terminal. I gave them a light clean up and made sure the connections were tight and it worked probably better than it ever had even when new! I now find that a very light clean up every couple of years and a light coat of ceramic anti seize completely cures this problem. I've since resurrected a few of these welders with this same problem and I'm always keeping my eyes open at autojumbles for cheap machines because often that's all they need to completely restore them to full usability again.

Don't know how many of you are into doing stick welding? but in case it's useful some of the more common problems my beginners had were:

Using the "wrong" rods. You need to be using a good quality general purpose, all position, RUTILE rod. Buy from a welding supplier who will be able to advise you on what's best and probably be cheaper too.

Don't expect too much from the machine. These small machines are all air cooled and many don't even have a fan. Mine didn't and would overheat and cut out when welding heavier gauge stuff. All but the cheapest will have a thermal overload which cuts it out if the windings get too hot. Then you have to wait for it to cool down before it'll work again - could be half an hour - but if you just start welding again right away, within a very short time it'll get to hot and cut out again because it wasn't fully cold when you restarted. By the way, these cut outs can fail so if your machine was working fine and suddenly cuts out and then, after waiting for it to cool, it still won't work all it may need is a new cut out which is cheap and easy to change.

Don't expect it to give you a long weld time with thicker rods. My machine - SIP topweld 140 - claims to be able to handle 3.5mm rods, and it will, just, for a very short time. I find it much better to accept that it works well with 2.5 (and smaller if you get good at it - small rods are much more difficult to work with). I've also installed a cooling fan into the back of it's cover and blanked off the rear louvres so that air is pulled in over the transformer core from the front and expelled through the fan at the back. It now very rarely, if ever, cuts out when using 2.5 rods. As a little guidance 2.5 rods are ideal for welding stuff like angle iron and plate. You're not going to weld car bodywork with it. Even with a 1.6 rod you've got to be very good to weld stuff like wings and sills. better to buy a MIG if that's what you want to do. Unless you're only going to use it very occasionally, it's worth splashing a little more cash for one with a cooling fan and probably, as it's going to be a bit more "uprange" it'll have copper windings too.

Electrical supply. Don't expect to be able to take the welder down to the bottom of the garden, plug it into your power tool extension lead, and expect it to work. It'll "fool" you into thinking it's working because when you switch it on it's lights will light up and the core will probably "humm" but it won't be able to pull the current it needs to weld and, although you might get a spark, you'll find you can't strike the arc. I have a 15 meter 2.5 wire size, 3 core extension which, when plugged into the welder's own supply cable allows me to work anywhere I need in my workshop and that's probably about as far as I think I could stretch it. I would not use this extension unless needed though and plug the machine in on it's own cable wherever possible. So you need nice thick cable size and not too long otherwise the current drop in the wire itself will stop it working. The shorter the better is the way to go.

I'm sure there's much more I could talk about but the above is agood starting point. I find welding very satisfying to do and it's amazing what you can do once you've mastered the basics. You do need to learn some technique though and a short course will rapidly bring you up to speed whereas trying to just muddle along on your own will take much longer. Don't think these wee machines are "toys". you can easily hurt yourself and others if you're not careful but also you can make and mend some really ambitious stuff. My biggest achievement was to build my own trailer. 95% of it being welded up with the SIP stick welder with only a few little brackets added later with the MIG. I'm very proud of it so here's a picture for you all to go "awe" over. It's loaded up with my gardening gear ready to go off for a day's happy gardening at my boy's house :

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

I have had several over the years, mostly larger three phase ones , the cheap modern invertor 13 amp plug ones do only seem capable of car body type thickness, which is ideal if that is all you need. That last one I bought was 415 volt on a 32 amp plug, from a auction of a Penryn company working for the fishing industry so I had hoped it was capable and it certainly worked OK , but not on the thickness I was asking it to do, whereas the "gas axe" oxy/propane did the job. I agree same as any welding type jobs full face mask, leather gloves and apron are the order of the day. I learnt along time ago gas welding Austin 1100 trumpet panels inside the front wings with hot weld dropping down my sleeves and burning my elbows.

Yup. I've still got little scars round my neck and forearms from melted burning underseal dripping down on me!

 

[bugsymike]

Yup. I've still got little scars round my neck and forearms from melted burning underseal dripping down on me!

I started with a little 140 arc welder, then like you over the years have had many others, I had a large air cooled one on three wheels by a company called Triangle I think, I paid £30 at a Boat Jumble it need Cooker wire power supply ( previous owner had built a steel sea boat with it ), then the gas welding stuff, followed by a Migatronic 180 for £200 s/h about two years old, the previous owner was emigrating and leaving his bodyshop, by the look of the torch he had been using it as a hammer, once I replaced the liner etc. it worked fine until having moved house it lodged in a damp basement so when I switched it on wire continued to feed, traced it to the circuit board and local agent supplied a recon unit for £80 odd. Sometime later read in a trade magazine saying what a good welder it was apart from not liking the damp, but all you had to do was dry out the circuit board and it would be good as new! I had a lovely little Kemppi Mineka 130 scratch start DC Tig really easy to use until damp got that one also and burnt out, damp garage different house. I then had a Kemppi 350 Mastertig DC again but three phase large invertor style with carry handle if you are \feeling really butch as b****y heavy, stainless steel welded the water cooled turbo exhaust for the 2.8 Ducato engine in my boat.I have had a few AC/DC tigs cheap second hand as I fancied being able to weld aluminium but never mastered the skill.
Currently I have SIP Merlin 210 fan cooled Arc welder I use from a 32 amp 240 volt plug but really should run on about a 16 amp supply (13 amp not enough), I have a Fronius 247 Mig welder three phase I paid around £200 for nearly new at an auction many years ago, though it is still in the same damp garage so safer to use in the Summer , I also recently bought a Miller Maxstar 200DX DC tig ex hire company from auction for around £100 it was working on a 32 amp plug three phase 415 volt supply, butI downloaded the manual and discovered Auto Line sensing (never heard of it ) basically it means you can run from three phase 415v, single phase 240volt or 110 volt, so now it runs quite happily from my 32 amp 240 volt supply plug. I haven't got any Argon at present for testing the Tig side and only a dodgy Tig torch, but I have used it for stick/arc welding from the 200amp down to under 20 using the digital settings and have been able to weld catering grade sheet stainless steel, not to a professional standard but certainly better than my old arc welders.Needless to say I keep this one in the dry .
As you say cable thickness is everything, so heavy input leads hence why I use 32 amp plugs and cable for most of my gear and also I have long arc welding leads torch and earth that are heavy although I set of long leads I have sold on as I can no longer lift even one of the pair, they were well over 50ft, long and around 19mm thick capable of around 600amp I believe.
Smart trailer Jock, with my first arc welder I built one with the idea of maybe selling some, until I found that due to my overkill approach it was possible to buy one retail of similar size for less than it cost me! I remember I put new mini indespension on it and to match the size of it, fitted Hillman Imp 12inch wheels.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Your welding exploits put mine in the shade Mike. So interesting to hear of all those machines you've had. Like you I've had a few goes at welding aluminium but always ended up in disaster. As I'm sure you know, but for the benefit of others, the problem is that aluminium transfers heat very rapidly so when you're trying to weld it it all seems to be going so well, oh yes it is, I'm really going to manage it this time, and then, Oh dear, big hole and lots of globby bits of ally on the ground! I once watched a chap weld an ally gearbox casting with oxy-acetylene and his use of the torch, flicking it on and off the workpiece, and his ability to judge the temperature as he stroked the work piece with the rod was like watching an artist at work.

When I ran the welding evening classes just occasionally I'd get someone who wanted to take things further than I could with my very much diy type machines. I made contact with our local further education college and the welding instructor, Bob, and I would introduce anyone interested in pursuing things further to him. Usually I'd accompany the student and give them a personal introduction to Bob. On one of these occasions his class were all doing TIG exercises and I mentioned I'd always fancied having a go at TIG. He sat me down at one of his machines and for about half an hour I made a bit of a fool of myself. Unfortunately he had no time to spend with me and I thought it would be like gas welding, and I'm pretty handy with the old gas, but all I managed to do was blow holes in stuff! We became good friends and he was always promising to teach me but I just never got round to it. I was very surprised when a few years ago, just before he retired, to find he'd moved into a house on our estate just a few minutes walk away. Unfortunately his health isn't so good these days but we often bump into each other and there's always a good craic and leg pull going on when we do. A couple of "old farts" talking nonsense!

 

[bugsymike]

Your welding exploits put mine in the shade Mike. So interesting to hear of all those machines you've had. Like you I've had a few goes at welding aluminium but always ended up in disaster. As I'm sure you know, but for the benefit of others, the problem is that aluminium transfers heat very rapidly so when you're trying to weld it it all seems to be going so well, oh yes it is, I'm really going to manage it this time, and then, Oh dear, big hole and lots of globby bits of ally on the ground! I once watched a chap weld an ally gearbox casting with oxy-acetylene and his use of the torch, flicking it on and off the workpiece, and his ability to judge the temperature as he stroked the work piece with the rod was like watching an artist at work.

When I ran the welding evening classes just occasionally I'd get someone who wanted to take things further than I could with my very much diy type machines. I made contact with our local further education college and the welding instructor, Bob, and I would introduce anyone interested in pursuing things further to him. Usually I'd accompany the student and give them a personal introduction to Bob. On one of these occasions his class were all doing TIG exercises and I mentioned I'd always fancied having a go at TIG. He sat me down at one of his machines and for about half an hour I made a bit of a fool of myself. Unfortunately he had no time to spend with me and I thought it would be like gas welding, and I'm pretty handy with the old gas, but all I managed to do was blow holes in stuff! We became good friends and he was always promising to teach me but I just never got round to it. I was very surprised when a few years ago, just before he retired, to find he'd moved into a house on our estate just a few minutes walk away. Unfortunately his health isn't so good these days but we often bump into each other and there's always a good craic and leg pull going on when we do. A couple of "old farts" talking nonsense!

I wouldn't say that, quantity maybe, not necessarily quality though , I did try welding a Villiers crankcase with gas and as you say very easy to fall apart welding aluminium. Just after I bought the Migatronic I got the rep to come round and we set it up to aluminum weld and even he couldn't get it to do a reasonable job. I did see a professional doing the entire top half of a pleasure boat with Mig and do a good job fairly quickly, but I think Tig and a lot of practice is the answer for a neat job.
One of my old customers had been a Coded welding Instructor and knew a lot, trouble was when I asked a question he would go into the highly technical end of why a certain percentage mix of gas was the only way to do a certain job etc. that it often went over my head. He was the one who called "MOT welding " **** welding, which I defended by saying we don't all work in a nice dry factory with with all the best tools for the job, laying under a car with the wind blowing trying to Mig weld a patch on a rusty car covered in underseal etc. is never going to be as good as nice clean new metal, no matter how much you prepare it.
The guy I know is like your Bob suffering from ill health so I suspect the welding wasn't kind to him either.
I feel the same as you if we are capable of a reasonable gas weld then Tig should be similar, just a different heat source for the filler rod. My first one was a "scratch start" but having HF makes it easier, also the shape of the tungsten tip is critical, I never had a pedal control so it was all down to trying to get an optimum setting and going for it.
One day I may get some Argon and have a play with the Miller, I think you would enjoy the control of it, even just for doing Arc/stick welding with it with the digital settings. I haven't found if it is possible on it to use the HF fuction to start the arc weld, I had an old one that did and watching the spark jump across to start a weld rather than dragging the rod across or poking it made life a lot easier. Another thing I used to have was a welding rod oven, one was big enouth to put your pasties in for lunch though probably not a good idea, it would certainly hold several boxes of rods and surprised me how much damp came out improving the rods use, the other heater was like a quiver you had the rods in like arrows.
Chatting B****Cks with an old friend is an enjoyable pastime as you get older.

 

[Cornish Ian]

Your welding exploits put mine in the shade Mike. So interesting to hear of all those machines you've had. Like you I've had a few goes at welding aluminium but always ended up in disaster. As I'm sure you know, but for the benefit of others, the problem is that aluminium transfers heat very rapidly so when you're trying to weld it it all seems to be going so well, oh yes it is, I'm really going to manage it this time, and then, Oh dear, big hole and lots of globby bits of ally on the ground! I once watched a chap weld an ally gearbox casting with oxy-acetylene and his use of the torch, flicking it on and off the workpiece, and his ability to judge the temperature as he stroked the work piece with the rod was like watching an artist at work.

When I ran the welding evening classes just occasionally I'd get someone who wanted to take things further than I could with my very much diy type machines. I made contact with our local further education college and the welding instructor, Bob, and I would introduce anyone interested in pursuing things further to him. Usually I'd accompany the student and give them a personal introduction to Bob. On one of these occasions his class were all doing TIG exercises and I mentioned I'd always fancied having a go at TIG. He sat me down at one of his machines and for about half an hour I made a bit of a fool of myself. Unfortunately he had no time to spend with me and I thought it would be like gas welding, and I'm pretty handy with the old gas, but all I managed to do was blow holes in stuff! We became good friends and he was always promising to teach me but I just never got round to it. I was very surprised when a few years ago, just before he retired, to find he'd moved into a house on our estate just a few minutes walk away. Unfortunately his health isn't so good these days but we often bump into each other and there's always a good craic and leg pull going on when we do. A couple of "old farts" talking nonsense!

I’m also in the “struggle to weld aluminium club”
A friend of mine was a welder in Devonport Dockyard and he was absolutely brilliant at TIG. He made
an aluminium petrol tank for his sprint car and you would think it was done by machine it was so good.

I’ve still got my old Oxford RT180 which is still going fine. It went through a spell of blowing my garage RCD but removing the water and debris from the oil restored it to heath again. It happily would run all day using 4 mm rods when I spent a year or two making scollop dredges. 230/400/440 tappings so presumably could also run on two phases.

 

[bugsymike]

I’m also in the “struggle to weld aluminium club”
A friend of mine was a welder in Devonport Dockyard and he was absolutely brilliant at TIG. He made
an aluminium petrol tank for his sprint car and you would think it was done by machine it was so good.

I’ve still got my old Oxford RT180 which is still going fine. It went through a spell of blowing my garage RCD but removing the water and debris from the oil restored it to heath again. It happily would run all day using 4 mm rods when I spent a year or two making scollop dredges. 230/400/440 tappings so presumably could also run on two phases.

There is another I had forgotten, I had an oil filled Oxford 140 on wheels the previous owner had made to drag it around, quality welder but not something to lift in and out of your van every day. Used to be wary of those in auctions as some had been on their sides and drained all the special oil.
On my boats propellers I had a guy who could tru them up and correct the pitch plus weld / repair them in aluminium or bronze, he also welded aluminium sumps and timing covers for me with Tig, another skilled guy retired.

 

[Motorcyclist Colin]

Nothing wrong with a bit of "overkill" it's often why an older vehicle can be relatively cheaply brought back to life and is strongly to be recommended with the old horticultural machines I mess about with.

Cebora - pronounced Chebora I'm told? My MIG is a Cebora Pocket Turbo 130. It's the same machine rebadged as Snap On and was sold out of their vans (for more money) and an excellent machine it is too, had mine for a long time and the only problem I've had is with the switch in the handle itself which controls the wire feed, It's not a very robust design and needs to be dismantled about every 2 years and have it's contact faces cleaned with some fine grade emery, then it's good to go again 'till the next time. The rest of the machine has never even "blinked"! Can't remember when I bought it but I've had it for a long time.

The other excellent welder I have is the first one I ever bought. It's an SIP Topweld 140 stick welder. bought in the early 70's. I've made and repaired shed loads of stuff with it. Welding up cultivator chassis, making my own small (5ft x 3ft) unbraked trailer and many other projects. The only problem I've come across with it is that because it's a machine at the cheaper end of the price range (I was an impoverished and ignorant youngster when I bought it) it's transformer windings are aluminium. If I was buying again I'd go for one with copper wires. In fact the aluminium core works very well but has a basic flaw. I found this out one day when welding with it and found it getting increasingly difficult to strike the arc. This got worse until one day I gave up using it, thinking it was knackered, and parked it under my workbench where it stayed for quite a number of years. Luckily I had access to welding gear at work so just used that. Then when I started doing the evening welding classes I found that many of my students were wanting to learn on machines like it - I encouraged people to bring their own machine in with them and learn on their own machine because these cheaper machines can be quite different to use, especially regarding striking the arc which depends on having a good open circuit voltage and can be quite marginal on really cheap machines. So, as some students hadn't yet bought their machines, I hauled the SIP out from under the bench and set about finding what was wrong with it. It turned out to be very simple. A friend at work who was a professional welder (north sea pipes) helped me dismantle it and we found the connection between the aluminium windings - which were formed into "eyes" by bending the wire round - and the steel output terminals was poor due to a build up of corrosion ( I now know this was an electrolytic reaction between the aluminium and steel of the terminal. I gave them a light clean up and made sure the connections were tight and it worked probably better than it ever had even when new! I now find that a very light clean up every couple of years and a light coat of ceramic anti seize completely cures this problem. I've since resurrected a few of these welders with this same problem and I'm always keeping my eyes open at autojumbles for cheap machines because often that's all they need to completely restore them to full usability again.

Don't know how many of you are into doing stick welding? but in case it's useful some of the more common problems my beginners had were:

Using the "wrong" rods. You need to be using a good quality general purpose, all position, RUTILE rod. Buy from a welding supplier who will be able to advise you on what's best and probably be cheaper too.

Don't expect too much from the machine. These small machines are all air cooled and many don't even have a fan. Mine didn't and would overheat and cut out when welding heavier gauge stuff. All but the cheapest will have a thermal overload which cuts it out if the windings get too hot. Then you have to wait for it to cool down before it'll work again - could be half an hour - but if you just start welding again right away, within a very short time it'll get to hot and cut out again because it wasn't fully cold when you restarted. By the way, these cut outs can fail so if your machine was working fine and suddenly cuts out and then, after waiting for it to cool, it still won't work all it may need is a new cut out which is cheap and easy to change.

Don't expect it to give you a long weld time with thicker rods. My machine - SIP topweld 140 - claims to be able to handle 3.5mm rods, and it will, just, for a very short time. I find it much better to accept that it works well with 2.5 (and smaller if you get good at it - small rods are much more difficult to work with). I've also installed a cooling fan into the back of it's cover and blanked off the rear louvres so that air is pulled in over the transformer core from the front and expelled through the fan at the back. It now very rarely, if ever, cuts out when using 2.5 rods. As a little guidance 2.5 rods are ideal for welding stuff like angle iron and plate. You're not going to weld car bodywork with it. Even with a 1.6 rod you've got to be very good to weld stuff like wings and sills. better to buy a MIG if that's what you want to do. Unless you're only going to use it very occasionally, it's worth splashing a little more cash for one with a cooling fan and probably, as it's going to be a bit more "uprange" it'll have copper windings too.

Electrical supply. Don't expect to be able to take the welder down to the bottom of the garden, plug it into your power tool extension lead, and expect it to work. It'll "fool" you into thinking it's working because when you switch it on it's lights will light up and the core will probably "humm" but it won't be able to pull the current it needs to weld and, although you might get a spark, you'll find you can't strike the arc. I have a 15 meter 2.5 wire size, 3 core extension which, when plugged into the welder's own supply cable allows me to work anywhere I need in my workshop and that's probably about as far as I think I could stretch it. I would not use this extension unless needed though and plug the machine in on it's own cable wherever possible. So you need nice thick cable size and not too long otherwise the current drop in the wire itself will stop it working. The shorter the better is the way to go.

I'm sure there's much more I could talk about but the above is agood starting point. I find welding very satisfying to do and it's amazing what you can do once you've mastered the basics. You do need to learn some technique though and a short course will rapidly bring you up to speed whereas trying to just muddle along on your own will take much longer. Don't think these wee machines are "toys". you can easily hurt yourself and others if you're not careful but also you can make and mend some really ambitious stuff. My biggest achievement was to build my own trailer. 95% of it being welded up with the SIP stick welder with only a few little brackets added later with the MIG. I'm very proud of it so here's a picture for you all to go "awe" over. It's loaded up with my gardening gear ready to go off for a day's happy gardening at my boy's house :

View attachment 417183

AWE!! JOCK and WOW!

 

[Cornish Ian]

There is another I had forgotten, I had an oil filled Oxford 140 on wheels the previous owner had made to drag it around, quality welder but not something to lift in and out of your van every day. Used to be wary of those in auctions as some had been on their sides and drained all the special oil.
On my boats propellers I had a guy who could tru them up and correct the pitch plus weld / repair them in aluminium or bronze, he also welded aluminium sumps and timing covers for me with Tig, another skilled guy retired.

They were certainly heavy, I had a 110 Oxford which wasn’t too bad to lift but the 180 was massive in comparison. It had a second adjuster for finer intermediate settings, capacitors on the side and a much bigger tank. It also came with built in wheels and I made some aluminium ramps from lorry purlins to load in into my van.
I also had another smaller180 amp oil cooled unit ( I cannot remember the make ) with a 12 v dc output.
Ideal for starting reluctant tractors that strayed into my workshop.

 

[bugsymike]

AWE!! JOCK and WOW!

I think I must have serious problem with collecting things, reread about your pocket mig Jock and the switch reminded me of one in the past where I bought the adaptor kit and fitted a Euro Torch to a Diy Mig, this then reminded me of a brand new catalogue return Clarke 130 Mig in my "sun lounge" , when I bought it the torch switch didn't work and one of the rear wheels was broken, I walked past it to check the details on the Miller I was saying about without seeing .

 

[bugsymike]

They were certainly heavy, I had a 110 Oxford which wasn’t too bad to lift but the 180 was massive in comparison. It had a second adjuster for finer intermediate settings, capacitors on the side and a much bigger tank. It also came with built in wheels and I made some aluminium ramps from lorry purlins to load in into my van.
I also had another smaller180 amp oil cooled unit ( I cannot remember the make ) with a 12 v dc output.
Ideal for starting reluctant tractors that strayed into my workshop.

The Oxfords were green I think, I was trying to remember the other make which I think came in blue.
All the quality British tools were heavy and repairable which is why some are still around today. I used to have a compressor with brass fittings and a large riveted receiver pre WW2, along with a Harvey Frost (I think ) Garage press that was worked by a large ratchet on a screw thread, a bit worn by the time I acquired it, but still capable of pressing Ford rear halfshaft bearings etc. before dropping the heated shrink collars down.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

AWE!! JOCK and WOW!

Thanks Colin. I'm sitting here with wife and her sister - who still hasn't gone home, came for Christmas and it's coming on for a month now! - with East Enders on the Tv and I was seriously considering suicide. Your brief comment here has cheered me up no end. Think I'll go in my garage and cuddle a couple of torque wrenches, that should do it!

 

[Cornish Ian]

The Oxfords were green I think, I was trying to remember the other make which I think came in blue.
All the quality British tools were heavy and repairable which is why some are still around today. I used to have a compressor with brass fittings and a large riveted receiver pre WW2, along with a Harvey Frost (I think ) Garage press that was worked by a large ratchet on a screw thread, a bit worn by the time I acquired it, but still capable of pressing Ford rear halfshaft bearings etc. before dropping the heated shrink collars down.

Yes the oxfords were green. (Pickhill came in blue in case it was giving you brain ache)

 

[bugsymike]

Yes the oxfords were green. (Pickhill came in blue in case it was giving you brain ache)

That was the one I was trying to remember, thanks.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

The Oxfords were green I think, I was trying to remember the other make which I think came in blue.
All the quality British tools were heavy and repairable which is why some are still around today. I used to have a compressor with brass fittings and a large riveted receiver pre WW2, along with a Harvey Frost (I think ) Garage press that was worked by a large ratchet on a screw thread, a bit worn by the time I acquired it, but still capable of pressing Ford rear halfshaft bearings etc. before dropping the heated shrink collars down.

Sturdy old British kit? I've mentioned this one before but some time ago so maybe you missed it? Back when we moved from the country back into town I saw an old vertical receiver type compressor sitting on the pavement outside a motor factor which specialized in replacement panels. I didn't have a compressor at that time and was a sometime customer so stuck my head in the door and asked what the story was with the compressor. It doesn't work so it's going to the scrappie when he can be bothered to pick it up. Can I have it? Sure, just take it away. I got it in the back of the car somehow (luckily I always buy estates but I think I was running around in the wee DAF van then) and when I got it home and stripped it down all that was wrong with it was a broken return spring on one of the "clapper" type valves in the cylinder head. I temporarily substituted a modified biro spring in it's place and it pumped perfectly. A wee while later I turned up a larger diameter pulley for the motor to make it pump faster which usefully increased it's output but it was still a small compressor on quite a large tank. It drove my air tools but only in bursts, then you had to wait for it to recharge. After I'd owned it for about 10 years I got a bit worried about the tank and decided to get it properly pressure tested. I approached a company up in Fife who I knew did this sort of thing and he asked me to read off the plate on the reciever. Ok, said I, it's a BEN - hold on, said he. is it (and he went on to describe it down to the smallest detail) Oh yes he said, I know those very well. The tanks are made of 1/4 steel plate, boiler plate mate, Never seen one anywhere even near to failing. You're wasting your money getting that tested, it'll outlive you! But it was made in 1945 I said, looking at the plate. No problem said he, seriously I wouldn't waste your money.

So I took the large bung out of the tank and used my angled mirror (like a dentists mirror) to look inside and actually it was rusty but didn't look too bad so I just left it. Quite some years later I bought "The Hooligan" (my very powerful CP air impact wrench - 1000Nm torque for undoing stuff like crank pulley bolts - but it just couldn't pump enough air for it so I bought a modern 3hp belt driven on a 100 litre tank and sold the BEN to a chap who uses it in his small agricultural repair workshop and it's still going strong as far as I know - he's never complained to me anyway.

Here's a picture of it:

I made the air filter and belt guard for it - neat eh? The air filter takes an "old mini" paper element. Biggest job I ever used it for was to respray one of my Imps, which was interesting as it didn't quite keep up with the spray gun so you had to decide where you were going to stop so it had time to recover but not leave a visible join line in the paint.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Another thing I used to have was a welding rod oven, one was big enouth to put your pasties in for lunch though probably not a good idea, it would certainly hold several boxes of rods and surprised me how much damp came out improving the rods use, the other heater was like a quiver you had the rods in like arrows.
Chatting B****Cks with an old friend is an enjoyable pastime as you get older.

We still have a gravity fed water system (as opposed to a combie boiler which seems to be a "must" these days) so we have a hot water tank in a cupboard on the upstairs landing. It's lovely and warm in there so I keep my welding rods at the bottom of the cupboard and MRS J has the spare towels and sheets on the shelf above. My rods seem to like it and work well.