cami

I don't use it now but I used to sometimes stick a Tiger Torch into a scrap of pipe; it made a nice little radiant heater. Did a little work on a site where they tarped everything up and had a couple Herman Nelsons going...nice and toasty.

@ChrisP: Welding rods are engineered to be used a certain way and if you use them in a way that's not intended, you can't make guarantees. When scabbing things together, anything goes, but I generally say no to customers with scab jobs. Jabbing a (second) rod into your puddle will cool and shrink it, and it's something I'll do when doing OAW or GTAW, but with those processes it can be done without deviating from common practices. I have never seen a SMAW weld procedure that called for dipping in a second rod and would question judgement of a professional welder who did it on a job. Speaking generally about something like heat control with SMAW, there are choices that allow you to use the process as it was intended. Depending what you're doing, backer strips, heat sinks, back stitching, or smaller rods might work for you. These have all worked for me at different times but most of the time, what works for me, is to weld downhand using 6010 with the lowest current I can get away with. As for comfort, it can make a big difference in weld quality; especially if you're doing it all day, every day. I don't have time for prima donnas but there's no point in making things harder than they need to be.

I sometimes light an open fire outside my shop. What't nice is my welder is driven by an old Wisconsin engine. The cooling fan's output is directed by shrowds over the engine and blows out one side. I'll put it by my bay door with the exhaust pointed outside and the cooling fan output blowing in; it takes the chill off so long as there's welding to be done.

I heard that the old-timers just dipped their rods in paint to keep the flux intact and a fellow on the surface just used a knife switch to cut the power when the diver wasn't actually welding; cavemen. I've thought of trying to lay some beads in a water trough at the shop, but have been too busy to mess around. I've dunked 6010 in water and ran it with hight current to do come scabby emergency cutting....how much underwater welding "street cred" is that worth? :)

Welding with two electrodes like that? Just say no. If you want to lay more pounds of steel in an hour then try a larger rod, try a fast fill rod (like 7024) if you can, or find a suitcase welder and run wire. Welding rods are engineered to be used a certain way and if you change that, you can't make guarantees. Oh, is this a soap box I'm standing on? Before today I've only heard of this stick-TIG techniques in tall tales told of great welders in days gone by. Usually there's a story about the same fellow taking a stinger in each hand and doing the root pass on both sides of a pipe simultaneously. I think in one version, he stuck a broom up his rear end and swept up his work area while he did it ;)

Things get quite coldon account of the temperature drop of the shielding gas going through the regulator. While that shielding gas is very dry, the air outside isn't; remember that one side of that diaphragm is in contact with the atmosphere. I don't know what's up with your regulator, but for chattering regulators I will turn the flow rate up high then bring it back down to where it should be; that usually does the job. For freezing, I hang a trouble light right on the regulator and put a small cardboard box over top; I have an extra work light just for warming regulators.

Oxy-acetylene torches are great for some sorts of heat treatment work. The intense heat lets you really control things. The drawback is that as far as heating methods go, it's expensive. I've never even thought to use a plumber's torch to harden anything but often use one for drawing a temper on small pieces when I don't feel like dragging out the larger torches. Just today I was re-doing a few short chisels with parker taper shanks on them. The torch allowed me to re-treat the working ends without putting any heat into the shanks; it also let me handle the work with bare hands.

In addition to crap in the castings, aluminum used in casting is often alloyed with Zinc to help it flow into the forms better; you might notice a more "liquid" puddle. For general repair of aluminum with a torch, I braze, or braze weld it with Alladin 3-in-1; it's a nice product.

Is it just me, or is the second half of a cigar not nearly as good as the first?

Make yourself a cyclonic air/water separator....or at least a drop/low spot to catch the moisture. Plumb a line into the bottom of the separator/low spot that comes out to a valve at ground level; give 'er a crank and let that compressed air do the work of bringing the moisture to the surface.

The official line is that you should lift a file off of the work on the back-stroke. You WILL kill your files in short order if you apply pressure on the back-stroke. I've always removed any pressure and just gently dragged file over the work when pulling it back. I find it easier to start the next stroke quickly this way as I don't need to worry about putting the file back against the work too hard if I'm going fast; I'm happy with how long my files last. As for sharpening...Files last so long and are so cheap it's hardly seems worrth the effort to me.

Regarding charred cloth: Once you char cloth it seems to light up much more easily after that.

I saw a fellow post a video in another area and reminded me of a great old Buster Keaton silent film called The Blacksmith. If you're in the mood for some stupidity then this is the ticket..

Depending on the joint prep and included angle (the total angle produced by the two chamfers on the plate ends) it can make for a fairly wide opening at the top of the plate....and of course, the thicker the plate, the wider the opening will be at the top. I've never worked in a shipyard so I can't speak first-hand but wherever I've done work with heavy plate, my value to the boss was determined by how many pounds of weld deposit were made each day. You run wire whenever you can; the thickest you can manage. If you can't get a wirefeeder where you are, then you use the thickest rods you can manage. I've had a a former co-worker and a former employer who were both former shipyard welders and one thing that came up in lunchroom conversations was what a hack-job it could be sometimes. As for filling the big grooves, I recall one of those fellows saying he used 1/16" wire. There was an equipment manufacturer in Nanaimo who used 3/32" flux core wire. I know a few guys that worked there and two have commented on how the fat wire made quick work of big welds. Where I worked we only ran 1/16" wire...not exactly gigantic but you could still build welds fairly quickly.

Cut a scrap of plate or flat bar into an L. Weld one end to your base so it stands upside-down and weld a nut to the other end; add some threaded rod and you have a clamp. It's cheap and you're not dealing with mystery metal. Depending on a few things, you might end up shrinking the nut a bit; I've run into this but it was nothing a quick pass with a tap or homemade thread-chaser(much cheaper than a tap if it's a monster nut) couldn't fix.