Welding

Safety Equipment

Of course safe welding requires appropriate clothing- heavy, long sleeved shirts and jeans, leather shoes, and gloves, or even better, welder's gauntlets. And a baseball cap for the head. I have a welding "outfit" - mainly because I've found it sensible to only use one set of clothes to weld in- all the little holes burned in them by the "spatter" means I cannot wear them for anything else. Rather my wife tells me I'm not to leave the house dressed in such woe-be-gone apparel

 

Going beyond these basic needs is the requirement for adequate eye-protection. I initially used a standard face shield but found it to be a major problem. Most people can work quite well with them, but most people can see reasonably well. I found that my nearsightedness was so bad that raising and lowering the standard facemask often interfered with the torch placement. This mask is a great improvement. I can work far more effectively than before and it has the added benefit of being more comfortable and readily adjustable. This one is a basic model made by ESAB, with a 10/11 grade protective filter. It works well and I've not suffered any discomfort whatsoever after several lengthy periods of welding with it. I'm very near sighted and need corrective lenses to see whatever I'm working on. I found the plastic lenses shown on the right that fit neatly inside the shield. These allow me to use it a little more comfortably.

A halogen light for use when welding and doing other work on the car. The autodarkening helmet works well but it makes everything look rather dim when the arc isn't lit. The bright light (this uses a single 1000 watt bulb) helps illuminate everything the rest of the time, and is generally useful for working on the car. The one shown is fully adjustable from one to two meters height, through 360° and a reasonable range of angles. The only drawback is that it tends to get quite hot, but all things considered a little more warmth in the garage isn't a bad thing.... The photo also shows a welder's magnet generally used to help hold items together; in this case I'm using it to hold welding rods for easy access instead of trying to pick them up from a smooth surface while wearing thick gloves the magnet holds them upright and separate so they may be easily grasped. The small flashlight is useful when working under the car or areas in deep shade, this allows the light to be held in one hand and the torch in the other with the light directed to exactly the point being welded.

A fire extinguisher. Something every shop should have. This one was scavenged from a bus being scrapped- it was still good and seems to remain so. Its foam so it is suitable for the kinds of fires likely to be found in a garage. It sits happily on my workbench close to where I do much of the work, but I wonder, wouldn't it be better near the door... on the way OUT.... I've also got a great bucket of used sand blasting grit... its served its purpose but I think it would do well too if poured over a fire to help extinguish one if necessary.

MIG Welders

MIG shrouds- a standard one on the left and one design for plug- style spot welds is also shown on the right.

What can I say about MIG welding that hasn't been said dozens of times before, by people more experienced and knowledgeable. The websites, technical websites and books & references web pages refer to a number of resources about welding generally and using MIG specifically for automotive restoration. They say it all so much better than I could.

It is the most effective and useful single method for the home restorer. A course and a fair amount of practice are essential prerequisites.

 

 

Spot Welders

Spot welder with standard arms.

Given the number of inner body panels to be replaced it became desirable to have something more easily used and economical than a MIG welder. The prospect of drilling potentially hundreds of holes and using a MIG to "spot" weld them was unappealing- I could see days and even weeks spent doing that. A spot welder seemed an attractive alternative- faster and cheaper- no wire or gas needed and the skill required was minimal.

Additional arms for tight spaces and working around obstructions, roughly to scale:

The welder chosen was a Spotmatic M1- the basic model. This was well reviewed in a hobbyist magazine and recommended as a "best buy" It was bought along with additional sets of arms to work around obstructions and in tighter spaces. A special 20 amp rated circuit was added to the garage circuit breaker box for it, and an outlet installed to allow it to reach anywhere in the garage. Update: The initial electrical installation did use the peoperly sized circuit breaker, but I found that it kept tripping off virtually immediately. Discussions with my local electrical goods suppliers soon revealed the difficulty- a higher rating was NOT needed, but the standard breaker would trip too quickly and a "slower" one was required- as might be used for the loads imposed by electric motors on starting. One was acquired, installed and found to solve the problem entriely.

After two months of regular use I feel that I can safely say that the spot welder has proven itself. The speed, ease and quality of the welds has made this investment well worth while. The long arms are easily the best feature of the set up I've acquired- the extra reach provided allows me to weld virtually any panel on the Healey. The only drawback is the weight of the thing- its good that I can do the equivalent of a full days' work in half an hour- any more would leave me flat on my back with exhaustion. Its heavy and very unwieldy and care is needed to produce nice, evenly spaced spots in a straight line. The shorter arms are much more manageable. I feel that the set of arms I've got- standard 4", 12" for confined spaces and 18" long, wide spread (roughly 10") for working around obstructions has provided the best combination.

Gas Welding

At first I had little need for gas welding- the MIG and Spotmatic would seem capable of handling virtually all of the welding requirements that I would face. Nevertheless, some provision was desirable. Having the capability of gas welding would allow for its flexibility to be used, and for a cutting torch when necessary. To meet this need I acquired a MAPP gas set up- a small gas welding system based on bottled gas canisters similar to those used in MIG, but using oxygen and various fuel gasses as required. These would allow a more intensive flame than butane or propane torches, though still not so powerful as true acetylene. I've been able to use this as a cutting torch, though it soon burns a whole cylinder of gas that way. The MAPP set up gives me some of the capability at a fraction of the cost ~£40 total vs ~£200 plus gas for an oxy-acetylene set. This set up worked well for the few times I needed it at first, but given the amount and variety of welding that came with doing the whole car I found that having a greater capacity soon became attractive.

I've found there have been a number of times when the flexibility of having gas welding was useful. It's been particularly useful heating tight and corroded fasteners, and it cuts metal too.

In addition to those esstential functions I'll be able to use it for my lead loading and also for the welding needed for the Aluminum shrouds.

Since first writing this I've sprung for a small gas welding set-up, and have opted for the BOC Portapak kit. I bought a whole set consisting of the torch body, a set of the most commonly used nozzles, a cutting torch attachment, hoses with fittings, regulators for the gasses and blow-out preventors. The kit provided everything except the gas bottles. In the UK those are only rented, not sold, so I soon rented a set of bottles and had them filled with gas, and started practicing, and then welding. The kit was easy to set up; and operating it has been problem-free. I've since bought a few small extras- nozzles, "keys" for the bottle's valves and so on; and I've sprung for a HENROB type torch for finer welding and my with the lead loading and the aluminum welding. This also claims to allow more efficent use of the gases at lower pressures, as well as better control over the process.

Inverter-TIG Welding

One thing I've found very odd is the wide availability of Information on stick welding- the cheap and dirty basic stuff AND on the expensive and bulky sophisticated stuff- proper TIG welding but nothing whatsoever on Inverter-TIG Welding that straddles the two. Given my needs I've ignored the stick capabilities of this equipment and have focused on its TIG capabilities. This offered a more suitable welding system for some of the work I'd be doing. While the MIG was great for chassis and other applications where the metal was relatively thicker I soon found that the thinner panels wouldn't stand the heat so well. What's more the Inverter-TIG offered more flexibility and cleaner welding with less spatter and smoke- which given my poor eyesight seem very attractive. I've been practicing and have found this system to be a very effective solution to these needs. I found that I was better able to control the heat and vary the rate of weld rod added using the TIG inverter than the MIG allowed. The MIG gave 6 settings between 30 and 130 amps (by inference: 30, 47, 63, 80, 97, 113, 130) and I've found that the lowest settings do not offer sufficient latitude for someone of my ability to deal with the thinner panels. With the inverter if I need 40 amps I can dial that in and make a start, if that's a little too much I can nudge it down to 37, if not quite enough push it up to 42. And I can see very well exactly whats happening with the weld. I wish now I'd bought this a year earlier.

The GYSMI 160HF isn't the cheapest, nor is it the most expensive but it offers a wider range of features at a reasonable cost, I judged. The range is 10 to a nominal 160 amps, with pulse and high frequency start capability it also has the capacity to do "blind" spotwelds without requiring access to the rear. Its limitations vis-a-vis a full TIG system are that the amperage is set and not immediately variable and it is only capable of DC welding and thus unsuited to aluminium (i've since learned that this could be done, using helium with ceriated tungstens and care). A further advantage of inverter-TIGs is their much smaller size and weight. They're not quite portable for the Industrial sized bottle of gas makes them pretty stationary, unless the hobbyist bottles are used for the few minutes capacity they permit. The torch shown is bundled with the system and not an extra cost as with the cheaper systems. Along with it are shown the two sizes of tungsten anode I'll find most useful along with the collets and shrouds for them. Shown in the picture above left is the full torch with a thin tungsten used for most of the welding I'll do; the lower left photo shows a wider range from 1 mm for the thinest material and 2.4 mm for the thickest stell I'll likely face. Shown on the photo above right are the components for heavier welding- a thicker tungsten and the other components to use that, along with a "shorty" back cap that allows better access in confined areas.

The system uses Argon and an industrial sized bottle has been rented and fitted out with the necessary valves and regulators. This can also be used with my MIG welder with suitable adapters so I may save a few pounds there compared to using the small hobbyist sized bottles.

The consumables cost:oughly £50 for a large industrial sized bottle of Argon, the welding rods cost about £12 for a 15 lb pack that may well be enough (Update 6/06: No, it hasn't been- I've bought another 15 lbs. but I do expect this will be sufficient to finish the car) for me to finish all the welding I need to do (which would be far more than most Healey restorations involve), and tungstens are pretty cheap- costing a £1 more or less each and they last quite long. The welder complete with torch can be bought for roughly £500 including the torch and all fittings.

Plasma Cutting

Not really welding, plasma cutting applies the principles of gas cutting without the gas by using an electric arc instead. A very neat and extremely effective method. Now my needs don't extend to cutting enough metal often enough to justify buying one, but given the amount of fabrication I need to cut to pattern, and the amount of old rotten metal I need to cut away the temporary acquisition of a plasma cutting set is attractive. So, once everything is all measured and laid out, I'm off to the local tool rental shop to borrow one for a weekend.

Update (8/04): My playing around with a plasma cutting wasn't to be. Finally getting down to the business of fabricating those items I needed I found that I really didn't need a high tech solution. And my dilatory approach made doing a little cutting and fabricating once in a while most sensible, rather than the contemplated "big bang" doing it all at once. The items were readily cut out using shears and a metal cutting wheel on an angle grinder. A couple of the thicker items were a little work but on the whole the exercise went fairly quickly. The plasma cutter was one toy, er, tool I didn't have to bother with after all....

Update (3/06): The inverter TIG can be used at a high amperage and will quickly melt through the metal. This can provide a crude cutting or "drilling" capacity- its not neat but it works....

Special Tools

Advertized as a wonder tool, with multi-functionality that would eliminate any need for other tools in my welding activities. Or so it purported ... this was rather a disappointment, primarily because the wire cutting capability wasn't very good. Otherwise it worked OK, but the more frequent need to clip MIG wire made that function most important and these pliers simply weren't very effective for that. I use some standard wire cutters and leave these in the tool box until I need to change a shroud or whatever, once in a while... I'd say not to bother with it....