Stick Welding

[Grahame Collins]

I have noticed that questions coming from the new blokes to this Metal work forum section of the board where relative to Mig welders. In most cases our motivation as the struggling home owner DIYER it’s about saving a quid.

Mig welders have their place fellas, but really for a lower cost and versatility you can’t beat a MMAW electrode machine. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to learn to use the process. If I could learn it any one could.

For those who are new to the use of the humble stick welder, I thought I would offer a few helpful hints to those new “would be “carpenters in steel.

Designing and Selection of material

Flat bar, angle section steel, sections of round, square and rectangular tube are the most popular steel types. The thing to remember is to design with the particular welding process in mind. If you design too lightly you may end up burning through the thinner material. Try to limit your thinnest section to 3mm or better. It is also wise to consider the joint configuration. Tee joints are preferable where you can weld a fillet. If you must have a butt edge joint consider a bevel on one or two of the edges. Amateur welders have a habit of welding a bead on top of a butt joint and if its not too pretty, end up grinding it off flush with the surface. The result a micro thin depth of weld that fails eventually.

If you fellas are happy to read my offerings I shall continue with them and talk about selecting the correct type and size electrodes and adjusting the amperage next time around.

Grahame

[rodm]

Good stuff Grahame keep it coming

[Grahame Collins]

Selecting the correct electrode and adjusting machine amperage.

Big time amateur stuff ups emanate from a failure to use the correct electrode and or setting the amps correctly. When I was a 1 st year apprentice my boss taught me this way
Backwards SAVAGE. No he was not upset at me .It was all about this

E- Select the correct grade of ELECTRODE for the work- For us if it’s branded 4112 its ok for mild steel (for the Americans its 6013)

G- GAUGE – the old fart way of identifying electrode wire diameter – To us it’s in metric 2mm, 2.6mm 3.2mm.Most home welders use 2.6 and 3.2 mm

A- AMPERAGE setting for the diameter electrode you have chosen in the above
2 mm = 70 to 90 amps, 2.6mm = 90 to 100 amps, 3.2 mm 110 to 130 amps
Note these settings are approx only because of variables such as household input voltage- its not always 240volts and can vary down as much as 10% down, your house wiring and YOU. Yes, you can vary the input
(slightly) as you weld. - more shortly

V- VOLTAGE – The heat input into the welded material which causes the bead to flatten. Hold the arc too far off the job and the voltage increases. The trick is the hold arc closer and you will automatically increase the amps – Also affected by poor connection to the work - Keep it clean of rust and dirt and spatter.

A- ANGLE – Lateral (Side) angle and Drag angle. Side angle is variable and related to the joint position as required. Drag angle – No more than 10 to 15 degrees off 90. Too much drag angle = too little arc penetration.

S- SPEED of travel. Look at the ripple pattern of your welded bead. If normal its about the curve of your finger nail, sort of crescent shaped. Too fast and its shapes like and arrow formation. Too slow and ripples are very slightly round almost flat.

Before you weld
I will assume you know how to set your helmet from previous posts. It is best to make a test run on piece of scrap of the same type and thickness you are going to weld on. It is better to have to ditch a piece of scrap, than the job you taken hours to prepare, if you have mis set the welder adjustments.
Check your earth connection is secure and clean. On some fiddly work I make a little arc strike block to strike on and jump quickly to the start of the weld while the rod end is still red hot.

Next time I will deal with “tacking up: and assembly of the work.

Cheers Grahame

[scooter]

Got me in Grahame, thanks for this and keep it coming mate


Cheers.............Sean, avid reader of stick books (welding manuals that is )

[echnidna]

What sorta rod do yer weld a stick tergether with

[rodm]

Me

[Grahame Collins]

Tack Welding and Assembly

Irrespective of the section or type of steel that you assemble your welded project from it is essential that the collection of assembled joints are all completely tacked first to minimise any distortion.

A tack is a short length of weld anywhere in length between a dot of weld and 25 mm ( actually they can be longer , but not usually for home construction.) A good rule of thumb is small beads require short length tacks and longer beads need longer tacks..

Select your electrode and then increase the amperage by 10% of the welding amperage that you will use. The purpose behind this is to keep the tack flat and allow deeper penetration. It increases the capability of the tack to bite in and hang on when assembly requires some re direction of components with a BF hammer. Higher amps keep the tack in a flat profile and make easier to weld over the top of the it .Flip down helmets were mentioned in earlier post. The tacking procedure is where they become really essential.

Include an arc striking block quite near to the position where you need to weld. There a two purposes here. One is prepare the end of the electrode for “ arcing “ removing any cracked or spalled rod ends. Number two is to get the electrode end red hot reducing the electrical resistance when red hot, enabling a easy ignition of the arc.


Beginners often make the basic mistake of tacking and welding each joint in sequence. This invariably gives distortion a free rein with disastrous results.

Tacking is a skill which requires practice. Some rules apply
The key is to tack one corner , check it for plumb and /or square and then tack the opposite diagonal corner , thereby locking the joint in alignment.

Having assembled your project and checked it for square . Where possible start the arc at the opposite end to the tack and complete it by welding to the tack. . Avoid starting or finishing a weld on an inside corner, such as would be found on an angle section leg tacked to a frame. Start your bead on an outside leg and weld through and out of the internal corner finishing on the other leg. That way you will minimise slag holes. Set your welder amps adjustment as recommended by the manufacturer.

Make sure you keep your arc length down within a core wire diameter. For those addicted to the well known brand blue coloured electrodes be aware they do not tolerate welding over their own welding slag. In any case clean and brush your tack it reduces the likelihood of inclusions during welding to or over a tack.

Next time - troubleshooting-
G

[knucklehead]

Grahame, keep it comming this is good stuff.
I have made (still do) all of these mistakes.

[arose62]

Ditto! Keep it coming!

I've got 3 froes, each sitting in 2 bits, waiting to be welded together.

A mate of mine is ex-USA Navy; a certified weldor who worked on all sorts of nuclear stuff in their subs. I've been waiting 3 weeks for him to drop over to do the 4 inches of weld on each froe, so now I'm psyching myself up to do it myself.

An earlier post of yours finally clarified at least one of my mistakes - the angle business. I realise that I had the electrode at more of a writing-with-a-pen angle, not nearly vertical.

I'll have to drag out my practice star pickets again.

Cheers,
Andrew

P.S. do you diagnose welds over the net, from pics posted here ?????

[Grahame Collins]

Hi Andrew
Is it a trick question ? I am tempted to give a trick answer
I had to read the first line twice- I thought you had an Axe –edent in the woodpile.

After I found out what a froe was- thank god for Google – I tried to think why you would want to weld some up.
Where you careless in the art of froeing and ended up with 3 broken froes? I decided you must be like me and you had to have a go at making something for the hell of it.

Sharp woodworking thingies, froes included are likely to have a high carbon content. Subjecting that carbon content to six thousand degrees of welding heat may adversely influence that very property that helps give you have that sharp edge.

Perhaps a little bit more detail on what is being welded to what and why.
I can only assume that you are making homemade jobs and welding the handle eyes to the blades. If that’s the case I would use hydrogen controlled electrodes then re heat treat the piece.

In answer to the weld defect diagnosis by photo. I suppose it gets down to how well you can capture the detail of the bead. If I can see it I can tell if there is a problem. If you are game ,I’ll have a crack at it.

[Andy Mac]

Just something to add to Graeme's excellent thread on welding...I have welded tools (during their construction), and parts of broken tools back together, using stick and MIG welders, with reasonable success. One of the main things to remember is to normalise or anneal the thing after welding, then proceed to the hardening and tempering stages. This should remove any stresses set up in the metal by the welding process.
Andy

[arose62]

All the froe content on the web implies that if you want a froe, just go to the local farmer/market/garage sale, and there will be piles of them. For, like, 8 cents each!

Not in my reality!!

So, yes, I'm making them myself. And 3 because I've seen a couple of my brothers-in-law splitting kindling. They either use a hatchet to just miss their fingers (so far), or stick the hatchet in the wood, then use hatchet-and-wood as a huge hammer-type contraption. I reckon even a home-made froe has got to be safer!!

I'm just using mild steel for the experiment, as I understand the froe is primarily a wedging tool, not really a cutting tool, so at the moment I'm not planning the heat-treatment exercise.

Cheers,
Andrew

[Grahame Collins]

Hi Andrew,
Mild steel foe, no worries. just use a mild steel rod . Australian made ones will have a 4112or 4113 number stenciled on the flux cover near the end of the rod where you attach it to the holder.

Mild steel have only about .03% of carbon content which is 3/5 of 5/8 of bugger all. Get into it you can't do any damage. If you have done a bit of prep on the foe edges to be welded just get some offcut of the same size and section material and have a practice.
My guess is that you probabbly welding on something around 10mm thick. If thats the case a 3.25mm diam rod should do. Crank it up to about 120-130 amps. If the beads flatten out to much back off the ammps a little. Keep your arc length short. A sign of your close to perfect bead will be that flux pops off by itself or with a tap of the chipping hammer.
See how you go.
Cheers Grahame

[Grahame Collins]

Identifying a less than efective welding technique

It might be as well to start at the beginning .
Having trouble in striking your arc. A couple of possible causes are

1.The electrode end broken cracked or chipped. If the electrode end is not covered in flux it won’t strike well.
2. The earth return clamp is not connected securely to the work. It is best attached directly to the work piece. If not all the little balls of spatter on the bench raise the job slightly off the bench surface and decrease the surface electrical contact and therefore lessen the ability of the arc to initiate. Use an arc strike block to strike the electrode and jump straight over to the work , while the electrode end is still red hot. This burns any possible cracked and spalled end off the stick and reduces the starting resistance.

A strike block is simply a block of steel ay 50 x 50 x 10 square. I mount mine on a 10 rod tacked ( tacked-not welded ) to the bench top.Come time when its all built up and unusable – smack it with a BFH and replace it.

The clamp connections themselves tend to get cruddy over time and poor electrical connection between the earth cable and earth clamp will cause trouble. Its little things like that that we miss.

Once you have a decent arc you can then concentrate on the welding technique proper. The distance from the end of the electrode and the work through the arc is called the arc length. Beginners often forget to compensate adequately for the continual loss of electrode length and the arc becomes longer. This in turn increases the voltage which in turn heats up the weld puddle area –big-time. Disaster on thin walled work.
The arc length is also affected by the way the electrode holder is held and manipulated .The wrist should be locked and this keeps the electrode angle fixed. People tend to pivot the electrode ( via the wrist ) during the running of the bead. The angle of drag changes from one end of the work to the other and with it the electrode length.
Arc length is important, as well as the above it also is critical in controlling penetration and avoiding slag holes. Held close ,to say the core wire diameter of the welding electrode is gives good penetration. Too long and it increases the voltage and reduces the available amperage .This allows molten slag to interspace itself into a gap between the arc and the work. Simply put, it requires high electrical energy ( amperage ) to keep the slag out of where it should not be.

This is starting to turn into war and peace. I’ll be back and continue this in another session. Please ask me to explain anything you having trouble with.

Cheers
Grahame

[Optimark]

Grahame, excellent information.

One day I was butt welding two pieces of steel and a watching friend, who is a welder by profession, gave me a tip.

He explained, that I was starting at one end just like most non professional welders.

Basically, he said that I was starting right at the end, but in fact should be starting before the end, so to speak. By doing this, as he showed me, I got a very strong weld right from go, not one that required some building up for the first 10mm.

Maybe you could explain in better terms for others, what I'm trying to say?

Mick.