Up until about 6 years ago I lived about 40 klm inland from the ocean (for about 22 years) Being that little bit further away from the coast meant I could leave a bit of bare steel laying on the bench for months without it going rusty. It also meant that I could leave the spool of wire inside the Mig for months without it going rusty as well.

6 years ago I moved closer to the ocean (only a couple of klm from it) and that's when the rust issues started. After having to strip about 1/3 of a big spool of wire off the mig one day before I could use the machine, I resigned myself to having to remove the spool , wrapping it in cloth, double bagging and storing it in a wooden cupboard after every use of the machine and then setting it all back up again the next time I wanted to weld something.
That got old pretty quickly when only needing to do a small welding job. So about the middle of last year I replaced my ancient transformer stick welder with a small new inverter stick machine.
Great little welder. Too bad the operator has lost so much stick welding skill over the 25 odd years since he did any serious stick welding. I used to be a pretty good stick welder (not pressure or anything like that of course) but on general purpose stuff I was ok. Unfortunately that would appear to have been a different person. . Im ok on straight downhand runs on steel with a bit of thickness to it but anything smaller (that I used to be able to do) I'm absolute rubbish now. As I discovered this arvo. I actually thought about setting the mig up but then thought "no, it will be fine". Except it wasn't. The time it took me to grind out slag inclusions and then reweld I should have just set the mig up. Grrrrr.
I think I will make a notice up for myself to leave inside the Stick welder box that says something like - "You are a crap stick welder. Is it worth setting up the mig?"
Don't you just love getting old?

peter


Read the full thread at metalworkforums.com...