Brodhead Pietenpol Association

Original Posted By: Ron Gipson
Mike;My exposure to welding came after college, I worked inMachine and fab shops and was involved on the technical sidenot the production side. This was 20 years ago, so I amdoing this from memory so don't quote me. I wanted toexpand on a couple of things you said. On the MIG welding,several different gases are used, depending on the type ofpuddle you want. Helium, CO2, Argon, and others are allused as cover gases. One made a "flat" puddle while one madea "deep" puddle. A nice thing benefit of MIG (and TIG -Tungsten Inert Gas) you don't have the slag problemsassociated with stick.. Stick electrodes have differentcoatings which produce different cover gases. I think thehome wire feed units do not use bottles and I assume use acoated wire. But I am not familiar so I don't know. Thereason I asked what you meant by a "gas rig", in differentparts of the country slang terms mean different things. Iwas pretty sure you meant an ox/ace. But since I waslooking to buy, I wanted to be sure. Thanks for yourinput, some of the other guys think I should reconsider,which I am.. So Who Knows. This subject did make me reachway back in to things I hadn't dealt with in years.. (Iwent on to work with the big Engineering houses and now I amin Project Management for an oil company, I use to writeprocedures, now I hardly read them)Thanks again, I enjoyed the note.Bill________________________________________________________________________________

Original Posted By: Doug
Bill,HAZ isn't an issue, according to the article and the response in SportAviation. You be the judge, though. In fact, one of the well-known kitmakers wire-feed welds their fuselages with no post heat, and have had noproblems.What I meant by "gas outfit" is an oxy-acetylene welding setup that usessmall-diameter mild steel rod as the welding rod. The words "stickelectrode" to me mean an arc-welding set (some people call them a buzz boxwelder) that uses a rutile-flux coated welding rod. These rods are availablein various alloys with various types of flux coatings. I don't own an arcwelder or a wire-feed welder, but I do have oxy-acetylene equipment. I planto do a lot of practice welds and have experienced people evaluate thembefore I do anything to 4130 tubing that will support my skinny littleposterior away from terra firma.The wire-feed welder was (until recently) used mostly for productionwelding, not home use. It uses a spool of wire that is motor-fed through thehandle that you hold, onto the work. The ones I welded with in college usedsome kind of an inert gas that was also fed through the handle, but it'sbeen almost 30 years and I can't remember the name of the gas (Argon?) orwhether it was for welding aluminum or steel. The correct name for thisprocess is MIG, or Metal Inert Gas welding (at least it was called that 30years ago). These welders have become less expensive, so more people havethem at home now.I was fortunate to attend a college that had the motto "Learn by Doing". Ispent a lot of time in the shop welding, turning things on lathes, millingthem, bandsawing, etc., etc. It didn't make me an expert by any means, butit did expose me to a lot of manufacturing processes. I also later spentsome years working in the machine-tool industry, in what amounted to aglorified job shop that built automatic bar and chucking machines. Later Iwent to a Class 8 truck manufacturer. All good, meaty experience.You may, indeed, be making a good decision by outsourcing that part of thework.Regards,Mike________________________________________________________________________________