Top TIG tips for trike welders

What have I learnt from a 2 day welding course? Well here is a simple bullet list of some of the notes I jotted down over the 2 days.
- TIG welding is a fine craft. Unlike arc-welding, TIG is quiet, clean, fine and gentle. At times a fine weld can feel a bit like jewellery making. Watching Tom lay down a root weld was sometimes difficult to actually see his hand moving at all. Any thoughts of wacking down a couple of yards of half inch fillet weld are a bit mis-lead.
- Keep the tungsten electrode tip clean and sharp. There really is no point carrying on welding when you've burnt the point off. Its certainly a pain to keep stopping and grinding the electrode, but a clean point makes a world of difference. Hopefully as my skill develops, I wont have to make so many trips to the bench-grinder.
- The electrode tip can protrude beyond the gas shroud pretty well as much as you like. Typically 1/4" to 1/2", but as I found out, in tight spaces you might want to extend the tip out quite a way; you just have to invent a smart way to keep the shield gas contained on the arc.
- Although the TIG torch has what seems like a 'handle' - you are not obliged to hold it like that. holding the shroud like a pencil gives far greater control, and often an awkwardly positioned joint might be accessed best with a quite odd upside-down grip. I was surprised that holding the shroud wasnt as hot or dangerous as i'd imagined
- I like to wear thin leather gloves as these give the best possible 'feel' of the objects you are working with. However, I soon learnt that i was better off with a thin glove on the hand with the filler-rod, and a thicker glove on the torch hand (especially when pencil-gripping the shroud)
- Keep the tip perpendicular to the line of weld, though a slight feed in angle is ok.
- Planning a section of weld is critical. how you position your arm, body to ensure a smooth and consistant travel makes for a lovely weld.
- Using a foot-switch helps with ease of welding. ie you dont have to fiddle around reaching for the thumbswitch on the torch handle - particularly if you are pencil gripping the torch. I think I shall have to invest in a foot switch for my own welder.
- It appears that 50A to 90A is going to be quite sufficient to weld my tube.
- For what I'm going to be doing, I dont need to switch on the pulse option (especially useful for aluminium), or 'slope-down' (crater-fill)
- Gas flow of about 4-6 liters/min
- Try different face masks. I used an auto-darkening mask which seemed to work well for me, but TVOR didn't get really going until he'd ditched the auto-darkening mask for a much darker fixed mask.
- practice, practice, practice

All good things must come to an end

TVOR and I had been pondering on what would be the perfect length of a welding course. Initially I had thought that one day would surely be enough to pick up enough tips and tricks to go off and practice at home. But after doing the first day of this course, I was very glad to be looking forward to a second day to do more practice under the guidance of an expert.
However come the end of day 2... i was pretty bushed and needed some time out to think about what I'd learnt. So all in all I think a 2-day welding course is just about right..... which is probably why CWW design it that way.
While TVOR was having a go at fillet welding stainless steel and aluminium, I finished off my course with welding up the section of my own pipe that id bought with me - a section of the real tube that I will be using for the Trike. In theory the next proper bit of welding I might be doing after this course is highly likely to be on the trike for real - so I had to bite the bullet at some stage.
Im not convinced it was my best bit of welding that day, but I was sure as heck happy enough with it and there is no way those bits of metal are going to come apart - this is going to be a safe trike as well as a good looking one too.
So thanks to TVOR for being there and sharing the experience with me, and thanks to Tom for his support and encouragement

Awkward welds

Working on the test pieces on the benches is great for developing the skills, but lets face it, how much of my trike am i going to be able to weld in 'class-room' like conditions? At the risk of trying to run before I could walk, I was keen to see what it felt like to have to weld awkward joints in awkward positions, so Tom set me up a couple of scenarios - an acute angle, and an overhead weld. I can happily say that if im ever faced with an overhead weld, i'd rather turn the project upside down ("yes Sarge, i DO think it would be better if we roll that Mark VIII (Liberty) tank over, you know how much overhead welding does my neck and back in")
As for the acute angle in an awkward position, well I reckon those are just about manageable - as long as you prepare the site to get yourself comfortable. I reckon one of the keys to a successful and tidy TIG welded joint is to prepare your working area so that you can get in a comfortable and braced position. Tom talks of tack welding bars and braces onto the job simply for the welder to rest/lean/support against (then grinding them off after the joint is made)

Practice makes perfect

Our course ran from 9am to 4pm. I thought it was a bit light-weight to be finishing at 4pm..... until about 3pm when you realise that actually this is quite tiring! Not only on the muscles, but on the concentration and also the eyes. So 4pm seemed like a reasonable time to pack up when you got there.
I was also surprised that there was no tea or coffee available (there was a sarnie van over the road) but on reflection, there just wasnt enough time to stop for trivial things like a cup of tea - this was full on welding. Tom demonstrating, us attempting, Tom guiding, us attempting..... practice practice practice.
The great thing was that we had endless consumables (gas, filler rods, tungsten electrodes - and man we consumed our fair share of those) and endless material to weld together. The TIG machines we were using were the size of a chest freezer and had an endless duty -cycle so there was simply no excuse not to practice welding.
On reflection we must have both welded for 6 hours a day - for 2 days..... thats 24 hours of nonstop welding (if you dont count the numerous pauses to regrind the electode tips that we kept burning off) - so at an estimated welding rate of say 3mm/second (if i learnt anything these last couple of days, its that TIG welding is a 'gentle' process) - thats 250 meters of welding between us [that cant be right can it? the numbers stack up, and we didnt do anything other than weld - even if you halved that figure to account for grinding tips and watching Tom demonstrate - thats still a heck of a lot of welding practice for a couple of amateurs]

Lets go and learn

There is only so much you can learn about welding from watching youtube tutorials and reading books. In the end you have to get some master guidance and then lots of practice. So with that in mind, TVOR and I set off to Coventry to spend a couple of days in the company of expert welder Tom at the Coventry Welding Workshop.
CWW appears to be joined with CBW (Coventry Building Workshop) where a number of youths seemed very productive in the plastering and bricklaying bays. However on the other side of the wall - in the CWW welding bays, TVOR and I had the place to ourselves. Heaven :-)
We had requested some hands on TIG learning with minimal theory and plenty of practise - and that is exactly what we got. Within minutes of arriving, Tom had us welding! He demonstrated a couple of runs (making it look of course Oh-so-simple) and then got us to work.
When I booked the course I mentioned that I was building a trike out of 2" pipe so Tom had read prepared for us a tray of cut and beveled 2" pipes - it was clear that he wasnt going to let us stand around doing nothing.

INTERMISSION

There will be a brief intermission in this project while the builder waits for warmer days to start handling cold metal again.
In the meantime we bring you BLACK CHISEL
Enjoy, and please tune back to Black spanner in a a few weeks time where you will see a renewed enthusiasm to get a rolling chassis :-)

Learning to weld

So not much physically happening on the trike - but that doesnt mean that things have gone quiet.
After my initial practices at TIG welding (BTW my plasma TV is still hanging on the wall ;-) and after watching a whole bunch of youtube welding tutorials, I realise I am nowhere near good enough to create a trike frame that i'd be proud enough of to see on the cover of BSH. And so i need some training.
Fortunately there is a welding training college not far from here which run courses not only for apprentice marine pipe welders but for the public DIY man too.
The people at Coventry Welding Workshop seemed very accomodating, and when I mentioned this to TVOR, he seemed very interested too...... So weve booked a 2 day workshop for the end of this month. Weve asked for a very much hands on/lots of welding practice event with minimal H&S/metallurgy nonsense - and the coventry welding workshop people seem happy with that.
So not only will this be a gaining new skills session, but a father and son bonding moment too :-)