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Step 7Oxy-Acetylene (Oxy-Fuel)
Weld Steel, stainless steel, aluminum. Braze anything. Really good on sheetmetal, thin tubing, and rusty stuff.
Cost: $200 and up.
A lot of people have a set of tanks around just for cutting. They don't realize it's their best welder for a lot of jobs. Put your smallest tip on it and it's easier to use on thin tubing and sheetmetal than any other welder I've tried. You can use coat hangers and random wire for filler rod.
Acetylene isn't the only fuel for this, you can use propane, hydrogen, or pretty much any flammable gas. Acetylene has the hottest flame. Get the free manual for gas cutting/welding from the welding supply shop. It has tables for what size tip and pressure to use for what fuel. And what thickness of what metal you're working on. Like all other welding, checking the book first makes your welds beautiful.
I just gas welded a stainless steel ladder from tubing. I used stainless bicycle spokes from junk wheels for filler rod. Now I want to make a whole lot more stuff like that. You don't need a helmet or gloves, just a pair of welding goggles. It's really quiet.
At Oshkosh they teach people to weld airplane frames and aluminum with oxy-acetylene and oxy-hydrogen. It's a really sociable type of welding. It doesn't drive people off with UV, fumes and noise. For aluminum you use some white flux to paint on the area before heating.
We used ESAB #35 aluminum flux and Alcotec alloy ER1100 3/64" welding rods.
TM tinmantech Aluminum Premium Flux also.
Muffler shops, even the big franchises use oxy-acetylene for patching pipes. You can adjust the flame to "reducing" with a shortage of oxygen. The starved flame turns rust back into steel.
Stainless will rust unless you treat it right. You can't use a steel brush or an old grinding wheel that's been used on regular steel. That will rub rustable iron onto the surface. Get a fresh grinding wheel and only use it for stainless. After welding you need to "passivate" the stainless. Rustable iron crystals come to the surface of the weld. You need to clean your weld with something - not steel wool, not steel brush. I'm using a bronze brush. Then use lemon juice to etch all the iron off the surface. The chrome and nickel that remains won't rust. Unless you mix grades of stainless, or have an electrical problem, or....
But don't worry about that stuff for now, it'll still rust a lot slower than regular iron.
Cost: $200 and up.
A lot of people have a set of tanks around just for cutting. They don't realize it's their best welder for a lot of jobs. Put your smallest tip on it and it's easier to use on thin tubing and sheetmetal than any other welder I've tried. You can use coat hangers and random wire for filler rod.
Acetylene isn't the only fuel for this, you can use propane, hydrogen, or pretty much any flammable gas. Acetylene has the hottest flame. Get the free manual for gas cutting/welding from the welding supply shop. It has tables for what size tip and pressure to use for what fuel. And what thickness of what metal you're working on. Like all other welding, checking the book first makes your welds beautiful.
I just gas welded a stainless steel ladder from tubing. I used stainless bicycle spokes from junk wheels for filler rod. Now I want to make a whole lot more stuff like that. You don't need a helmet or gloves, just a pair of welding goggles. It's really quiet.
At Oshkosh they teach people to weld airplane frames and aluminum with oxy-acetylene and oxy-hydrogen. It's a really sociable type of welding. It doesn't drive people off with UV, fumes and noise. For aluminum you use some white flux to paint on the area before heating.
We used ESAB #35 aluminum flux and Alcotec alloy ER1100 3/64" welding rods.
TM tinmantech Aluminum Premium Flux also.
Muffler shops, even the big franchises use oxy-acetylene for patching pipes. You can adjust the flame to "reducing" with a shortage of oxygen. The starved flame turns rust back into steel.
Stainless will rust unless you treat it right. You can't use a steel brush or an old grinding wheel that's been used on regular steel. That will rub rustable iron onto the surface. Get a fresh grinding wheel and only use it for stainless. After welding you need to "passivate" the stainless. Rustable iron crystals come to the surface of the weld. You need to clean your weld with something - not steel wool, not steel brush. I'm using a bronze brush. Then use lemon juice to etch all the iron off the surface. The chrome and nickel that remains won't rust. Unless you mix grades of stainless, or have an electrical problem, or....
But don't worry about that stuff for now, it'll still rust a lot slower than regular iron.
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I am not trying to give a free commercial to them, but they have very cheap stuff, otherwise offensively expensive.
You can get an oxy-mapp welding setup for around $50. It's utter crap, but it can be used to weld. The regulators are.. not, they're just needle valves and it uses disposable o2 and mapp tanks. Disposable o2 tanks get expensive really quickly though, as they aren't as high pressure as the refillable kind. It's a false economy unless you only use it for a few minutes (how long an o2 tank lasts) per year.
its not cardboard, but close. i have an acetylene tank that my welding teacher cut in half without dying somehow (i havent asked him how he did it, and he did it before i joined the class) but inside the tank is a chalky white substance that you can poke with a bit of force using your finger nail and it will leave a permanent indentation, and if you drag your finger on it it feels like really textured drywall. the acetylene absorbs into this material to provide stability (acetylene is EXTREMELY unstable and wants to explode when disturbed).
lol btw i went to a so-called "expert HHO welding" site yesterday and they called gas torches a "Settling torch". Obviously not expert enough to know that it's an Acetylene torch.
Gas is expensive, but if you keep your eye on the used equipment market, you can reduce the cost. (I got extremely lucky, full gas rig for nothing when I found it cleaning out my mother in law's place.)
I would like to add that a welding book I bought warns against using coat hangers for filler since it is typically the poorest quality steel the manufacturer can find.