I learned how to gas weld 47 years ago. But for the last 20 or so years I hardly ever do any gas welding. TIG and MIG rule in my shop. But just a few minutes ago I needed to weld a nut onto an exhaust stud and my arc welding leads were too short to reach the backhoe. But my torch has long hoses. So I gas welded the nut on and the job was easy and turned out well. The old muscle memory just came back and the weld is not only strong it also looks good. So I guess I can still cut the mustard. And even spread it around a little. Eric
Back around 198X give or take I ran afoul of a local DPS officer who already had a bad reputation as a hardass. If I hadn't had a witness I think I might have gone to jail the night I missed a gear out in front of his house and over revved my pickup truck. The truck with not so great exhaust. When he called me at work the next day to ask what time we closed the store I knew I wasn't going to get any time to fix it before he came after me again.
I asked a farm mechanic I knew if he would patch up the holes in my exhaust pipe. He said, "No Bobby I won't. But I'll teach you how to do it yourself." He and I met up in the workshop we had behind the grocery store that evening and he showed me how to patch exhaust pipe and even muffler skins with clothes hanger and a cutting torch. He wouldn't even let me use a welding head. He said after I learned to do it with what was handy I could worry about getting fancy. No flux. Just heat and and make small circles with the torch head. Mostly on the thicker wire keeping the muffler skin and the wire about the same color until they flow together. Then you do the other end and if you get it right the wire parts a just as it flows into the skin. Then you lay another one next to the first one until you cover the hole, and finally you flow them altogether the same way. The best part is your duty cycle is 100% until you run out of gas. Made all kinds of parts with a torch after that. It was a great skill to learn. Thank you Ron Partee where ever you are today.
I haven't done any of that kind of welding in over 20 years, but I can still feel the slow steady motion of making tiny circles and watching the metal.
After buying a MIG I practiced until I could close a quarter-sized hole without a copper backing plate. That taught me the value of fitting and welding a plug instead.
I remember Arc Brazing with Copper Coated Electrodes....in my bedroom!
The headpipe on my Jeep got a biiiiiiiit rusty, see...the kewel thing was t hat the CO generated by the Montgomery Ward Home Arc Welder fitted with Mon tgomery Ward's Carbon Arc Torch and Electrodes would not ... not quite kill ya, but it was powerful good, lacking an O from being CO2, at stripping O from Fe2O3 and other rusts, and leaving shiny ferrous behind. Wow.
You would just glaze over it, melting into the surface.
Ever see a metglas? Like that.
Then you'd withdraw...real slow like...because if you didn't, Quench!
But it would work real well, it would sort of magically derust and repair s teel or iron of all kinds, and it didn't frighten my neighbors, well not to o much, I told them I was photographing nudes with a harsh light I got from an old movie house. Hah!
And if that metal had rusted through, this was the best way to get it ready for the coat hanger wire build up described by others. A strongly reducing flame. You might try it with fuel gas but I suspect you'll carbonize the m etal. The flame hits the metal. The arc heats by radiation and the CO is mo re of an envelope, the pooooor and I mean dirt farm ain't gonna buy it diet poooor man's MIG / TIG. What fun. Jazzbox. Build one from a Microwave.
Doug Admin AT Replikon DOT Net also keeps the Spam down Like fer lunch
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