Top ten gorilla welds I've seen

Is that a copper pipe rising ?

Looks like it was never hot.

Mart>

"By gorry, that'll hold her......"

Cheers,

Bruce in Bangkok (bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

Maybe a Mapps torch and clothes hangers. Did not get it hot enough to flow. Does not look like any MIG weld I have even seen, which would give the thin wire.

maybe that was done by the guy that told me you could stick weld with a car battery.

RCM only

On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:40:50 -0600, the infamous "SteveB" scrawled the following:

Let's see: not hot enough, feed too fast, _and_ bad ground, all at the same time, right? That sure kills the old saying that "Anyone can MIG weld.", doesn't it?

...a bigger idiot shows up.

A buzzbox run off an inadequate generator?

Some of my first welds were that bad until I bought an adequate welder ($30, broken, but 225A).

The leg of our welding bench, where everyone strikes an arc to burn excess mig wire back, looks better than that. ;)

Wes

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very good welder... but I'd be ashamed of a job like that.

That looks like one crappy weld, for sure.

Have you ever seen a MIG job where somebody ran out of gas - - or never even turned it on, in the first place?

That's my guess - - - too much Old Milwaukee, not enough argon. If he had gas, it was only from too many bean-tacos.

Flash

Argon for MIG? The only time I did that was when the supplier gave me a tank by mistake. Welded like crap. Maybe that was it, he used argon.

Steve

Or possibly it was really windy that day. Wind blows the gas away and cools everything.

I had a welding instructor that used to make a comment about piling it up on there until it "looks like bird s*it".

That weld looks like bird s*it to me. Dave

You can with carbon arc and wire

Have you been teaching one of your birds to weld? Nice pictures, by the way!

... and still got it wrong. That is not a gorilla weld. It's a post and socket assembly.

I could have done a better job with oxy/acet and a clothes hanger. Would never have tried it with just mapp.

(I used to be able to patch muffler walls with oxy acet and a clothes hanger)

I have a friend who has a good sized bank of industrial batteries (previously used as computer emergency power supply and obtained as scrap as they were replaced on a strict time in service basis) that he charges using roof mounted solar cells. He uses this battery bank for both stick and TIG welding as well as some other domestic usage more experimental than necessary as he is not 'off grid'.

IIRC he has the batteries wired through some kind of series-parallel switch to give him 3x12=36 (actually more like 40) volts for welding. He claims it is very smooth and it certainly is 'pure DC'. I doubt that he does much big rod work, but it is a good example of the application of alternate power.

Good luck, YMMV