Pulsers, etc

--Had Ernie in my shop yesterday; great fun! There were 5 of us, pretty much hangin' on every word: every time he comes by I learn a fistfull of new hacks. One thing he mentioned is that, even though they've been around for a while nobody seems to have written anything in the way of a comprehensive tutorial on what you can do with a pulser. He did a few of what he calls "stupid welder tricks", but boy they surprised the heck outta me! I've been trying to weld some 1/8" wire thingys and he comes over and welds some 1/16" welding rods together, using the pulser and some insanely high amperage. IIRC he had the pulser set around 500 cycles per second and maybe 10% peak power. Interesting sound and impressive results. I can see I've got a ways to go on my learning curve! --Always good to have Ernie visit and point out blindingly obvious things that shoot right over my head too. I'd been having trouble lately getting a stable arc started with my welder; I just assumed I wasn't as skilled as I thot I was. Turns out that the aluminum tank of argon that the counter guy from Praxxair gave me last month was, in fact, full of CO2 and mislabeled! I never would have known this but Ernie sez that argon is never stored in aluminum tanks, due to the pressure limit on them being half what's needed. (That's the third time Praxxair's f***ed up on gasses I've bought from 'em; the others were easier to spot: empty tanks marked 'full' were the previous mishaps. Time to get an account elsewhere methinks!) --Oh, and I found out why my earlier attempts at TIG brazing failed so miserably: Praxxair sold me the wrong rod, even tho I had explained the application B4 they ordered it special for me! I managed to get the correct stuff from another company before 'class' and, with that and real argon (I'd gotten a spare bottle (fortunately not mislabeled) in case we ran low with all the welding we'd be doing) I finally got the hang of a process I've always wanted to learn.