Welding for dummies

Home Depot carries a book......."Welding Essentials" or something. Buy it and you'll know what to do next.

The owner's manuals for most Lincoln welders include a decent how-to section but I looked yours up on their site and it doesn't so I recommend you look at the one for the Pro-Core 100:

Find the section on page 30 called "Welding Techniques For The Self-Shielded FCAW Process". Not great but good enough to get you started. The best thing you can do to start learning is get some scrap steel and start running beads. Stay away from anything galvanized though.

And in case you didn't get a manual with yours it's:

Technically, no. It's a flux-core welder meaning the wire has a core of flux similar to the flux coating on the outside of rods used with stick/arc welders. The flux shields the weld. A MIG welder uses gas to shield the weld instead. Many can be converted between the two but from looking at your manual it doesn't look like yours can.

Best Regards, Keith Marshall snipped-for-privacy@progressivelogic.com

"I'm not grown up enough to be so old!"

Lincoln's web page has a lot of useful information. Here is a place to start:

Click on the "Home/Hobby/Farm" box and you'll pull up a number of articles that may help you get started, or just browse around ...

Ask around. You can probably find someone close to you that will know how to get you started, and all it might cost you is a couple of brewskies and some brats. If you can find someone who knows how to weld, they can show you more in an hour than you would pick up in a week of reading.

Just a thought.

Steve

I teach welding at CMU. If you live near Pittsburgh I'd be glad to help you out, Brewskies and brats optional...

I live in the great outback of BC Canada, but thanks for the offer. I'm finding the manual suggest in another post very handy. It's like my unit but has an option for gas I'm wondering if Lincoln would sell me that video included with that unit. I'll phone them tomorrow.

Thanks guys for the pointers. I was on the Lincoln site earlier but didn't know what to look for and the manual that came with my unit is terrible.

Have the same welder, wont find anything specific to this machine. What do you wish to know?

Email your questions, I'll be only glad to help.

Bert Newfoundland email: snipped-for-privacy@nf.sympatico.ca

I'm an absolute beginner too and I found this book a great help:

Welder's Handbook by Richard Finch HPBooks 1264 ISBN: 1-55788-264-9

A.B.

Thanks Bert. I've kept your address, I'm not sure if I'm going to even have time to play with this gadget until after Christmas. I finishing up my gift projects (wood) at the moment.