Basslicks

x2 on that. Not bad at all... either turn up your wire feed speed or reduce your travel speed. Practice practice practice... half the battle is just getting used to your machine and what the best settings are for your technique.

Get yourself a piece of 1/4" thick steel cut into a small (3"x 5") to medium (8" x 11") rectangle and run a "pad of beads".... just bead after bead after bead. Aim your electrode at the toe of the previous bead each time. Keep doing that until the coupon is full of beads, then dunk it in water, flip it over, and fill up the other side.

Photojared

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm working on getting some scrap from some buddies to practice with. Its going to take me a while to get to a point where I'll be able to do well, but I'm super excited to learn the craft.

Here's all of my future projects:
Full set of frame stiffeners
Full header back exhaust for my LS swap
High steer and OTA track bar

Rogue4x4

Golden advice. Also, after you can lay down a good looking pad of beads in the flat position, then try lap joints, butt joints, and so on in different positions, flat, horizontally, vertical up and down, then overhead.

Most of your bead looks ok, with a few exceptions, so try turning up the feed a tad, then work on your travel speed. You got this...also try a straight drag and/or push, and watch the puddle. Then try again with manipulation.

Rogue4x4

The puddle is everything. Know what's going on in the puddle, and you're golden

Basslicks

lol... thanks man... Ima learnin'

Martlor13

A bit off topic from welding, but have you guys heard of the rise of steel prices that is happening?

my buddy works at a tractor dealershio and sells trailers as well. He showed me the notices from the manufactures thatvsaid effective in march, all trailers were rising in price from $400 to $600 per trailer due to rsing steel costs. This was from all 3 manufactures and a tractor implemnt supplier as well.

this effecting any of you guys? I know alot of you guys weld or fabricate for a living.

TeXJ

I've heard steel was going way up, but the price at the steel yard, to take steel in, hasn't really come up yet

5-Speed

I believe it is something about a new tariff on imported metals. Mr Trump wants us to only use real US metal only. Prices of aluminum went up too but steel prices were affected more.

Photojared

I'm a real estate agent for a home builder. Rising material costs are increasing our costs quite a bit

Martlor13

i was a little shocked to hear that it was a $400 increase on a 16 foot utility trailer...seems like a hefty spike in steel prices to me. Crazy

XJwonders

Yeah. DOM tubing doubled in cost. I used to buy a stick of 20' of 1.5" DOM 1/4 wall thickness for $150. It now cost $300 per stick

5-Speed

Does anyone else hate welding cast steel?

TrailerTrash

Yes very much so. I won't do it on anything that could kill me if it fails lol no suspension parts or stuff like that. I am not good enough to be doing that

5-Speed

I know what you mean. I am slightly scared about it. By no means am I a professional welder. But I have been tig welding long enough to feel pretty comfortable with it. The rest of my car has stayed together and it was half welded with my under powered mig. All the important stuff like the arms and steering were tig welded though.

SatiricalHen

Ya'll would really love one guys rig I ride with, that thing is sketchy. He thinks he can do his own fab work and he really shouldn't. Looks like someone threw bird poop at the seams. The track bar mount is peeling off the axle and already broke off the frame side once

Edit:
Here's a picture of some of his Helen Keller fab