If you want to know about a bad flash burn, try using an industrial plasma cutter. The guy at work used it for not even 2 minutes wearing only those oxy torch goggles, looked like a red raccoon for the next four days.

 

I just hobby weld myself. I always put on everything I have and I STILL have gotten burnt. Through my gloves and my jacket with nothing burning straight through. It sucks. I can't imagine how bad it would have benn NOT having gear on. Good posts.

 

You can wrap yourself head to toe, and hot slag STILL finds a way in, lol

 

 

Yup.....





This was a burn that resulted when the slag went right through NOMEX.

Another good point to note, pay attention to your surroundings when you weld. If you're welding outside, make sure you're on the concrete, gravel, dirt, or something that won't readily burn. Welding over top of grass that "crunches" like a bag of chips is asking for a nice brush fire to happen.

Make sure there's not puddles of WATER all over the place either. You're dealing with a lot of electricity (with most welding equipment), don't take a chance of getting zapped... it won't be pretty.

 

My worst was a bb in the ear, luckily not in my ear canal, but still hurt like a beyotch. The other one thats happened a couple times is welding in regular shoes and getting hot slag between the tongue/laces and it goes down in your shoe.



Thin nomex welding shirts or FR shirts wont do jack for mig/stick slag, ive also found out the hard way. Get a nice mid-weight canvas welding jacket or set of welding leathers.

Nomex will just make sure you dont completely catch on fire once the slag finds its way in.

 

finally bought a replacement gun for my hobart 140, trigger wire broke some where along the line so to limp it a long i bypassed the gun externally straight to the trigger. haha

switching to gas an solid wire as well(looooong over due)

 

True, but the Nomex I was referring to was actually a de-certified Wildland Fire suite. It's a bit thicker than your average FR or NOMEX shirts... but yeah... still not rated for molten metal. It is nice knowing though that you're not going to burn down in your shirt lol....





Must be a Hobart thing. Buddy of mine has a handler 140 and the button went out on that. He wired up some sort of momentary switch up on the handle and uses it that way. I asked him if he was going to get a new gun he was like "Meh. Works just fine like this. Plus I'm used to it now."

Cant argue with his welds either lol...

 

i might have left it but the bypass it 2 chords joined at the middle and some time they pull out or contact one another so i end up with run away wire feed

 

lol... yeah that's a PITA

 

Ok guys I'm an amateur (as in I've welded twice with a beat up stick welder at my works shop) and I'm looking for some advice, there is a welder for super cheap on CL curious if I should try to refine my skills a little with this before moving on to something better.
Here's a link to the welder in question.
https://medford.craigslist.org/tls/5996930606.html

 

that's a pretty good deal, even if the rods haven't been stored properly, you should still be able to get a few good welds out of that machine.

for the 50 bux, why not. then later, if you come across a lincoln tombstone for cheap, you can upgrade.

 

on another note...

 

Some of the cooler weld art I've seen.

 

Agreed on both.