Advice: cleaning/prep pre-tacked workpiece

[Richard.]

I'd be doing a wee little manual pulse on the button to finish the point end. Never thought of actually doing it all on a long downslope before - nice one mate

Takes a few practice runs to match the slope down accurately with your pace if you haven't done it. I run on a little longer and step back after finished Afew mm to smooth off the end dab and avoid a crator. More important with Alu mind but you get in the habit with both.

 

[Ali]

Did this last weekend, but it's been a busy week and haven't had time to update.

I took back the corners of the 'knife-edge' a little bit - in my eyes, more aesthetically pleasing anyway, no difference to strength as far as I can see, and makes things a little easier in terms of heat.



I also found some chunks of aluminium to draw some of the heat away, particularly in this area. To be fair, this did seem to work.



After setting up I did a couple of practise runs again, and found that my torch hand was all over the place. I couldn't keep it steady at all. I'm right handed but I don't really have a dominant hand when it comes to TIG and a few other things (I'm usually equally bad with both), but my best welds recently have been holding the torch in my left hand and feeding rod with my right.

I'd deliberately done this at a time when I'd have a few hours to spare (rare) in the morning, whereas I usually do my messing about at the end of the day. Tried everything to find a relaxed position, but couldn't get comfortable. Then swapped over to having the torch in my right hand and feeding with my left. Practise runs looked better, so I decided to crack on.

I got the job done, but it was a stressful affair. My left hand doesn't seem to be as good at feeding the rod as my right after all, and I kept bumping the electrode and having to stop. There's 14 welds here, and I must have made at least that many trips to the grinder! There's more undercutting than I'm used to seeing on my welds too - it's all driving.

I should have given up and come back to it, but I've had these on my bench for weeks - I've got a toddler and a baby at home and don't have much spare time at the moment.

I'm confident in the strength of the welds (for what they're for), but not happy with the appearance. Appearance is the main reason I'm learning TIG, and the fact that this was the first functional bit of work, and that it was for someone else made things worse!

I'm not as unhappy with them as I was when I'd just done them, and I suppose you have to learn somehow.

With regard to travel / comfort - a lot of the videos I seem to watch show the weldor pinching just below the neck of the torch with thumb and forefinger - this looks so much easier, but the torches must be really slim! I just can't get that position with my torch. I bought a WP9, as Doubleboost seemed to have the same issue in one of his RTech vids but mine is physically the same size - I don't get it. I know I can do it with my big lump of an air-cooled WP26, it'll just take time. More practise needed. Then more practise.