Do this instead (3 Stick Welding Tips)

good and gentle good and gentle yeah so striking a match would actually be pushing down I'm putting quite a bit of pressure up against my welding rod and the pipe and now to strike it like a match you can just strike it like so see whatever you do do not strike it like a match I have personally gave that advice also strike it like a match but today instead of that I'm going to share with you three things to help you strike up as a beginner stick welder versus striking it like a match and at the end of this video I'm going to weld with my eyes closed or essentially with my hand in front of the puddle like this hey what's up guys welcome to the channel if you're new around here I'm Austin Ross I've been a mobile rig welder for 17 years or so here on this channel I share tips and tricks about welding and also just whatever projects that I may get into on the farm or here in the shop also if you're new around here check out our website AOSS welding.com you can find the grinder holder that you'll see us use in this video this brass soap stone and a few other things over there in our store and for a lot of other things that you may see me use in my videos you can find those on my favorites page they're on my website AOS gloving.com just scroll almost to the bottom and there'll be a black and gray bar looking thing that says my favorites so I was helping my brother-in-law the other day down at the farm doing some weld project some some fence work and we were welding on some used 4 and 1/2 in this is 3 and 1/2 but we were welding on 4 and 1/2 in had some surface rust like this actually a little bit worse and if I remember right we were adding on to a post or something and uh I went to fire up on it and it struck right up and my brother-in-law was like whoa how didd you get it to strike up like that and I was like At first I was like I don't know and as I was welding I got thinking about it I said well I I took a sanding pad a grounding whe like this and I you know I ran around the ends of each piece that I was going to be welding made sure where my ground was was good and uh brushed off you know and so I told him those couple of things and then as I was welding the rest of the day I got thinking you know a lot of people including myself have told others that are learning how to stick weld to just strike it like a match you know and uh as I was welding I I learned that uh I don't strike it like a match in fact I went to the house later and I got a match and I struck the match and I realized that when striking a match there's a lot more pressure you know you got to put some good pressure on that box to strike a match and it's not that way way with a welding rod so my first tip is get comfortable that's the that's very important we hear it all the time with all these welding videos and those of you that are just getting into welding or in welding school get comfortable is one of the biggest things that I can recommend commend because there's 14 in between your stinger and into your rod on most welding rod and sometimes whenever you're new that's real uncomfortable you know so if you need to put it point it down like this if you need to point it out like this or if you're doing overhead you need to point it straight out do whatever you got to do to get comfortable to weld on what you're welding on and not only getting comfortable comfortable position wise but also things that are not mention mentioned very much that I know of are a comfortable welding cap one that fits a comfortable welding hood gloves that fit a comfortable welding shirt all these things matter when it comes to getting comfortable you want to be able to be agile and not to mention whenever things just fit good you just feel good you know so you want to get comfortable clothing number two is what I've already mentioned is making sure that you've got a good connection so on this pipe here what I'm going to going to do is I'm going to take a sanding pad and I'm going to brush it a little bit right here you even want to check your ground you want to make sure that if this is you know all rusted or whatever you want to wouldn't hurt to run a wire brush or a file in here also your connection from your lead to your ground same with your stinger you want all those connections to be good and clean so you got a good clean spot where you're grounded at you even take a wire wheel or a sanding pad to where you're going to be welding all right I brought you in close so you can see the final tip which is be gentle as long as you got a good connection everywhere you're good and comfortable that last tip is be gentle if everything is connected acted good feel like I'm repeating myself all you got to do is barely tap it cuz look at that metal shining through by the way sometimes there will be a welding rod where this flux covers the end of that welding rod but ideally it's not supposed to but if you do run into that you just get a new welding rod or file the end of your welding rod to get that flux off the end because the very end needs to be bare metal because your stinger is touching bare metal here so again good connection but your flux will ground it that's why it's not arcing right now cuz I'm using this as a uh tutorial situation but uh real gentle and by being real gentle like that that's going to help you move slower because you're you're already comfortable all you got to do is barely strike it cuz I feel like a lot of beginners you know if they strike it too hard it just sticks you know that's the biggest issue with you know learn how to stick weld is people hit it and it just sticks you know it wants to stick there and that's frustrating but if you get comfortable make sure you got good connection you just barely strike it that thing will bust off usually and then you can watch it also having your uh heat down a little bit CU if your heat is down you can move slower I've talked about that before but so just barely strike it and then barely lift it off the metal and then you can start moving you can just you got way more time by by turning it down and by being gentle and just get laser focused on what you're welding here you got way more time to to do what you need to with this welding rod just by slowing down and getting all those tips that I already mentioned and just be gentle that's the last tip be real gentle be real gentle all right now let me go turn my welding machine down and turn the lights down and we'll do a little welding all right I want to get you good and close Turn Down the Lights a little bit still got enough light that hopefully you can see my my welding rod another thing you can do is you can actually choke up on your welding rod it's good to practice with it long yeah I guess we'll leave it long but for those of you that need a little a little extra tip there by choking up on your welding rod like so and then you can just bend your welding rod up that'll break the off right there and uh that helps but it's not a bad idea to practice like this so okay nice and gentle and I got it cold so remember but see that allows me to lift it up off the material you just have way more control and with this 6010 this is 18610 you can actually be pretty gentle with it again see It'll fire right off versus 78 which we weld with here in a minute it doesn't fire off that easy so nice and gentle now the more the more you weld you can be a little faster and more aggressive and it's not IDE it's not a bad idea to practice being aggressive you know cuz like I said let's go ahead and switch to some 718 okay here's some 718 so since it's a fresh Rod we'll be gentle with it to start gentle with it for this first time but now we either need to break off the end like so even sometimes when you do that you still got to Peck it pretty hard the next time see so what I want to do is show you a uh example of what striking a match is really like okay so strike a match would actually be pushing down I'm putting quite a bit of pressure up against my welding rod and the pipe and now to strike it like a match you would just strike it like so see see that works but then here's where you got to be gentle again so all this to say is it's really about being gentle on your pressure with stick welding I just had to share that with you because so many people especially if you're at home watching and you're a you know a DIY y welder you've never been to Welden school but you've watched Welden videos and you've heard all these tips but you haven't got a weld machine yet or something and if you've heard that term strike a match this is a little leg up if you will for whenever you do finally get out there and start welding you'll be even more informed about the pressure behind your welding rod the pressure it's all it's all up here how much how much muscle how much how much pressure you're putting some of you this you may not even thought this in depth of how to strike a welding rod you might have heard strike a match and you probably didn't give it two thoughts you know there's nothing wrong with that saying you know but if somebody was real literal like myself and broke things down like I started to do because you YouTu Channel if you break it down you actually go strike a match if you're real literal like that you may be too aggressive when you're starting to weld versus after you watch this video you'll be good comfortable good connections and gentle that's the main key is be gentle light on the hand hold this thing with two two fingers just gentle gentle it's all you need just be gentle just be gentle gentle gent gentle gentle gentle that that easy that easy good and gentle good and gentle yeah gentle with you don't need a lot of aggressiveness he just needs gentle oh yeah look at that boys let's try to weld this with no no looking I can hear it I'm shoving my rod into the metal wow that's incredible I totally missed the missed the line good and gentle boys boys and girls good and gentle I hope this video was helpful I hope you have an awesome weekend if you stuck around to this point in the video I appreciate you like I said go check out our website for helpful tools and resources and if you want to learn more you can check out our online school AOS bling. school to find our online course thanks again for being here and remember learn something every day

Channel: Austin Ross

Views: 204,672

Keywords: Austin ross, autin ross, aaron ross, arosswelding, a ross welding, austin ross welding, austin ross pipeline, stick welding tips for beginners, stick welding tips, don't strike it like a match, stick welding, mobile welding, tip for striking arc, arc welding, smaw

Id: SV2vRJ4CfSw

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024