How to Butt Weld Sheet Metal Patch Panels - TIG Welding Tips & Tricks!!

[Music] today's video is going to be on take welding what do you do when you want to tig weld a patch panel into a fender into anything sheet metal on a car for me my technique might be different than other people's you know there's a million ways to skin a cat but this is how i do it i make sure that my fit up is super super tight i would take welding it really matters if your gap gets a little bit wide it's easier to burn through especially with thinner material so you make sure that your fit is perfect 90 of tig welding is just making it fit really nice basically once i line it all up i'm going to tack it in a couple spots i'm going to line it up i'm going to make sure that the panels are fitting you know together nicely panel alignment i can't use my other finger because it's holding the camera you don't want one panel to be above the other when you're installing the patch so tack it and then i get the tacks closer together until they're about a half an inch to three quarters of an inch maximum distance apart from each other closer to better really just fusion tacks work fine as long as your fitment is uh is very tight then you'll be able to fusion tack it once everything is tacked then i get to hammer and dolly that area and make sure that it's something you can access the back of you hammer and dolly to make sure that your panel fitment is perfect so um dolly on the back side hammer on the outside and tapping along it to make sure that everything is basically on the same plane now once all those tacks are evenly spaced apart they don't have to be super even but they just got to be tight to make sure that as you're welding it the panel doesn't warp once that's done you know you might see people mig welding patches and and they'll just keep tacking it until it's all up i mean i do that too in places where i can't use tig weld to get the backside but with tig welding once everything's tacked and the fitment is tight and everything's tacked and you've you know smoothed it all out you just weld it start at one end and just weld it it's gonna distort and that's fine all that's gonna happen is that it's gonna shrink a little bit now that's why it's so important to have really consistent panel fitment is because when you weld it all the way you want it to distort evenly if possible you know it's gonna distort for sure it's going to shrink that's what heat does is it shrinks it's nice if it's super even you did a tight fit you welded the whole thing and then it all distorted evenly and then now you just have to hammer it right on the weld to stretch that weld back out and then your panel should align that is the technique now here's how i do it [Music] all right so we got this piece fitting pretty good takes a little bit of filing you know to make sure that it's it's as tight as it can be there it is you know super tight now it's time to tack you know butt weld clamps people like using them i personally in this scenario um i'm not gonna use them because they do leave a little bit of a gap you know i can get it even tighter if i don't use them and these fit really really good i'm just going to hold them in place like hold the patch as tight in as i can and wherever it's touching and get a couple little fusion tacks to hold it where it's going to be make sure that it's aligned and then tack tack tack tack tack tack tack like i said before until they're nice and tight and then we weld it so before we get into this i'm just using a 1 16 2 38 that's the red tipped electrode sharpened up nice i'm running about 70 amps so that i can sort of stab it a little bit and get my fusion tacks as well as dial it back for my full welds as far as filler rod i just use the 035 wire out of my mig welder even bio4o in the store but my store locally doesn't stock it so i find this stuff works great thin wire makes it nice and easy here we go [Music] [Music] what's up so finished up the welding and the uh smoothing out of this fender here it turned out pretty decent i think everything does need bondo though i want you guys to think this is like metal finished where somebody you know pick and filed it and uh made it so it needed absolutely no filler this will need filler it's to be expected all you know nice things need a little bit of filler still but uh it's as close as i can get it i'm pretty happy with the repair so that's it for tig welding 101 on sheet metal make sure that your gaps are tight everything's consistent make sure everything's clean and uh just do your best and smooth it out after that's all there is [Music]

Channel: Make It Kustom

Views: 80,194

Rating: 4.9398084 out of 5

Keywords: Make It Kustom, makeitkustom, kustom, tig welding, how to tig weld, tig welding tips, tig welding tips and tricks, butt welds, butt welding, tig welding patch panels, patch panels, body panels, sheet metal, tig welding 101, metal fabrication, custom fabrication, mustang, fox body mustang, fender repair, hot rod shop, body work cars, tig welding for beginners, welding tips and tricks, how to weld, hot rod builds, fabrication, automotive restoration, auto restoration

Id: pvVShEpR7ZA

Length: 7min 50sec (470 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021