What Do You Need To Start Metal Fabrication? (All The Basic Tools)

michael gallally asks from watching you i've decided to try some of this stuff myself i have a basic drill press and a standing band saw need to buy a welder but not sure what to get to start there are some basic tools required to get started fabricating at home i get asked often what tools i would recommend for the beginner fabricator today we're going to touch on some of the basics and help you determine exactly what you need when i thought about doing this video first thing that came to mind was the folks over the last 16 months or so of me having a youtube channel that will make comments like hey man um i like the video but this is not exactly a beginner project because you're using a 3000 welder or a plasma cutter and those folks aren't wrong but i wouldn't exactly call them right it's true that i do have a lot of really nice equipment and i've got a big fancy shop to work in but this is not what i needed as a new fabricator this is not what you need as a new fabricator there's a key ingredient that you need in order to be a good fabricator and it has nothing to do with how much money you have i know many of you guys are catching on to where i'm going already and the most important tool that i'm talking about of course is your brain your creativity your wants to get the job done we're going to talk about real tools in this video don't get me wrong but i know that i need to lead with this because there are a lot of people out there because i read the comments that do think that i can't do this unless i have a really expensive set of tools to do it and i'm here to tell you if you shop around you buy used tools you buy the cheap pipe kinker instead of the nice tube bender and if you're creative with these tools you figure out your own method to make it work you can build the cool stuff that you want to build i have been doing it for a really long time and i started out with the cheapest grinder in the cheapest 110 welder i could afford and over time i have slowly built up all the stuff that you see here in this shop i want to be super duper clear about this i am not saying that you can get the exact same results with inexpensive tools as you can with something higher end you definitely get some different features some different functions some different usability whenever you invest more money in a tool but i am saying that you can still build really cool stuff if you design a workaround so on one hand i've got a tubing bender that costs a little bit over 100 bucks and on the other hand i've got a tuning vendor that cost a little over a thousand bucks they both bent front hoops for this bumper and you don't notice a quality difference until you get real close and you start to look at what a cheap bender will do to tube and it has better results with pipe like we were talking about you can find workarounds it but you will still get little indentations there are some less than desirable things that will happen with a really inexpensive bender whereas with something that's a little bit more expensive you definitely get a better looking more professional bend with these things in mind let's talk about our list the first thing i recommend you get is an angle grinder if you already covered the basics like a tape measure or sharpie then an angle grinder is definitely the next step this is a tool that can not only cut and grind but it can help shape different types of material even wood and it's a very versatile tool that all these years later and after all of these new tools that i have i still go back to the angle grinder constantly i'm a big enough fan of the grinder that i actually own three of them and the reason that i own three of them is for workflow i want to keep a fast-paced workflow so to start i would recommend just getting a regular run-of-the-mill middle of the road angle grinder like this one this one's probably 60 or 70 bucks and this is definitely middle of the road a higher end four and a half inch would be this guy right here and this is a higher amp and the higher amp grinders are going to be a little bit better whenever you're grinding a ton and it'll help keep from overheating it's got a little bit more power doesn't get bogged down quite as easy and then this big bad mamma jamma is what i'd like to use if i need to cut material quickly or if i need to grind it quickly because it's got a bigger disc it moves a little bit faster and i've noticed that these usually last a really really long time i mean this thing is built super beefy i think you can actually put a nine inch on here which i never have but if i remember correctly it came with a separate uh shield for a nine inch but what i would recommend for a beginner is just get something middle of the road get something that's flexible what fabrication basically is is taking raw materials and turning it into projects you've got to be able to cut you got to build a shape you got to be able to grind so this is an important tool one of the most expensive fabrication tools you will invest in is your welder i'm using a 3 000 welder from miller and this machine is outstanding for a number of reasons but i started with a used 110 welder that i bought for 180 bucks the machine that i'm using right now is the miller multimatic 220 ac dc and i have a full review on this on the channel if this is something you guys are interested in for beginners beginner budget usually does not include a 3 000 welder but if you're someone i've had a number of people say hey i just graduated high school or i just got out of the military or whatever the situation is i want to take on welding as a career what's a good machine to start with i think that if you're serious enough to look at welding from a career standpoint this is honestly a great way to start the machine isn't giant but it has got giant capabilities and one of the biggest challenges that i had whenever i started welding was trying to dial in the controls and i just fought it like crazy and what's so nice about this machine is you put 3 16 if that's what you're welding you set your uh your wire thickness and if you if you think it's a little bit cold you can turn it up a little bit if you think it's a little bit hot you can turn it down a little bit but it's so easy to dial in your controls with a machine like this so for the rest of you that don't have three grand to just drop on a machine as a beginner welder don't worry you still have a lot of other options like i've already mentioned i started with a really inexpensive 110 unit so it wasn't very powerful it was like century or it was a brand that was like available at autozone and i bought it used from a guy that i worked with for 180 bucks that wasn't a great deal but it's what i could afford and it came with a bottle and whatnot so it was enough to get me started now with that welder even though it wasn't powerful if i preheated what i was doing if i um if i chamfered all my edges before i started to weld i could take advantage of every bit of energy that that welder had to offer and i could easily build a front bumper like this now i didn't build this front bumper this just came with the discovery and i've always thought it needed a hoop so that's why we added a hoop today but you could easily build a bumper like this with a cheap 110 welder and you can really maximize your dollar if you do start out with a cheap welder just know that you're going to have way more time practicing trying to dial in your settings and trying to get everything good to go right out of the gate whereas if you step up and you start to buy a more powerful or more expensive welder it's usually a lot easier to use for a beginner i think it goes without saying that if you want to weld you need more than just a welder so there's a whole bunch of little accessories that i recommend and i'm just going to go from my left your right all the way over to the other side and we're going to talk about the basics that i think you should get in order to dive in head first and start welding stuff so i've got a whole bunch of different size magnets these are so handy for just connecting different pieces of material together while you tack it up you know or if you want to do it at 90 or you want to do it a 45 these are handy for multiple reasons then you've got a whole bunch of different size clamps i've got a whole bunch of small clamps these are all like harbor freight or equivalent clamps some larger ones same deal it's nice to be able to clamp material together in more than just one or two spots sometimes especially if it's like thinner sheet metal or something like that it's nice to be able to run like eight ten clamps around an edge so as you're welding it nothing wants to like move at least it doesn't seem to move as much for me when i have just clamps all over the place also i've got big big mouth clamps like these these are for wood for woodworking but they just they came with this little chunk of rubber i haven't pulled the rubber off all of them yet because the rubber melts but home depot black friday these were like 10 or 15 bucks for the whole pack of them and clamps are so handy you just it's good to have extra ones around c-clamps i have never bought one brand new every one of these you see here has either been had from a garage sale or a swap meet or something like that and these usually are super cheap at places like garage sales like a dollar for a giant clamp and stuff like that so i try to pick up as many clamps as i can just because i think they're so handy to have now proper ppe gloves are super important you will get sunburn on your skin if you have exposed skin and you weld it's really bright light i've had so many burns on my necks and arms and stuff when i was younger and i didn't wear full cover and full ppe whenever i tack i usually use thinner gloves just because it's easier for me to handle the material and hold it there because bigger gloves are a little more cumbersome whenever i go back and i finish weld i usually break out the big boys here this is a slag hammer so for those of you who are new there are multiple times in metal working where you have slag and this is nice because you can just kind of chip it off if you're using a flux core or if you're welding with stick welder you get a whole bunch of stuff on top that you can knock off with the back side of this so and if you're using a plasma cutter this is nice to chip off the slag on the back side of your cut with a plasma cutter or even a torch these i didn't know existed for the first couple years that i was welding again i taught myself so this is so valuable and i think that if you buy anything with your welder aside from your welding mask and your gloves this these are so important these are just regular welding pliers a bunch of different companies make them i will throw a link to i'll throw together an amazon shopping cart with all this stuff in it so that'll be in the description if you're interested in any of these items and i will definitely be putting these right there at the top of the list because it's like 15 bucks or whatever these cost now and this has made all these different shapes and everything are made to clamp and work and clean different parts of your nozzle on your mig gun uh so handy very important i would definitely not start without these then i have some nozzle gel this is nice to keep your nozzle clean and uh this is like 15 bucks and it lasts forever almost and it helps keep the slag from building up inside the nozzle makes it a little bit easier to clean then i have various ways of measuring angles with metal working it's really important to be able to mirror angles from one side to another if you're building like a step or a slider on one side of a vehicle how nice would it be to be able to zero it out and then whenever you go do the other side you can zero that out as well or if you want to tilt it up at 20 degrees or 10 degrees just you can do the same thing at the other side because you have an angle finder so there's more to metal working than these basic tools you're seeing here but i think that this is a really good shotgun list of stuff that you could go out and get and most of this stuff you can get used if you shop around and you can get into welding relatively inexpensive and have a bunch of tools to help you get started now that we've covered how to stick metal together we need to talk about how you cut it apart there are various ways to cut steel to cut aluminum to cut brass to cut whatever metal it is that you're working with so now i want to run through real quick and show you the various options that i have in the shop that i think work really well this is my full size band saw and i don't use it very often i just keep a wood blade on it and i use it for aluminum it cuts aluminum very fast it's very accurate i love it for that kind of thing but even when i was using steel blades i wasn't super impressed at how well it is at cutting steel now my swag off-road port-a-band table is a different story you can get great metal blades for a port-a-band setup and what this does is it converts your port-a-band to a normal bandsaw with this table then if you need to use the porta-ban again you can just pull it back off and you've got a portable bandsaw which is pretty slick so we're clearly getting into a little bit beyond basic uh tooling so this is stuff that is for someone that's a little bit more advanced someone who takes a little bit more serious but if it's something that you enjoy doing a lot these are great tools to look into and this is one that i use a ton another one that i used a ton that i haven't really used until um i don't know i didn't really think i needed one of these until the company evolution sent me one and now you will watch me use this in every video i'm not paid to use it they just sent me one said hey if you like it then enjoy it use it in your videos and this thing cuts i mean one inch steel tube whatever it doesn't matter it cuts at all it cuts aluminum this thing is awesome and again if you've watched any of my videos you've seen me use this a lot in the last six months so this is definitely one of my favorites it's a little bit expensive i don't know if it's a good beginner tool but if you want to be able to cut tube and things super straight or even cut them at an angle and you want it to be done fast this is a great tool to have another tool that i used to use but i don't use very often anymore is my nibbler now this is an interesting little tool it's super inexpensive let's see if i can get it open here and you hook it up to a drill and then it just as the drill spins this part right here you can see that little guy going up and down and it just nibbles off little bits of material it's pretty slick you can cut circles you can cut straight whatever i want to say it's like 30 or 40 bucks that might even be cheaper than that but these are on amazon i'll throw i'll throw all this stuff in the cart of course but this nibbler is a pretty handy tool that i don't use too often but it is really nice to be able to break out a tool like this if if you have a situation that calls for it another thing that i use um probably more than a lot of people who do metal fab is just a normal jigsaw a jigsaw is something that you see all the time in woodworking you just don't see it a whole lot in the shop but a wood blade on a jigsaw cuts aluminum beautifully it cuts very well and if you switch it out to a metal blade i think that this is one of the best ways to trim away around fenders for big tires this is a great tool to have and again super common a lot of people inherit it from their grandpa you know what i mean and they're not very expensive if you need to go buy one new but again this is another tool that you will find at almost any garage sale because a lot of garages in america have one of these just sitting in a box now this used to be my favorite tool of all time until i got the porta table portaband table and the evolution power saw i still use this a lot whenever i need to cut material just kind of just on the ground or something like that if you need to cut like a 20-foot stick of tube in half this is great for that but man this tool it cuts very well it cuts very clean but it doesn't cut very fast and once i got a hold of the power saw i just no longer use this but a porta ban is something that is worth looking into because of its portability and i mean you can cut anything you need to with it you can cut chain you can cut cable you can cut just square tube round tube it's a great tool very multi-purpose so it's certainly worth looking into now the last cutting tool i want to talk about today is the plasma cutter the plasma cutter is something that has gotten so inexpensive very recently and so small so this is a higher end plasma cutter i want to say this is like around 1500 bucks i can't remember now you can get them down to like three or four hundred dollars now the big difference is going to be how thick a material you can cut how available your consumable parts are and then how often do you run through your consumables i have had this plasma cutter for a year and a half if you watch my channel you've seen me use it in a ton of videos i am on the original set of consumables inside of this plasma cutter and it still works great so i have a whole bunch of spares that i will i will put in there once i need to but the nice thing about a higher end plasma cutter is that you don't go through consumables near as often so this is a tool that is again it's probably for your more advanced metal worker and fabricator not necessarily your beginner but if this is something you want to make a career you want to start fabricating things out of your shop or out of your garage or whatever the case may be this is a tool that is worth looking into and you can go from mild to wild just like anything else you can choose the 300 unit to get started and then eventually upgrade to something like this or if you're like me and you take this very serious and you want to use it all the time this is a great way to go now we need to talk about drilling drilling is very important it's just as important as cutting or welding or i guess we did touch on tube bending a little bit drilling can go mild wild just like anything else you can use a hand drill or you can step up to a drill press and to me a drill press is absolutely worth every penny i got my first small drill press for about 50 bucks actually not about i got it for 50 bucks on craigslist and i got it over a decade ago i use it all the time it is one of those tools that i bought and i never look back it's about the best 50 bucks i've ever spent now there are some projects where the smaller tabletop drill presses aren't quite big enough for the job so maybe three years ago somewhere in there i went out and i bought it's a hundred dollars for a used uh stand-up really nice and tall drill press from like the 60s i think it was like in a shop class or something like that and i ended up buying it off a guy at a garage sale so again these are all tools that you can get used and a lot of times things like drill presses have a really long life so i haven't had any issues with either one of my drill presses i just replaced the belt in one of them and that's it these make your bits last way longer they make your holes way straighter and they take out so much headache it's way easier to do use hole saws or anything of that nature if you have a drill press so again to start though you only need basic tools you can definitely still drill with just a regular hand drill but as you start to expand your skills and your shop and your interests it's definitely worth investing in a drill press this video wasn't supposed to feel like this but filming it i feel like i'm just giving you guys a shop tour that's not what i'm intending what i'm intending is to show those of you who are new some new tools that you could look into or give you some thoughts about some of the tools that i use um but i could be out here all night just showing you random tools in the shop you know cheers and presses and press brakes and my compressor room and all this stuff but i don't think that initially pertains to the beginner fabricator i think that if you look at this video and you just distill it down to its basic essence it's like if you have a drill a welder and a grinder you can do a lot of stuff i mean a lot of stuff if you're creative and make sure you have ppe i can't stress this enough for guys that are new whenever i would have apprentices i made sure that i was on them about ppe because it's super important you don't want to lose an eye because you want to grind a fender so hearing protection eye protection all that stuff is important and i think that's about it i didn't really talk about welding helmet i use an auto darkening i highly recommend getting a good auto darkening welding helmet that a welding helmet is something that you could use seriously for like 10 or 20 years if you take care of it so buy ones cry once get something decent we're talking about your eyes they're super important so if you enjoyed the video give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you haven't already i've got a bunch of how-to content on here usually it's not this kind of video usually you just watch me build a bunch but every once in a while i do videos like this too if you've ever learned anything any of my videos you want to help support the channel you go to thunderlifestyle.com we have t-shirts hats net gators stickers all kinds of stuff my wife's always designing new swag so make sure you check out see what we have on there we also have a patreon link there as well if you want to follow me on social media i'm at your lifestyle nate we'll see you next time you

Channel: Dirt Lifestyle

Views: 184,989

Keywords: how to weld, mig welding, metal fabrication, how to, fabrication tools, metal working tools, getting started welding, welding tools for beginners, metal fabrication techniques, welding for beginners, metal working, welding 101, mig welding for beginners, learn how to weld, mig welding basics, mig welding techniques, how to weld metal for beginners, mig welding sheet metal, mig welding tips and tricks, how to weld with a wire feed welder, metal fabrication 101

Id: akcMSruNAF8

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020