Al From Iowa

[Al Brase]

I'm new to this group, but first witnessed a good body man bump out some dents over 50 years ago. It was amazing. I'm mostly into straightening and rust repair of bent cars (mostly VW type 2 and Porsches) but also antique motorcycles and trying to learn how to form repair parts of sheet steel to repair them.
Several years ago I decided I needed an anvil and was lucky to pick up an old Peter Wright (around 140lb) for not so much money. I learned a lot about them afterwards. I have a 4 ft Chicago box and pan brake and a Chinese shrinker stretcher (1 each) that I need to build a floor mount for. Oxy acetylene torches including an old Smiths Airline torch with shutoff lever that leaves a pilot burning. A Miller mig welder.
A lot of nice old body hammers and dollies, Fairmont mostly, but pretty nice ones.
I'm pretty good at gas welding. I can chase a rust hole around an old muffler and get it sealed up. I like to say it is the only worthwhile thing I learned in college, but there are probably some other things I can't think of.
I have a mig welder and I think it is a good thing if I want to build something in my shop, but it's just not controllable enough to suit me to weld body metal.
I once picked up a Linde Plasma welder and I think it would be ideal for welding thin gauge stuff, but I need to figure it out. It needs Argon for plasma and Argon -Helium for shield gas I think. I have heard torch part consumables may be hard to find, so might hit a roadblock there. In the Linde sales literature it said it could be set low enough to weld aluminum foil! These were mostly used by the aerospace industry to weld titanium and other exotics.
Enough for now.
Al

[Peter Tommasini]

Hi Al welcome to the forum
Peter

[Jere]

Hello Al and welcome to the site.

Jere