New member from El Paso,Tx.

[craigsmall]

I would like to introduce myself.
My name is Craig from El Paso, Tx.
I am currently working on a 1954 Chevy pu.
The body is rusty but straight and fairly nice.
The cab corners are rusted out, however.
I have purchased reproductions and will be welding them in later.
Since I have a MIG welder, I was thinking that I would use the technique of spot welding across the seam, skipping around and using an air nozzle to cool it.
1. Do you think that using wet rags laid on the sheetmetal above and below the HAZ would be a better alternative than the air nozzle?
2. Is there a special kind of mig wire that is softer and easier to planish than the standard mig .023 wire?

[HEATNBEAT]

Hi and welcome Craig!

[Peter Tommasini]

Welcome to the site Craig
Peter

[invision]

Hi Craig Welcome to the site.

When you get a moment throw up a few photos of your '54. Will be great to see the project.

Skipping around is a great practice, though I've found that using compressed air to cool the weld seems to make it harder and the area more brittle when working the sheet metal after. While others may disagree with this, I've found from experience that letting the tack/weld air cool till I can put my hand on it then move onto the next spot works quite well. It may seem slow and tedious, but in the end the result speaks for itself. So basically, tack the panel until all the tacks are about 1" apart, then move around the panel welding it up 1" at a time, grind the proud off(excess material created by the addition of wire) till it's just above the surrounding metal, planish and repeat... Running the machine hot(but not too hot) also helps in reducing the amount of time it takes to fuse the metal and therefore keeps your HAZ area smaller. Practice on some similar gauge metal to get a feel for how it'll react and what settings work the best.

Here is a link that you may find helpful for Mig Welding.

http://allmetalshaping.com/showthread.php?t=3487

A lot of guys out there TIG or Gas weld their metal. But if a MIG is all you have then that's fine too. Just takes a little more work to finish the metal.

Hope this helps.

[David Gardiner]

Hi Craig, welcome to the site, mig will join the metal and there are ways to keep the distortion down. I have tried most things. The real difficulty comes when you try to metal finish a joint. It is much harger work than other methods and the welds tent to crack sometimes causing more work. For speed I prefer to gas weld. I am not saying that mig cannot be used just that it is harder to get a good result when metal finishing.

David