Reddit reviews Welding Manual Haynes TECHBOOK

Okay. Mansplanation time. TLDR-It's probably worth the time. Sounds like you really want to be there. So you should be there. For maximum awesome points get a diving certificate. Anyway.

Go buy a welder. By the way, you would become a weldor. The welder is the tool. You would be the weldor. Anyway, a MIG (metal inert gas) welder would be the the thing to start with. They're pretty cheap to start with, and also the easiest. If you haven't already, go buy a Haynes Welding Manual. Do that first. Read the thing.

Blue collar jobs are a lot like programming. There's a heavy emphasis on the self taught. If you went to school, they look at you funny. Like somebody had to make you learn. How good can you be? I didn't say they were right. That's just how they tend to think.

You can go to school, and probably should, but you can also score a MIG of your own and just start practicing. And that's what they want to see. They want to see the proof that you just HAD to. $200 WILL buy you a brand new MIG welder. You can't do much with that, except learn to weld sheet metal like a boss, which will get you a job. Sheet is thin and it burns through easy.

See, if you just go get a 200 dollar MIG welder and some scrap, a book, and a place to practice, and get at it, you'll either confirm your talent, and then be ready for school, or find out that you suck at it, and actually hate it. Then you can put the MIG welder on Craigslist.

Fuckers talk shit, but don't let them fool you. It's a sausage party up in there. Not too many ladies. They'll want you around. It's just weird when you look around the shop and it's just dude city. Makes you feel fucked up. Like the thing you care about professionally is some anathema to women for a reason you don't understand.

It's just that dudes always talk shit. I'll skip the thesis on why.

If you go into it, you'll be a pioneer (in 2014, ain't that some bullshit) but it sounds like you really wanna be there anyway, so you should go. Really that's the bottom line. You're all about it, you have to go for it. If the whole thing is just a pile of suck, then you can drop it with no regrets.

So go get a cheap MIG. Weld stuff with it. Make some art pieces out of scrap for practice. That's how the average welder do. Just go do the work, since the basic tools are cheap enough. Go to any scrap yard and see if you can get a pile of miscellaneous steel for practice bits. Read your book. Get one of those successful chicks to watch over your first weld so you don't blow yourself up or something. Shit ain't toys, I'll tell you that. But the gas in a MIG is inert. No explodo. It's there to shield the weld from oxygen, but I digress.


But if you really wanna mess with it, do the thing on its own terms.

Take it from a born English major who went to tech school instead. You really, really wanna do it go buy the tools and try your hand at the work. It's not like they ask for qualifications. You can just go buy a welder and fuck around. IF AND WHEN you start to feel good enough about your skills to try for going pro, THEN go to school. By the time you get to that point, you'll have thought it through properly.

These blue collar types only respect skill though. So if you roll up to whatever shop looking for a job, and you've got no schooling at all, BUUUUT you do have two pieces of steel that you welded yourself with perfect "fish scale" welds AND you can do it again in front of them for proof, well, you're in. These guys will actually look side-eye at you if you've been to school. It's a conservative, school-is-fer-fags kinda mob, but you'll find lots of decent people within it. The whole point I want to make is that if you really wanna do it, then all you gotta do is do it.

TLDR- Go buy a Mig and a book

Me, I just really want one of those jobs where you sit on an office chair and type shit and then cry about it in the air conditioning like your life is hell. Getting real tired of burns and bleeding. You go do the work then, and I'll take your job. I just wanna wear slacks and a dress shirt because I don't have to worry about dirt or wear on my clothes.

I've had this for several years. It's a solid, easy to read book.

https://www.amazon.com/Haynes-Welding-Manual/dp/1563921103

I suggest you read a decent welding manual.

Also, a project like this isn't really one to start with, you're going to either burn through or not penetrate in the first 500 welds you make. You'd likely end up with a trailer that might as well be held together with hot glue if you were to try to weld it together yourself with no experience.

If you were to start welding on the cheap, read a manual, acquire a welder, and acquire scrap from fabrication shops to start making welding sculptures. Do all sorts of welds, start with just beads on the face of the steel, once you get a feel for that, start welding all sorts of joints. As often as possible, try to break those joints to see how the weld breaks. If you see the welds popping off of the steel, you're getting no penetration and your weld is very weak. Over time you'll get a feel for welding, and only then would I try something like working on a trailer.

FYI, it took me probably 6 months to produce halfway decent welds while working in a shop occasionally welding. However, I wouldn't call myself a good welder, mainly because I can only weld steel with a MIG welder and I've only been doing it for about 2 years.