electrode is
Interesting description!
With your experience, maybe you could tell me... I'm interested in taking a welding course at a nearby community college. How long should it take for an intelligent person to acquire usable welding skills? Months? A year? Two years?
Surface welding? Which process?
Intelligence is part of the equation, but motor skills are a more critical part. If you can't hold the rod/gun/torch and move it as required while maintaining the correct distance from the material, you're not going to get good welds no matter how intelligent you are.
If you have reasonable motor skills along with reasonable intelligence, three or four evenings of tech school welding class should have you sticking non critical stuff together ok. Having the time, equipment and scrap metal to practice on is the most important thing in improving your skills. It helps to have an instructor to point out what you're doing wrong and demo the correct technique initially, but lots of practice after that point is what is required.
I know you asked Jim, but I'll toss in an opinion of my welding since 1974. It is a craft that you can learn something every day. To get the basics, tho, a couple of weeks with OA, stick, MIG, and TIG (if they let you). So, that's two months. And that's going once or twice a week. If you know someone who welds, they can show you a lot of shortcuts and AHA moments in a shorter period of time. A lot depends on the instructor. Some instructors aren't worth a darn and don't show their students a lot. Others do.
Steve
nicknamed
moments in a
instructors
Pete C and Steve B, thanks.
Would you recommend / is it possible to just buy some equipment (and Welding for Dummies, if such exists) and get right into it? Or would that be a disaster?
Thanks, Jm
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