First Time Welding??

[Lordy]

Hi all, GF has a metal framed bed and one of the supporting legs has come away. (Mainly because she didnt do it up tight enough as usual - but thats another story). The metal tube ripped.

Dont know what kind of metal it is (probably steel).. So assuming I havent a clue about welding and have never picked up anything bigger than a soldering iron, is it a good idea to rush down to homebase and pick up a mid priced welding kit of some kind. Or is this a recipe for disaster?

Alternatively I could look at using some liquid metal but I think it will be to brittle for this application and crack.

[Fred]

Accomplishing a good weld is not trivial and really can't be learnt in an hour or so. A MIG welder, the easiest form of welding, will set you back a bit as well as using expensive gas bottles. I wouldn't normally recommend stick welding for a complete beginner.

I would suggest take the bed to someone who can do welding, possibly a small car repair business. If he can't do it he'll know someone who can.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yup. It isn't a skill you can pick up in minutes. Some never can ;-)

Take a trip round your local industrial estate. You'll almost certainly find a metal fabricator who will weld it for you. Even a local garage that does MOT repairs. For far less than the cost of even the cheapest welder which is likely to be rubbish anyway.

[Andy Dingley]

Don't weld it. It's hard to do, and the heat will damage the finish, needing even more "making good" afterwards. It's also a hard weld to do - any muppet can build a bed, but building a strong one out of Ikea's tinfoil-thin materials is much harder.

Instead I'd suggest a splinted repair. Make a steel brace that goes over the affected area, and bolts through on each side (couple of bolts at least). If you're not familiar with the technology, get your greasiest biker mate to show you - there's a limit to how helpful we can be in ASCII, without being there to show you in close-up!

Then make another three splints. If one leg failed, then the others might well do the same.

As a serious suggestion for how to repair a typical commercial bedframe given a welder, then you throw the whole frame away and weld one up from scratch. Steel is cheap (still, just about) and it's quicker & easier to work from a clean slate than to try and work around some nasty piece of cost-reduction engineering.

[Rick Hughes]

Don't bother .... first off it may be an alloy which means your bog standard welder will just melt it, secondly it will be thin gauge and by the time you have managed to strike an arc you will blast holes in it.

Also if it is tube .. then a gas weld is better, or a mig (if you can handle one) either is not worth the cost.

Try making a new part instead ... most bends are in sectional parts ... just make a new section.

Rick