Essential kit

Many trade and retail outlets will be able to provide the necessary welding hardware, whether you are looking to buy, or rent. If buying, your choice of welder specification will depend on your expected usage and budget. Should you be welding thin steel occasionally and not embarking on a full restoration (car bodywork thickness tends to be around 0.8mm), you are unlikely to require more than a basic-spec unit. However, the quality of the wire-feed mechanism is crucial and you should always pay more for a decent clamping mechanism. Welding wire is wound under tension into various sized spools, with 0.6mm and 0.8mm diameter wire preferred for car bodywork, and remember that you must match the wire diameter with that of the torch tip.

You will also require welding gas. For occasional use, it might be best to pay a one-off fee of around £60-£100 to retain the bottle indefinitely, then exchange it for a replenished replacement for around £40-£50, when your gas is depleted. A reliable regulator, preferably a twin-gauge unit, is critical. The regulator shows not only how much pressure remains within the cylinder but also allows accurate metering to ensure a strong, sound, defect-free weld, while avoiding wastage.

Instead of buying gas, you might consider gas-less wire, where the flux core of the wire, when exposed to the arc, forms a protective gas shield over the work area. However, gas-less wire is not only expensive but also harder to control.

Consider consumables, too. These relate to not only safety equipment, such as gauntlets and welding helmets, but also the essential tools needed to prepare the metal before and after welding, including an angle-grinder and metalcutting, grinding and flap discs.

Techniques

MIG (Metal Inert Gas) welding should really be called MAG (Metal Active Gas) welding, because an active shielding gas mixture of argon and CO2 is used, rather than fully-inert Argon alone.

MIG welding is extremely userfriendly. Being a semi-automatic process, it is unnecessary for the operator to feed the wire manually into the work area. The machine also adjusts the current automatically to allow for any discrepancies in both operator movement and the position of the torch, making the process very forgiving.

MMA or ‘stick’ welding tends to only be suitable for thick steel sections, such as a separate chassis. MIG welders can also cope with thicker materials, provided the voltage and wire flow settings are increased.

TIG welding can produce very neat results and be done with or without joining material, which is in the form of a thin metal rod.