Four reasons ordinary people love MIG welding
Have you ever felt the urge to weld and create things from metal? Now is an excellent time to begin. The simplest, most economical and easiest-to-master option is something called MIG welding. This one particular welding process has done more than any other to boost the ease and accessibility of welding for ordinary people.
The letters M-I- G stand for “metal inert gas” and using a
MIG welder is something like using a hot-melt glue gun except that you're joining metal instead of wood or craft materials. You'll sometimes hear MIG welders called “wire-feed welders” for reasons I'll make clear.
You can buy a very good, simple MIG welder for less than $250.
MIG welders are portable metal boxes that use electricity to create an arc that generates enough heat to melt metal. Every MIG welder in the world also automatically pushes thin wire from a spool through the tip of a hand-held welding gun during use. This adds extra metal to the molten weld area, making the finished weld stronger without need for you to think about it. This feature is why MIG welders are often called wire-feed welders and it's part of the reason they're so easy to use.
There's a lot more to welding successfully than just buying a MIG welder, of course, but MIG is still the best place for beginners to start. in my experience. I've been welding in my own home shop for more than 40 years and there are four reasons MIG welders are still my favourite.
SATISFACTION
The ability to join pieces of metal quickly, easily and permanently is energizing. It's fun, useful and amazingly empowering. With the ability to weld, you'll find yourself imagining how to do all kinds of repairs and projects you never thought of before.
ECONOMY
Even with occasional use, being equipped to weld makes it easy to save thousands of dollars in equipment repaired and items created. If you're an active person, perhaps with some older vehicles to take care of, maybe with a garage workshop space or perhaps a rural property or farm, you can easily pay for a high-quality MIG welder in less than a year of savings. Even living in a city, with a garage or backyard space to weld in, you'll find lots of fun use for a MIG welder.
CREATIVITY
If you're a mechanically creative person, you'll find that your welding projects keep you productively
engaged, even when you're not actually welding. Simply planning a project and imagining how all the pieces fit together is deeply satisfying. My best time to design and engineer projects is when I'm lying in bed drifting off to sleep. There are no distractions and it's easier to envision how things will fit together. I call this “phase one-ing.” I get some of my best ideas for the details of putting together a project during phase one of sleep.
CAPABILITIES
If all the welding I've done over the years for my home, vehicles and property were to disappear in a moment, a lot of important things in my life would literally fall apart. It's possible to make a significant improvement in your life with the capability welding offers.
Visit baileylineroad.com/ mig-welder_uses to learn more about using a MIG welding and watch a video about some of the things I've used my MIG welder to make or fix over the years. Steve Maxwell is always amazed by the good things that can happen when you join metal together with care. Visit Steve online at BaileyLineRoad.com and joint 31,000 people who look forward to his free Saturday morning email newsletter each week.