Good morning Mossberg Owners.
I’ve got the motorcycle about half cleaned up and polished, and I’m getting ready to takeoff the pipes & engine cover to reconfigure the clutch.
I also moved a lot of heavy shit around yesterday, did some welding, made a pizza, and conked out early.
I woke up at two in the morning. *yawn*
My buddy came over yesterday to weld on his grinder stand project.
Here I am sleeving two pieces of pipe together, and this is the first time I have arc welded with a stick since 1973. I have done lots of welding with oxy acetylene torches and some welding with a MIG torch (including doing some spray arc) but zero stick.
It’s pretty ugly at this point, and I’m not surprised. It took me a while to figure out how to set the welder up, as I have only done TIG with it so far.
At least I remembered to flip the polarity right off but I forgot to flip the switch from TIG to SMAW because on this welder it’s labeled MMA(?)
I used a brand-new pack of 6013 rods from Harbor freight. I don’t have enough experience to judge the quality of the rods as far as how they weld, but it seems to be OK if a bit sluggish on penetration.
On the right, I tacked it down hot (130 amps) then turned down the heat. (95 amps) Then I had a bad start as there wasn’t quite enough heat. Once I turned it back up to 110 Amps I was able to make a reasonable bead.
I should’ve had my buddy lay this thing down and roll it on the bench while I did it, But this is kind of a practice welding project and I didn’t necessarily wanna do it the very easiest way.
I did some welding (not shown) out of position, on purpose, just for practice and experimental reasons. Overhead with stick is interesting…
I’m not showing you everything today. I’m only showing you the very first tack & bead of welding that I’ve done with a stick in approximately 50 years.
We both practiced making bubblegum and grinding it back out. LOL
Anyhow I’m still not rested and in spite of drinking 2 cups of tea I’m gonna fall back asleep.
I’ll probably weld on this a little bit today, but tomorrow we’re gonna go fishing again I need to get the boat ready.