The bike on the left is a photo of a custom chopper done by one of our favorite customers, David Anthony Customs…
check out some of his other handiwork. He has become quite good at TIG welding and some of his designs are  pretty extreme!

If you’re into building custom choppers, or want to learn how it’s done, check out this website, Custom Chopper Guide:

The most common problems metalworkers and custom bike builders encounter can cost them countless hours of frustration, and thousands of dollars in wasted material. ’9 Problems Metalworkers Face When Building A Chopper Frame And How To Overcome Them’ is a special ‘mini course’ that reveals the solutions to these problems.

Novato, CA (PRWEB) June 22, 2007 — Building a chopper frame from scratch is not an easy task for any metalworker or motorcycle builder. Fortunately, the most common problems that metalworkers face as they build a custom chopper frame are answered.

Custom Choppers Guide and BCC Orlando have teamed up and put together a mini-course called ’9 Problems Metalworkers Face When Building A Chopper Frame And How To Overcome Them’. This valuable new resource will help metalworkers save time and money on their frame-building projects. For example:

Problem #1: What is the difference between common pipe and tubing?

Answer…. read the full press release….

The site offers lots of articles and information and while it appears they have an ad revenue business model (you’ll see lots of adsense ads from Google) they do sell Ron Covell videos and some books as well.

And when you’re ready to fire up the TIG welder, and you’re looking for a high-performance TIG torch set up, check out our lineup of Weldcraft TIG torches, from the super small MicroTIG WP-50 or WP-125 to the popular WP-20 water cooled TIG Torch. We also carry a complete line of tungsten electrodes, welding water coolers, and much more! Give us a call at 800-944-2243.

And yet another TIG Welding Tip:

Check the electrical integrity of any work lead cables, and cable connections and ALWAYS use quality cables. A well constructed cable will maximize power flow and dissipate heat properly.

We generally recommend the Flexible rubber cables instead of the standard vinyl cables for your TIG Torch. (Jim Watson, aka Joe Welder™, always says plastic and heat don’t mix.)

The high flex FeatherLite™ cable from Weldcraft is shown at the bottom left of this photo.

Another Weld Like a Pro(tm) TIG / GTAW Welding Tip:

Maximize your shield gas coverage by extending your tungsten no further than the inside diameter of the cup (nozzle). For example, if your cup is a size 6 (3/8″ ID) then your tungsten should not extend beyond 3/8″.

OR, if you use a set up like the Monster(tm) TIG Nozzle from Arc-Zone.com, with it’s one-inch-wide cup, you can stretch that tungsten electrode out an inch!

With the gas lens collet body set up, you’ll benefit from a coherent umbrella of shield gas with minimal turbulance– especially great when your TIG welding stainless steel, titanium or other alloys.

You can see this Monster(tm) TIG cup in action at The Fabricator online, “Delta repair welders aim high: an introduction to GTAW repair at Delta Airlines.”

To learn about all your TIG Torch front end part options, check out Practical Welding Today online, “Improve your GTAW in 3 steps: front-end parts that make a difference.”

Weldcraft has added a tungsten grinder to their lineup. Of course this has been in the works for a while, and not a big surprise as Illinois Tool Works (ITW) Weldcraft’s parent company, purchased Georg Fischer Rohrverbindungstechnik GmbH of Germany back in early 2006.

This new tungsten grinder from Weldcraft, the Triad Tungsten Grinder (Manufacturer’s list price $835) has four pre-set angle settings (15, 18, 22.5 and 30 degrees) and accommodates tungsten electrode diameters from .040″ to 5/32″

The Triad(tm) Tungsten Grinder also comes with a rugged steel carrying case for welding in the field. Read the entire press release from Weldcraft here.

We had a visit from our Weldcraft sales rep the other day. He had lots of great information to share, and some behind-the-scenes company info (we were sworn to secrecy, but I’ll let on as soon as we are given the O.K.) And, the new Weldcraft catalog is available. Drop me a note if you’re interested in having one– we’ll get one sent out to you.

Sales people always have great schwag : branded post-it notes, pens, coffee mugs, you know. Sometimes you can go months without going to the office supply store!

Joshua is no different. He left me this great notepad. (Thanks!) Not only does it have all the appropriate contact information on it, but along the bottom there’s TIG WELDING TIPS. I’ll share them here, on the blog, just in case you don’t get a visit from Joshua.

TIG WELDING TIP

Prevent excessive electrode consumption: maintain one second of post-flow gas for every 10 amps of weld current and choose a tungsten diameter appropriate for your application.

And don’t forget, Arc-Zone.com has some great welding tips, articles and links in their library. And don’t forget about JoeWelder– a great place to read commentary on welding industry news, and tips on metal fabrication from Jim Watson.

I just ran across this article online about a woman learning to weld. Why is it that welding is still primarily a male dominated field? Particularly with TIG / GTAW welding brute strength is not what you need most of… rather dexterity, attention to detail and of course practice that will get you further.

There still is a lack of pay equity for women in the workforce, partly perhaps, because of the lower paying jobs women often take. Pay for welders is good. Particularly skilled welders.  And, with the shortage of skilled welders, you’d think that welding would make a good career choice, for a man or a woman.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from the article:

LTC program turns woman into a welder
Female student shines in mostly male course

By Helen Clarke, Herald Times Reporter

CLEVELAND — Give 24-year-old Lois Vasquez some tungsten inert gas and a welding torch, and she’ll call it Zen.

“It’s a very slow, very delicate process,” Vasquez, a Manitowoc resident and Lakeshore Technical College student, said of TIG welding. “You’ve gotta respect it.”

And as a woman in the welding field, she knows a lot about respect.

Vasquez will graduate from the LTC welding program Saturday, May 12 — the third woman to complete the program in at least the past seven years, welding instructor Dave Saunders said.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE ONLINE….

Good for Lois Vasquez, but what a shame, that she’s only the third woman to complete the program in the past seven years!

Though not directly related to Women in WELDING … these organizations offer various levels of support, guidance and training to women in the trades:

• National Institute for Women in Trades Technology and Science
• Oregon Tradeswomen Inc
• California Women in Trades
• Washington (the state) Women in Trades
• Chicago Women in Trades
• and more links to women in the trades here.

And for links to trade schools that teach welding, check out the American Welding Society’s Trade School Locator.

We’ve been learning a lot about pipe welding and creating a localized purge dam for a new customer who’s working on a liquified natural gas (LNG) plant.

Purge bladders are popular in Europe. Not so much here in the U.S. In fact, some folks still purge an entire pipe system for welding. You can spend a lot of money on shield gas doing it that way. There are a lot of options for creating a purge dam, but our LNG customer has opted for the inflatable purge bladders as a way to improve their weld quality, lower the purge volume (and gas consumption and expense) and minimize downtime (time waiting to flood an entire system in purge gas).

A few things to keep in mind regarding purge bladders for pipe welding.

First, for pipe IDs larger than 12, it is highly recommended that you use the quick purge system, especially if you’re doing field pipe welding as opposed to pipe fabrication in the shop.

The larger standard inflatable purge bladders can be difficult and cumbersome to situate, and if they are twisted up at all, you can get creases in the bladders which allow oxygen to seep in. This ultimately will negatively affect your weld quality.

The connection between each bladder in the quick purge system is more rigid, which facilitates correct placement of the bladders.

These quick purge systems are brand new products, available now from Arc-Zone.com. Give us a call (800-944-2243 :: toll free US or 760-931-1500 world wide) We can get you a quote or an order right quick!

My friend Scott always says, “A clean job site is a safe job site.” Thankfully he’s never seen my desk. Of course my desk is covered with papers, not with heavy equipment or sharp objects so safety isn’t much of an issue. I also don’t do much welding at my desk.

Thinking about safety isn’t usually the most fun part of a welding project, but it is essential. Jim just wrote a great post over at JoeWelder. com talking about safety when it comes to grinding tungsten electrodes. And another about safety, “What’s Your Health Worth?” Check ‘em out.

And lately there’s been a lot of buzz online (and off) about the “new” OSHA regulations regarding hexavalent chromium (present in welding fumes).

If reading government regulations is too overwhelming, Practical Welding Today wrote a pretty good article about how these regulations specifically affect your welding operation and what changes you need to make to be in compliance. You can read the full article online, “OSHA’s new hexavalent chromium standard: what it means to you and your employees.”

And you can download the American Welding Society’s fact sheet on Hexavalent Chromium (a PDF document)

If that’s not enough information for you, check out the picture on the left Jackson Safety — they’ve got a space age looking welding helmet / air purifying rig.

We got a call from a potential customer yesterday. He was looking for a Pyrex nozzle for a WP-20 TIG Torch. Now we don’t have these nozzles anywhere on our website, so it was curious that Brett found us. So I asked.

Apparently Brett reads The Fabricator magazine, at least the online version, where he read an article written by Arc-Zone’s own Jennifer Simpson, Improve your GTAW in 3 steps: Front-end parts that make a difference:

Once you know some basic information about the equipment on the front of your GTAW torch, you can get the right parts for your application and start improving your welding performance.

An industry-standard manual gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) torch package includes a torch body and a cable set, either 12-1/2 or 25 feet long. Front-end parts generally aren’t included. While it may sound like the manufacturers are being cheap, it’s really in your best interest, because it lets you customize your torch for the job at hand or to use front-end parts already in stock.

…….

Pyrex and Quartz. Pyrex is a low-temperature, nonconductive glass material, while quartz is a high-temperature, nonconductive glass material. These glass materials are hand-blown to make nozzles for specialty torches for microwelding or standard torches that allow for added visibility when welding in confined spaces. While the Pyrex nozzles look good, the improved visibility doesn’t add much benefit for general-purpose welding. After all, you should be watching your weld puddle, not the gas coming out of your torch. Also, Pyrex nozzles get dirty quickly.

CONTINUE READING ….

So if you’re interested in Pyrex nozzles, they will be in our webstore soon, but in the meantime, give us a call!

And do let us know if there is a product you’re interested in that we don’t have on our website…

Over at Arc-Zone.com we get a lot of inquiries about front end parts. Just last week, one customer emailed in asking about a “whole set” of front end parts. He had recently purchased a Weldcraft “super cool” 18 TIG torch, but only had one collet and one nozzle.

Weldcraft makes a standard accessory kit, the AK-18, which is a basic starter kit… but Arc-Zone makes a PRO Accessory Kit for the Weldcraft WP-18SC TIG Torch. Our kit includes a full line of gas lens collet bodies and collets (3/32″ to 3/16″), gas lens nozzles, a short and long electrode cap, a couple of spare o-rings and a sample pack of our ArcTime Hyperformance Tungsten Electrodes.

Pretty much everything you need to Weld Like A PRO(TM).