"Wild_Bill" wrote in message
...
A few points that may be helpful as you get more familiar with the welder
you're using.

A mild steel wire is important, there are special grades of wire that are
really tough to grind away.
Lincoln SuperArc L-56 is a ER70S-6 wire, and I believe I found that it was
a mild steel wire when I looked it up.
The ER70xx designation is the majority of wire that I see at retail
stores, so it's very common.

Choosing wire with a bright finish has always worked well for me, even
when choosing fluxcore wire. I've known some guys that have had nothing
but problems with a fluxcore wire that had a dark appearance, almost as
dark as black oxide.

Putting the wire on is a lot easier than removing it.

I try to get the Heat setting a little hot, and attempt to move the tip
quickly, to avoid a lot of build-up of bead above the surface of the
sheetmetal (which is a very different method than making structural welds
with thicker, stronger parts).

A build-up/weld height of 1/16" may not look like much to remove, but it
consumes (essentially wastes) a considerable amount of time.

When grinding, the fastest removal of weld is accomplished with the very
edge of the abrasive wheel (like using a bench grinder wheel), not the
broader face, as would be appropriate for sanding.
With the edge of the wheel contacting the metal (grinder spindle parallel
to the metal's surface), the edge is continuously refreshed as material is
ground away.

--
WB
.........


Thanks, the tips sound good. I was having a lot of trouble burning away
metal, I had some gap in places in my butt weld and had to build up to fill
in the hole. I'll have to get some copper to help avoid burning holes and
to fill in voids.

I think my heat setting was a bit hot, it was easy to make a hole in either
the new sheet metal or the original.

I spent a lot of time fixing a little hole but hopefully I'll get better and
faster at it with practice, gotta start somewhere.

I need to get set up better with the sanding blocks too, a single inline
sander just doesn't seem adequate but the 36 grit paper levels bondo pretty
quickly.


RogerN