Early on, I purchased a college textbook, complete with color
pictures, on welding. Aimed at students, it also includes occasional
career possibilities as well as every type of welding and cutting
imaginable. So, here are my recommendations:

1. Decide what to leave out. Water-jet cutting, SAW and oxygen lances
are unlikely to be employed by your audience.
2. Spend just as much attention to cutting, fitting and safety as is
done for the actual welding. I could make a great weld in the middle
of a flat practice plate, but if the joint fit and preparation are
poor, the weld may still fail.
3. Start collecting proofreaders. The guy who wrote the college
textbook I have has loads of experience and knows his craft, but there
are obvious errors and inconsistencies in the book. Realize that some
errors will creep in and beginners won't know the difference.
4. Hopefully, by now, you have an editor to assist in organizing the
material and making it flow from one topic to the next. The measure of
a book is not whether you know the material, but can the reader
effectively learn from the material. Exercises are just as important
as the information presented.
5. Doing a video in any format is a real challenge. It's all in real
time. Having someone videotape you in a classroom and welding lab
setting could be helpful for the finished product. Again, get a
beginning student to see if they can learn as well from the video as
from the actual class and lab.
6. Consider breaking the book writing into several smaller works:
Book I - OA, SMAW and MIG - flat, vertical and horizontal, mild steel
Book II - Plasma cutting, TIG, pipe - add aluminum and overhead
or match it to the current curriculum - one book per course.
7. Teach with the book in class before publishing it. Students will
assist in polishing it to a fine instructional document.

As others have recommended, a guide to buying used equipment would
be very helpful.

On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 04:17:34 GMT, Ernie Leimkuhler
wrote:

Hi Guys.

I have decided to spend some of this summer finally compiling a welding
book.

I am curious what you guys would want in a book.
I am looking for a balance of technical info to step by step
descriptions.

Lots of pictures and likely I will do at least 1 dvd or tape to work
with the book.
I will likely start with a general welding book and move on to a TIG
specific book, or maybe the other way around.
I need both for teaching and if it is an actual published book the
school can buy them.