Thanks, MIG isnt hard to do but its not easy to do well, I have a couple of mates who are fabricators and there MIG welds make mine look awful.
ha ha... butt...
I haven't caught up on Rich's for a while, I hope he is ok.
it depends on the metal, there is a lot of pitting from the corrosion and even after cleaning it back and treating the rust the metal thickness varies hugely (as a percentage of overall thickness anyway) so from one tack to the next is a completely different weld, this, I think, is why I cant seem to run a good bead on anything that is original steel, on parts where I am welding new steel to new steel I can run a decent continuous bead. the other thing to consider is that if you lap a joint it potentially causes a new pocket for corrosion to form in. I would say Butt where you can but if you need the extra strength of a double thickness joint then use a lap.
I have a hole swager and hole punch. they are cool but were not cheap, kind of an impulse buy really
will try to find where I got them from.
I got loads of odd bits of steel at varying thicknesses and just stuck them together over and over. I also asked friends for advice and watched videos on YouTube and the forums (MIG-Welding.co.uk I think). it is all practice you will be fine! just get the best you can afford, use gas ( its unbelievable how much better gassed welding is than that gas-less crap) I also only use 0.6mm wire and tip as its less current for the thinner steel, this helped loads. 0.8mm was too much for a rusty datsun.
just mustering the enthusiasm to go out to the garage now...