Thank you very much for thinking that highly of my meager talents Jon. I hope I live up to that kind of a reputation, both with knowledge to share on the forum as well as in my work at my fab shop and doing inspections.
Now, AED...
WELCOME TO THE AWS WELDING FORUM!! Glad to have you around. Anyone still has things to learn and this is a great place to both share with others and to ask questions to expand your own knowledge base.
7018 is more than just a popular choice of electrodes for practicing your SMAW (stick) welding. It is one of the most used Low hydrogen process electrodes because of several considerations and all the various grades of structural steel that can, and in many cases must, be welded with it.
Three things come to mind right off the bat with your questions:
1) PRACTICE with the 7018 on everything from 1/4" to 1". If you can carry a good bead in all positions in these ranges you will do well on any thickness of material.
2) Study the Codes to see what you will have to do to be in compliance with them.
3) Get some print packs with all phases of the job-Architectruals, Structurals, Mechanicals, Electrical, so you can practice going through the plans for a job. Look especially at the General Notes on the Arch's and the Struc's. They will give you a lot of info on what the job requires. There are usually Job Specs as well that can run several hundred pages long. They really get fun to go through and find everything that applies to YOUR part of the job.
Now, we haven't even touched upon all the other things you need to consider to go into business for yourself: Contractor Licenses, Liability Insurance-make sure you get some that covers you for what you are doing, Workers Comp, Bonding, Incorporation, EIN (employer identification number), advertising-at least the local yellow pages, phones, fax, computer, cell, website, printer, billing program, steel inventory, etc. Don't forget the expense of using pre-liens on your jobs.
And how about a Written QC program, safety program, HazMat program, OSHA ten hour certification, Safety harness certification, Equipment operator certified, Certified in all your welding processes you want to be able to use, Welding Procedure Specifications, etc.
Man the list just keeps going. This is why you can't work too cheap. It costs alot of money to be a ligitimate business. Then, what happens when, as right now with us, three of your regular customers call and tell you they are filing bankruptcy. Praise the Lord only one of them owed me money. And it isn't a lot, though every penny is important in this economy. Especially for us Mom & Pop shops. Yes I am. My wife and I work it. My oldest son was my shop forman for about 12 yrs but he left this year and we have let all but one part time employee go. It is that slow in our area. Now my overhead is way more than my income. Just the two mill liab insur will hurt your bottom line. Then the workers comp.
Trucks to maintain, equipment to maintain.
You need to really plan if you are serious about going into business for yourself.
Just my two tin pennies worth based upon your post and Jon's comments.
Have a Great Day, Brent
I have to agree with Brent on his post. First, you have to have the drive to run the business, good and bad. Believe me, you are gonna run across times where the truck payment or insurance payment is coming up within the next few days and your gonna be wondering where am I gonna get the money for it so they don't drop me or come hunting the truck. I can say it will really try your nerves at times then throw into the mix the wife coming to you and saying, "Do you have house money?" on top of the truck payment that is due,....which you don't have. Around here $1mil/$2mil insurance, workers comp, truck insurance runs me just shy of $3000/year. Business license every year based on your gross income, taxes you pay on ALL of your equipment owned every year. Then you have wps which for me now is only about $300/year, luckily the AWSD1.1 is good as long as you keep welding that process, keep a log book. If your just starting out you'll be the welder, cleaner, assistant, secretary, owner and a whole host of other jobs. You will stay busy doing something most days of the week. I'm not trying to spook you just telling you how it is. I know several folks that have tried and get out of it after a few months or a year, not for the faint of heart. After you get some eggs in the basket and rolling along it gets better, not easier cause then you've got employees to worry about, bigger jobs and so on. I'm not quite there yet myself, this year looking at hopefully getting a helper full time......maybe.
As far as what to practice with. I'm no expert but I practiced on anything I had or that I could land for free. 1,2,3,4....6 inch schedule 40 running downhill, uphill, 2" and up heavy wall tube going uphill, tig roots, tig all the way out. Welded plates, more plates and when I was done I welded more plates, 3g, 4g or whatever. I do a bunch of x42/52 .250 wall pipe mostly but I know a bunch of guys on here talk about .500 wall downhill welding, 5/32, 3/16 6010's, puddle caps and so on. Heck, I'd weld a plate and if I botched it I would just run stringers up the plate to use the space available to play with the heat. Turn it up and see what it does, turn it down low and see what it does. I'd run weaves on plates just to play around and experiment with different techniques, angles, just to see what happens. Seems like I see a lot of A36 in the structural world around here. Pretty common but I'm sure there is a bunch of other stuff out there. A53 for pipe, X42/52 is the gas pipe(in what I have seen) but does go higher in numbers. Most of the stuff I practiced on was A53. Pulled off of jobs where they were replacing chiller pipes, sprinkler pipes and so on. It's round, its steel and I don't notice a difference in how it welds compared to the X42/52. I'd do the same kind of stuff on pipe. Run stringers around a piece that was to short to use, run uphill caps, downhill caps, long arc the rod, short arc it, turn up the amps, turn them down, speed up forward progress, slow it down and just play for hours and hours at a time. For me it made things a bit easier to figure out I guess. When I did something on a pass and you wondered why it did that you could think about how you ran than pass and say to yourself, oh yeah, when I long arc a 7018 it does some funky crap like this, maybe I stretched the arc to far because you know how it looks. What comes to mind is striking off on the bottom of a 6g, running uphill 7018. For me I had some trouble there, would strike the arc and pause to long before moving out. Would leave the nice little pitted mound of crap. Figured out I needed to strike the arc, get the correct arc length quick and move into my weave quickly.
I would buy cheapo rod from TSC or some other places to burn. Much cheaper than running excalibur's to practice with. Figured if I could run good looking welds with the garbage I got from there then when I went to some good rods life would be grand! Hope some of my babbling helps out, like I said, I'm no 15-20 year guy but remember how it was 3+ years ago when I was in your shoes and the things listed above are what I did until I could get back into the tech school. When I got in it took me 3 nights to pass my 3g for AWS, had my 4g unlimited in about a month. But, that's what worked for me, don't know if that will work for everybody.
Shawn
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