:| I thought it was a 50 amp outlet :/ now I'm going to have to go look in the morning.
Stick welding is a bit of an acquired through practice art. My father-in-law taught me and left me his old welder along with about a hundred pounds of various types of welding rod. He described the start as being like striking a match, and that is a very close description to what is required. Preparation through cleaning and chamfering of the material before proceeding is imperative for good results. Your power settings are dependant upon the nature of the material, the thickness of the material and the size and type of rod being used. Mine is an AC type welder, DC welders have the advantage of being able to weld almost upside down on your workpiece, AC works best when gravity is working for you. The purpose of the outer coating on the welding rod is to exclude oxygen from the actual point where you are creating molten metal, that is a combination of welding rod metal and melting workpiece material. The correct term for this is penetration. If your power setting is to low, you will only be melting welding rod, as you increase the power you will be melting more of the workpiece, eventually if your power is too high you will blow holes clear through the workpiece.
that's how you can use the welder to cut steel. Thin rod is for thin material, thicker rod is better suited to thick material and lays in much faster with better spread, coverage and penetration.
Welding is fun, but 3 significant dangers to realize: the light from the arc is intense enough to blind you very quickly, in lesser exposure it will at the very least give you a tremendous headache. Make sure you have sufficient sun or artificial light on your work area so that you can see the workpice and rod while you are wearing your helmet. Secondly the fumes are very toxic, try not to breath in too much of the smoke. The third thing is electric welding is all about grounding, don't weld on a rubber tired vehicle that is not very well grounded or the vehicle will acquire an electric charge just like a giant battery! If you become the ground in that situation it will send you flying and probably blow the false teeth right out of your head :/
seen that happen to my father-in-law once.
Simple AC arc welders also have what is called a duty-cycle. You need to occasionally stop or break very briefly from laying a continuous bead of weld, or you will exceed the machines duty-cycle.
You really should either take a course or seek assistance from an experienced mentor if that is an option, do lots of reading on the subject in advance of attempting to weld. look at examples of really good welds and try to emulate those results, proper welding is to make very tiny circular "stitches" with your welding rod. It's definitely an art form to achieve good results.
Oh ya, one other thing, if you can't get good results with all the cheaper welding rods, say for instance you are attempting to weld a crack in a tractor bell housing :ashamed: get yourself some Nickel rod, that stuff is awesome!
There you go that is the worlds briefest synopsis on how to weld.
