Mig Welding Techniques for Edge Welds

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This week’s video is about mig welding techniques for making edge welds.

I got to thinking how I could make this video a bit more interesting because, frankly, a weld bead on the edge of a piece of metal is not that interesting.

So I thought “What is a common application for an edge weld?” One common practical application would be building up the edge of a tiller tine.

I even bought on on ebay just so I would have something more interesting to do than just weld on the edge of a piece of metal.

The best mig welding technique for making edge welds easier is to use copper backing. Yes, welds can be done on the edge of some pretty thin metal but its always easier if you clamp a piece of copper to one side and weld directly against it. It’s a heat sink and therefore allows you to weld hotter and faster without stopping to let cool, it traps shielding gas so porosity is less likely, and it actually helps mold the weld on the back and prevents it from drooping over too much and saves grinding afterwards… lots of pros and no cons.

Now let me explain something…

Welding up a whole set of tiller tines is something I would not normally do for myself (I would probably just buy new ones every few years), but I have definitely done it before for someone else at a company I used to work for.

They used to call jobs like that “g jobs” – short for “government jobs” – which basically meant a job for someone that had nothing to do with whatever it was the company was about.

There was a culture in the workplace of doing practically any job for anybody regardless of cost of time and materials.
It was considered a perk.

So building up a whole set of tiller tines that were worn to a nub was perfectly acceptable… regardless of whether or not it made sense to weld rather than buy new ones.

Same thing with weld repair of boat props. It happened all the time. People would bring their dinged up aluminum or stainless prop in to work and get it welded, blended, and balanced… all on the company dime.

One welder told me he did close to 50 boat props one year. And when his lead brought number 51 to him, he put another hash mark on the calendar he had posted on the wall of his welding booth. When the lead mechanic asked him what the hash mark was for, he said, “That’s number 51 so far this year… I am keeping track of how many boat props you bring me for the next time you get on my butt about not getting enough work done.”

(Oh yeah, I ordered an old aluminum boat prop on ebay also so I can use it in a future video on tig welding edge welds.)

Anyway, before I get too far off topic talking about “g jobs”, let me list some mig welding settings I used for this video.

I was using an inverter mig welder and it seemed to weld a lot better using higher than normal wire feed speeds for a given voltage.

And since I was welding directly on the edge of 11 ga (1/8″ 3.2mm thick) cold rolled steel it did not require much heat.

Here are the settings I used: 15 volts, 190 inches per minute of wire speed using .030″ er70s-6 bare wire. 75/25 argon/co2 gas set at 20 cfh.

There is a wide range of settings that would have worked. I just found that dialing the voltage down worked well for these edge welds with very little spatter.

There are quite a few comments from YouTubers already about hardfacing. So that is something I will look into for a future video, but for now…

Peace Out.

( As always, feel free to visit us at our sister site, WeldingTipsAndTricks.com. )

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