How to Build Real Skill in Stick Welding

Want to get good at stick welding? There's no shortcut. That's just time under the hood and burning a whole lot of rod. Welcome to Weld. I'm your host Bo Wigington and today we're talking with Geese again. Also known as Sewing with Fire Welding. Geese spent many years in the field and in the classroom specializing in stick and tag welding and helping train the next generation of welders. We talk about welding education, what most students struggle with and how to get started if you're thinking about getting into the trade. We dive in right now. Just in case people aren't familiar with you and what you do, will you introduce yourself to the audience first? Absolutely. My name is Geese Gain. Handle on Instagram is Sewing with Fire Welding. I'm also a professor at Algonquin College in Ottawa where I teach the new sets of trades people. I love the content you put out man. You have some of the best little shorts because recently you did one where you welded all the way around the T-joint multiple times. You just do such cool hands on stuff but you're a really slick stick welder. Thanks. That's my area that I enjoy. I try to stick myself in the stick welding courses that we teach and in the field that's what I did. Eight to 12 hours a day, stick welder. Going through a couple of sleeves of 532 a day will get you that skill. That's the only way you can get good at it is to do it. Get that timing under the hood. Well up here in Canada, you teaching at the college, what kind of industries are you prepping people to go get into? A lot of our students are staying local but Canada is broad. We know that. The work that they're doing out west versus out east could be a little bit different. A majority of them are staying local and we're teaching a lot of TIG welders, we're teaching a lot of TIG welders. So structural welding. We're a one year fabrication techniques program. It's a really good entry level program. They're ready to go but a lot of them are going into union halls. What the union halls are looking for is in all positions, stick ticket. That's your flat, your horizontal, your vertical and your overhead. Even though, for example, our local 71 is not a structural outfit. They do mostly high pressure and pipe welding. That's the entry level ticket or requirement they're looking for to get in there. So lots of TIG, lots of TIG welding. Well, stick welding, a lot of people, it's a love hate relationship, either love it or you hate it. But I personally love it and it seems like you love it. What are the nuances? What do people need to focus on to get real slick with stick? Burn a lot of rod. Just do it. Do a lot of welds. Stick and TIG welding, we know that they're the manual processes. So there's a little bit more going on and for those of you who maybe don't understand the arc or what's going on with the heat distribution, would stick and TIG welding, the welder is responsible for arc length. Whereas when we look at wire feed while you're setting your voltage, that is your arc voltage, and that remains constant. But with your manual processes, that in and out is changing often. And what you see is you see it in the weld whenever you're done. So if you're not keeping a consistent arc length throughout, then that's really going to show up. That's going to be that imprint. So a lot of time, a lot of practice, but at the end of the day, get comfortable. The basics are, you know, don't have a death grip on your stinger or your torch. Breathe. Don't forget the breathe. Those are the simple things, right, Bo? Yeah, just the easy things, man. Just relax and just let it do its job. Somebody was told me use, use at least the least amount of muscles in your body to weld, right? So when we tense up, we get, we get two tense, maybe we get shaky, so just being relaxed and finding, finding your way. Some people need to brace, some people will just float, hover over top. It's really just finding that comfort. And stick welding, you know, it's like you got a bunch of different appearances, you can get out of them. You know, a lot of people want to get those nice stack times. Some people just lay nice slugs all the way around. You know, what is, like when you're teaching people, what are you teaching people when it comes to manipulating a stick rod? If you're coming to my class, stick one on one, you've never welded before, or maybe you have a bit of experience on the farm. It's a straight bead. It's a straight stringer bead. I don't, I don't encourage too much manipulation in that rod, unless you're, you're running a cellulose or, you know, a 60-ton that may require it, but in the beginning, we have a lot going on already. We have arc length, we have travel speed, we have work angle, travel angle, getting comfortable, right, and then being able to see. And then let's throw in another variable. Let's move that puddle around. That's not the way I teach it. It comes in time, but right out the gate, I think just running that straight bead and focusing on the, the basic parameters. You know, some schools will start you on a 60-ton, some people will start you on a 70-18. What do you think the best entry to stick is? When I went to school, we started with 60-10. My instructors were telling me that, you know, if you can run a 60-10, well then you can, you can pretty well run, run any rod, but I like to back it up a little bit. And we start with a non-structural rod, a ruta rod, 60-13, 70-14. Mostly the 60-13, it strikes nice, it can be ran on straight polarity, that's direct current electrode negative, and it's less likely to stick, right, whenever you're, you're starting out. It's got some cellulose to that electrode, and it produces a nice even smooth ripple as well. Speaking of sticking, all right, so there's a lot of frustrations that turn people off from stick, right? So sticking your rod when you're trying to light it is very frustrating. What is your advice for people that, you know, it's the first time light in the stick rod, what do you, how do you describe it to them? Don't be dainty with the rod. Don't be gentle at first. You don't have to hammer it into the plate, but a lot of people will come in grays or just kind of suddenly tap in one area, and that's where we stick. So you kind of have to be a little bit more mobile with that rod and grays it along that plate, pull back a little bit, let that rod heat up, and then move in. You avoid the cold start, you avoid that, that ferocity, that lack of fusion in the beginning. Another big, frustrating part of stick is tie-ins, right? No one wants to do a tie-in, they just want to get all the way across the plate. How do you coach people on tying into a crater? We got a whole bucket of half rods, that students are not burning up, so we offload those onto the table, and we're using those for restarts, although they're not, they're not always the best for doing a restart, like for a high critical weld, you know, a high pressure weld, there's something that's extra or that's tested. I always encourage fresh rods in that aspect, but if you can light up and do a tie-in with a half rod, then I think you can do it with a fresh rod, but there's technique to that, and that's the same technique I used to start the weld, and that's grazing that plate, pulling back a little bit, coming back to the top of that crater, tracing it, or sometimes doing a number six, a little bit quicker, when you move to the outer end of that crater, you return back to your regular travel speed, and again, this all comes with practice, I'm explaining it right now, but if you've if you've never done this or experienced it, it's going to take some time. The number six, I like that, like just kind of loop it around and then just going, then do you just keep tight circles when you do that, when you're coming out of your number six? I just keep it subtle, just keep it straight, no real movement, but I'm watching, and I'm traveling a little bit faster with that number six within that crater, because the crater is higher, so once you get to the end of it, then you can go back to that regular travel speed, depending on what rod you're using, you're using a cellulose, I might throw some technique, I like the whip and paws with that rod, especially on the open root, but all other basic low-hydrogen or rutile-type rods straight across. All right, I'm getting to the end of my rod, it's getting pretty short, and now it's spitting all over the place and giving me what is called arc blow. How do you help people figure out how to avoid it, how to fix it, all together? So if you're doing it in the overhead, make sure that your your your buttons are tied up and you know everything is you're out of the way because that that material likes to drop, I had this happen on a test plate once and a piece of slag fell into my cover all pocket and started smoldering and on an overhead test plate, we know it's bad news if you stop, so I had to kind of power through this, but what we teach our students is try to handle it, as you can in that moment, your your well is not going to turn out perfect, but I'll drive the rod in and that's where I'll really start manipulating, whipping a little bit, not too far outside of the puddle, maybe a little side to side motion, and the biggest thing really is just keeping that tight and and riding it out until the end, right, and then correcting it for for your next pass, we we move our our work clamp, our ground clamp, maybe we turn down our amperage a little bit, there's that saying of switching to alternating current, but that doesn't usually happen, we weld with DC, We've done a couple videos on wild.com throughout the years of ARC Blow, but there's always seems everyone seems to have their own way. They try to avoid it. Yeah, or my teacher. Stick it in there. Yeah, sticking it in, getting it tighter. But I remember my instructor telling me to wrap that work clamp, that ground clamp around a post. Yeah. When we welded like pile caps, we would switch directions while we're welding. We would just flip to the other side of the joint and just start welding in the opposite direction. Some ways to skin a stick. Skilled welders are harder to find than ever, and shops are under the pressure to produce more while still hitting quality and delivery deadlines. Automation feels like the answer, but it doesn't have to be complicated or out of reach. The iBot 1 from Abacor Benzl is a collaborative welding robot designed to make automation simple. Its ideal for job shops, custom fab, and manufacturers weren't ready for a traditional industrial robot. Whether you're running one part or a hundred parts, the iBot 1 adapts to your workflow. You don't need robotic to experience. Anyone with a welding background can learn to run it in minutes using the intuitive software and guided setup. The iBot 1 takes over repetitive welds so your skilled welders can focus on higher value work while you get consistent weld quality from the first part to the last part. If you've been considering welding automation but thought it was too expensive or too complex, the iBot 1 is worth a look. Contact Abacor Benzl to see how it can fit into your shop. Now let's get back to the episode. Outside of stick welding, you said you do a lot of tig, you know, that's also another frustrating process, especially when your first getting started. You give sticking your tungsten to the plate. You know, it's like how if someone has never tig welded before, how do you describe the process? If somebody has never tig welded before and maybe they've got an understanding of welding in general, well we know that we're melting the base metal. Sometimes we're adding a material or not. That added material is coming in with an outside filler metal, but our torch or that tungsten is our heat source. So in some cases the heat or the electricity is going to jump across the gap. We call it the art gap and go to the base metal and create a puddle. So if you've never tig welded or if you're starting out and you're having trouble with it, let that puddle form to the desired size that you want and then we start moving. Moving on those parameters of correct angle and tungsten stick out and if you can try and keep those variables the same, your weld is going to turn out more uniform. It's when all those variables change constantly that your weld doesn't always look the same, right? But keeping your hands steady, I like to kind of put my hands or my arms up onto that bench and lock them in a little bit because most tig welds for me are not any larger than 8 inches long or before I have to reposition. So I can really lock myself in and I'll keep my filler rod really close to that envelope to that heat source so that I'm not cooling it off. I'm not contaminating it and it easily goes into that puddle. Let's say I dipped my tungsten, it happens to us all, right? I got to go grind it. There's all kinds of advice of different angles and different types of grinding you need to do on your tungsten. What do you teach in your school? People have different ways of grinding the tungsten and there's different theories behind how the heat transfers across it. Having a steeper or a sharper angle for myself and my experience, having a more blunt angle will create a larger puddle for us. So depending on the thickness of material you're welding, you may want a decrease or have a sharper angle on that tungsten to give you a smaller puddle. So if I'm welding 16 gauge or one-sixteenth material, I might want to have something around a 25, sometimes even 30 degree angle on that. But then as we get into the thicker materials, we can drop it down even more. I'm not sticking. I'm starting to go across the plate but my filler metal keeps running away on me. What's happening? It's a little bit. It's a little bit spastic. I just got off a teach in eight weeks of oxyacetylene. So it's similar to take welding and that torch is heating that filler metal prematurely. So it's all kind of the angle of your torch and that filler metal. I had an older fellow tell me once that to start with, the rule of thumb is to try and keep your filler metal and your torch at an included 90 degree angle. So as your inclination or your angle changes on your torch, well then that should change as well with that filler. So if you're pointing your torch into your filler too much, well then it's going to right up it. It's going to melt off. But keeping that close enough to the puddle where the tip of the tungsten isn't focused on that electrode or sorry on the filler metal is going to help with that. Okay, S2 or S6. We run S2. S2? We run S6 for make. Okay. Yeah. So that's our ER70S-2 and then ER70S-6 for hard wire make. And then the cool thing about watching that little dancing, dancing man in the puddle, it shows you what your gas rate's doing. It's like you can really see how your gas flow is affecting it if you have too much or too little. Absolutely. A lot of people say you want to have some movement with that little dance man. What do you tell people to look for in the puddle? So we're looking for, it doesn't matter the welding process. I always explain it that we're looking for a clean, shiny, reflective puddle. That's not too hazy. That's stable and that you can control of course. So when shielding gas is too high, it can displace. It can actually draw in air. Our job is to displace air and nitrogen or oxygen and nitrogen but with too much gas, it can draw that in. That puddle is just not going to look the way it should. It's not going to be shiny, reflective. I'm looking at the toes of the weld all the time when I'm welding. I'm making sure that it's washing into those sidewalls because that's going to indicate whether or not you have any weld fault coming up. But not enough shielding gas. You can kind of see that little ripple effect and it's like so much that you might not have too little that you're going to get porosity but you still don't have enough to give you that finish and it's still going to have that granular look to it. If we grind into it, you'll see right away that there's some. There's some boobos in there. There's some boobos. There's some boobos. I don't want some boobos and you can't just weld over them. They don't go away. No, they just keep coming back. I get that a lot actually. I find with a 6010, you might be able to dig through some of that stuff but low hydrogen applications, just burn it hotter. Just burn it hotter. That ain't happening. I've seen it too many times on test plates where we've had someone say, "Yeah, just run a little bit hotter and go a little bit slower and you'll burn it out." Sorry. That slag is getting entrapped and it's going to stay in there. And the porosity too. You can't just burn that out. No, that's the gift that keeps on giving. Always. Always. Yeah. So, on the education side, it's like students, they struggle with different things in different places. What are some of the most common mistakes you see students making every year? With the stick welding portion, they're not setting up their machine properly. They're not connecting their leads properly. That's a big one, meaning your dense connectors, they have the little kind of nub on it and that gets inserted into the machine and you've got to twist that and lock it tight. I often see new welders just, they go in and they give an eighth of a turn and then if you come over, it's flopping. So, a lot of setup. Write it down, guys. Write your settings down. Write the way you've welded last. Try to stick to the same machine for that duration, at least for a couple of weeks until you can get a little bit more proficient, right? So that those variables aren't always changing. And remember what you did the week before, right? So that you can, you know, we have, our one stick course is five hours a week. So we've got three hour class and we've got a two hour class. Well, sometimes those are straddled pretty close to each other. So there's a whole week that goes by before they're stick welding again. And in the beginning, it's easy to forget. So write down your settings, write down what you did. It's really going to help you out. But a lot of times it's set up, you know, just welding on the wrong polarity. Come into me and saying, my stick rod doesn't work. It won't strike an arc and hit it harder. Break off that little crucible cup on the end of it. Use that filler rod or the wire on the inside of it. Those are just basics. Those little things go a long way. Yeah, absolutely. If you were to give advice to somebody who is kind of like curious about getting into it, but they weren't certain if like going to a welding school was right for them. What would your advice be? I get this question often. I would say most post-secondary schools, colleges, even some universities, they're offering an open house where you could try welding. We just built this little welding booth. It's all contained. It's a self-contained unit. You've got your shielding gas, you've got your fume extractor. You could go in and weld with shorts on. You don't need a welding helmet because everything's contained. It's basically a purge chamber. But you're sliding your hands in. Think of a portable or one of those actually stationary sand blasters. So you throw your hands in and you could try it out. So you don't really need a lot to try it out. So yeah, link up with a college or your high school, even your elementary school, they're doing field trips, but reach out to the colleges. Somebody reached out to me and said, "Hey, I want to try welding. I'm curious about it. I've never struck an arc. I'd like to try it. I want to see if it's something for me." Come on in. We'll get you in on Wednesday afternoon when the shop's dead, whatever. Well, if people want to reach out to you, see the cool content you make. Where do they find you? Sewing with fire welding, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and I've just recently started long-form content on YouTube again. So I'm looking forward to that and sewing with fire welding, yeah? Thanks for tuning into another episode of Weld and a huge thank you to Geve for coming on the show. One of the biggest takeaways that I had from this conversation is that the fundamentals matter more than anything else. Whether it's stick or tig, it all comes down to consistency, setup, and putting the reps in. If you focus on the basics, everything else just kind of starts falling into place. I'm Bo Wigdington and until next time, see you out there. (gentle music)