I’m working on a home project (making a BBQ smoker) where the ability to cut/weld metal would be useful. I’ve looked into taking some classes but they are expensive and not convenient to my schedule. Is this something I could teach myself from books? If so, does anybody have suggestions on what kind of welding technique to learn? Right now I’m leaning towards oxyfuel welding; the safety precautions I’ve seen for arc welding make me a bit leery of trying it on my own. Will my local welding supplier toss me out on my ass when I tell them I’m teaching myself when I buy/rent equipment? Any suggestions on what equipment I should buy and what I should rent?
Here’s a online course you can start with. I looked at it briefly and didn’t see any charges or registration.
this is arc welding
http://www.esabna.com/EUWeb/AWTC/Lesson1_2.htm
for cutting steel, you’ll need a Acetylene torch.
this vid seems like a good start. There’s many others on youtube
you can learn a lot on your own. But, getting someone experienced to tell you what you’re doing wrong helps even more.
welding with Acetylene
I’d suggest looking on Amazon for a dvd course on Acetylene cutting/welding. youtube can only teach so much. 
This question was asked Last December.
Stick or wire-feed welding is pretty common, and I think the equipment isn’t insanely expensive(~$400), but I think it’s more challenging to make nice clean welds, or small welds. TIG welders are much more expensive, but give good control, enabling nice small welds on thin material, produce minimal spatter, and require less post-job cleanup. TIG welding also makes less fumes/smoke, but not zero: you still need to give serious, careful attention to proper ventilation.
Six years ago I bought a TIG welder (Miller Econotig) for about $1500, and it came with a DVD showing how to weld with it. For several years prior to that I had occasionally (at my day job) observed our machine shop personnel when they were TIG-welding, so I already had a pretty good idea of what was involved, limiting the value of the DVD for me. Haven’t looked at YouTube, but I’d bet any tutorial videos on there are at least as good as what Miller’s DVD showed me.
At some point (after becoming a novice welder) I bought this book, which has been a pretty good reference. During a project last winter I consulted it on tips for minimizing distortion, and I ended up getting much-improved results because of it.
If you will be doing a lot of welding, I recommend two very worthwhile investments:
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get an auto-darkening welding mask. The temptation to tack-weld with the mask up will be gone, and you will be able to see what you are doing with the mask down right before you strike the arc.
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If you don’t have a dedicated steel table for welding, you can convert a regular workbench. Get a big piece of heavy-gauge sheet-metal, fasten some standoffs to its bottom, and put it on top of a wooden workbench. The ground clamp can attach to the sheet metal; when your parts are placed on top, they are grounded, and you don’t have to keep repositioning that ground clamp every time you want to weld on a new part. The standoffs assure that you won’t dump too much heat to the table. Here’s what I’ve got.
I don’t know if local shops rent equipment or not (other than gas bottles); if they do, I imagine they’ll want to be satisfied that you know what you’re doing before you use their equipment. If you’re buying, I expect they’ll be happy to sell you whatever you want.
If you get a stick welder, don’t get one of the ultra-cheap ones that runs on 120 volts; IME those can’t draw enough power to do anything other than stick the electrode to the part.
I took a welding class at the local community college last year. I learned oxyfuel and arc welding as well as oxyfuel cutting. I think oxyfuel or GMAW arc welding would be the easiest to learn. But obviously there are a lot of safety issues with any type of welding that you need to be aware of. Even in the controlled lab environment there was a lot of time spent going over the procedures and safety issues. Knowing what I know about welding, I would not recommend that any of my friends teach themselves welding. But I tend to be a scaredy-cat about potentially dangerous tools, so others may have a different opinion. I don’t think the local welding supplier would toss you out on your ass, though. Dunno about renting vs. buying equipment since I used the equipment in the lab. If you’re only doing oxyfuel I think you only need a shade 3 eye protection (in addition to your safety glasses). For arc welding, it’s shade 8-10 and get an auto-dark helmet, even though it’s more expensive.
One important thing that my welding instructor stressed is that any type of welding that could cause danger or bodily harm if the weld fails should always be done with stick (SMAW) welding using an E7018 low-hydrogen electrode.
Thanks for the response all, especially Joe. I should have done a search first but being a narcissistic drama queen I figured nobody would ask the same question as me.
Can a MIG welder be used to cut as well as weld? Do you guys have a suggestion for a good brand of MIG welders I can look at to get an idea of cost?
I weld with gas as well as stick weld. I’m no expert, but my welds have turned out strong enough for my purposes and I have found it to be a very useful skill to have. I have never taken any classes, but I did have my father (years ago for gas welding) and a neighbor (more recently for arc welding) show me their approach and give me some pointers. After that, it was all trial and error coupled with information gleaned from the Internet.
It’s not all that difficult to do simple welds competently, but it would help a lot if you could just find somebody to give you a quick demo and critique some of your first welds.
I tought myself to weld. Didn’t read a word about it first. Went to Harbour Freight, bought a wire-feed welder and a metal-cutting saw. (About $300 total) I’m “half-assed” this way.
Wire-feed is pretty easy. Kinda like soldering. My first jobs weren’t real pretty, but strong. I get a little better everytime I do it. I’ve found that the better prep work you do, the better the results. Choose your material carefully and don’t use junk wire. The Lincoln wire at both Lowe’s and The Depot for $10 is great. Thicker the metal, easier the weld. No finesse required. I stopped using gas, as it did nothing for my results, and actually seemed to make a bigger mess.
I’ve made motorcycle carriers that held a 300lb bike on the back of a truck for 1000’s of miles, spare tire carriers on the Jeep that gets severely tested off-road, repaired trailers and all kinds of household stuff.
My crowning glory is the rear bumper on my Jeep. Turned out very strong. Once got the Jeep stuck in the worst mud ever. Took a guy with a 100 foot chain basicly going as fast he could with a backhoe till he hit the end of the chain to jerk it loose. The bumper was every bit as strong as the frame. I was kinda surprised it took the abuse.
Depending on the job, I can make strong but ugly or pretty and weak. Every now and then I get strong and pretty. Then I have a beer.
I’d say, “Go for it!”
Edit: Like the poster above says, its a very usefull skill to have, especially if you have a Jeep, which is constantly breaking shock mounts, cracking frames and other stuff and you are too cheap to pay someone else to fix it. Its also a skill that allows the most ill-advised creative projects to see the light of day. I’ll bet most of the folks at Burning Man weld. 
After doing some research I’m leaning towards getting an oxy-fuel welder for these reasons:
- The garage/barn I plan on doing much of my welding doesn’t have easy access to electricity.
- I can cut metal with an oxy torch.
- I can use it for brazing (someday I hope to cover my kitchen counters with copper).
I’d like to get your opinions on what to buy. I’m looking at two different options on Amazon. There are a bunch of inexpensive kits like this one:
$77 Victory-style without tanks
It’s so cheap, though, that it makes me nervous (even with decent reviews). Here’s a more expensive one:
$310 Victor brand kit with tanks
Is the premium worth it? I like the idea of owning the tanks (I won’t have to deal with renting) but I’m not sure it’s with $200.
Is there an appreciable difference between Victor-type and Harris-type welders?
Important limitation of gas welding: you can’t weld anything very heavy. It just doesn’t generate enough heat, even with a big tip.