GTAW Skills Development

GTAW Skills Development (all I could think of for a title)

Grab a glass from the kitchen for this exercise; place the rim of the glass
on a flat surface with the base of the glass in your hand.
Orient the glass at about a 45 deg angle from the surface.
The glass should be inline with your wrist for ease of movement.

Roll your wrist from left to right with very light to no pressure on the
glass.
Now think of a sail boat and how it travels through the water" tacking from
left to right" this is the basically the same thing you want to achieve but
with your torch (glass).

You can even use a pencil too simulate the filler rod touching the center of
you imaginary puddle as you move along.

One other technique I picked up from a group member for developing TIG
skills requires;
2 sharp pencils
1 washer and not one with a 2" hole, that would be considered cheating.

Place the washer on a piece of white paper.
The pencils will represent your torch and filler metal.
Your torch pencil will be used to move the washer. As you are moving along
you should try and create a nice straight pattern of little overlapping
circles.
Anywhere from 1/4" (6mm) to 3/8" (10mm) in diameter with a spacing of
approximately 1/8" (3mm).

Once you have something resembling a straight line then you add the second
pencil to the mixture. Your goal will be too place a dot at the center of
each circle, best done when your torch pencil is at the back of the circle.

Once your circles form a reasonably straight line and your dots are centered
your TIG skills should improve.

Something I just thought of and may have too try is once you have a few
simulated welds find a piece of 1/2" (12mm) pipe or tubing.

Use this to practice the cup walking method by following your welds that you
have drawn on paper. If the paper gets cut or mangled in any way then you
are using excessive pressure on your cup.

John Noon









"John" <jonp154@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1124307874.373118.89910@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> hi tony,
>
> boy, it's tough to describe in words. the real key to this is that the
> cup will move on it's own with the right motions on your part. imagine
> you placed the cup in a fillet joint, touching both side of the metal,
> normal forehand slant (just as you are probably doing). without any
> arc going, imagine you just pushed it straight along the joint, keeping
> the cup against both pieces of metal. it would hop and skip as the
> edges of the cup caught and released on the metal.
>
> now imagine doing the same thing, but kind of screwing the cup back and
> forth as you pushed it. it would move right along without hopping.
>
> does that make sense? if not, please let me know.
>


.

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