What is a good welder for beginners to fix rusty car parts?

[HawkAlarm]

Asking for experienced welders, car body workers to recommend something that is cheap but reliable.

Also, I would like it to run on the regular household electricity and a normal 20A breaker.

When it comes to the process, I am not sure.

Both me and my wife are interested in learning it. I already did some welding before but she hasn't and wants to learn.

Maybe the MIG process is our best bet. What do you think?

[droopsnoot]

You could do much worse than have a look at www.mig-welding.co.uk and the associated forum - there's a lot of scope for recommendations of various machines, help with techniques and so on. It also covers other types of welding than MIG, though that's often a good bet for car bodywork repairs.

[HawkAlarm]

Thanks for that! I will definitely check out that forum!

[HawkAlarm]

droopsnoot said:

You could do much worse than have a look at www.mig-welding.co.uk and the associated forum - there's a lot of scope for recommendations of various machines, help with techniques and so on. It also covers other types of welding than MIG, though that's often a good bet for car bodywork repairs.

That forum recommendation turned out great! We found a few very interesting stuff for me and my wife. The most fascinating discovery wasn't the welding machine itself. It led us down to the rabbit hole of searching for information about the female welders. Since she is going to weld as well and a topic on that forum intrigued us to keep searching further and we found this https://weldingpros.net/female-welders-fill-the-ga....

It's fascinating in a bad way that there are only 1% women welders.. Well, we are about to change that. It's going to be 1.0001% once she figures out how to weld with the Forney multiprocessing unit that we decided to buy

Thank you for recommending that forum!

[droopsnoot]

No problem, glad it's helped out. I've had a lot of interesting info from it over a few years. I still spend more time grinding than welding, but there you go.

[HawkAlarm]

I think that I spend at least double the time grinding than welding

My wife willing to be a tough welder and all that will first need to learn to grind but she is not yet aware of that lol

[omniflow]

Just in case you've not encountered them before - use a flap disk for grinding.

Ideally you need 2 4.5" grinders - one fitted with a slitting disk and the other fitted with a flap disk.

[droopsnoot]

I kind-of agree re the flap disc, but it will all vary depending on accessibility as much as anything else - I have an electric die grinder with a selection of carbide burrs, for example, which will get into corners that a flap disc won't get close to. And don't forget that you can get a lot of heat into the panel while grinding the welds down, so take it steadily - it would be a pity to avoid warping while doing the weld, and then introduce it while trying to tidy up.