[99 to Life]

hey man, we all can't learn the easy way. to be honest learning the hard way is prolly better because you can truly appreciate something in its entirety. Box stores are so insanely overpriced with metal. its a godsend finding a good metal supplier. one that will let you just go dig around and buy "drops". I always like to have sheet and tubing on hand.

as for welding. no matter how many tutorials you watch, you're really gonna learn by doing it. learning on a floor is the best cause you'll never see it. I'd say (aside from the HF welder and fluxcore) your doing really good. Not to say flux is bad, I'v learned on it, but once you go gas you'll never wanna go back. Just make sure the two pieces your welding are cleaned up good, even fresh metal from the supplier has a coating on it. Get it nice and shinny. Once your fully welded up you can skim some duraglass on the welds to cover any pin holes. the patches look great btw. just be patient

when learning on thinner sheet, like say 20g, maybe even 18 but not so much. its tuff to weld without tig and not get alot of build up and or burn through. You gotta know how to control the heat and bounce around. something I'v learned on my own, stitch weld first and when you come back to a previous tack, start at the tack and lay new metal in the same tack, like your creating a bead, but just pulsing it. hard to explain but that metal you just laid down is stronger than your 20g, so it withstand more, so if you aim for that and not the edges of your metal, you'll avoid burn through.

It is going to take hundreds of hours to really get the feel of it. just keep finding stuff to fix. all the hours I'v dumped into my current build has really let me just get more experience making patches and welding them in. and yes it is rewarding.