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From: Richard Smith <null@void.com>
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.metalworking
Subject: Re: Outdoor Welding
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:02:04 +0100
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This topic has journey productively far from its start with "Outdoor Welding".

On that topic...

SMAW (Shielded Metal Arc Welding) - "stick" welding - is "the only one".

Okay I have never done / tried self-shielded flux-cored-wire.

* when you are outdoors, the equipment is too sensitive and expensive
  for the rough-and-ready work typical of site work.  eg. how well would
  a wire-feeder do if splashed with seawater (?)

* the wire rusts then presumably won't feed - so presumably it can only
  be used in site conditions when you have a "volume" job where you use
  reels at a time

So it's "stick" welding for most site work.

Illustrative...

I had a job where if I could go out and "take it" for 2 hours in winter,
I wasn't expected to do any more work that day.  I would sit in the
notor house of the crane next to the engine keeping warm, and read
books.

That job was on the peak of the highest tide - the "spring" tides which
occur every 2 weeks - to get in on the inshore-most piles and get
welding.  In the two-hour window we had - get in with the barge and
tugboat, and get out before they get grounded and stranded by the ebbing
tide.
I got lashed with rain and blowing seawater.
You cannot wear plastic waterproofs when welding.
I had to drop electrodes into the stinger because everything became
conductive with the seawater.
I got soaked, and chilled "to the core".
But when I was lifted back to the barge there was a hot tea waiting,
thrust into my hands, and the motor-house awaited.

Overall site setup illustrated here
http://weldsmith.co.uk/tech/welding/weld_imgs/231215_weld_pile_access.png

Page on the job
http://weldsmith.co.uk/tech/welding/weld_tales/231215_ybj_tpile_z5_z8.html

For what it's worth - was the classroom part of my lesson on fillet
welding and the imperative of fillet weld size control.
Got the apprentices doing fillet welds, then took them to the
whiteboard, then back into the welding workshop and now really weld your
fillet-welds...