New Welding Thread ?'s for beginners...MIG

[JoshStratton]

Hey all, and probably Matt since he seems to be the forum guru on this subject and may reply

I looked for a thread like this but didnt see one. I am guessing it fell off the board if one ever existed.

I am planning on doing some body work on my car. I have a small MIG welder that seems to do a decent job on thick stuff up to 1/4 inch.

I practiced with my welder by creating a body cart.




Now that I am about ready to work with sheetmetal, I wanna make sure I don't create a brittle mess of welds and I know that sheetmetal is a whole new animal from what I worked with previously. I will make sure my butts (hehe) are tight (hehe again), but I am not quite sure how to do the finishing welds after spotting every 6 inches or so.

I think I saw Matt mention in another post that with a MIG, you wanna find you setting and then pull the trigger on one spot for 2 or 3 seconds.

Instead of laying a bead when finishing thicker stuff, do you just create a series of spot welds all the way down the seam?

Would anyone have any pics of what the welds would look like before grinding them all off?

Also, what kind of penetration are you looking for with sheetmetal?

Should the weld go through the entire panel, or just 3/4 of it?

I am sure I will have more questions after getting some answers but I thought I would start with these.