Does anyone have a cheap way so they don’t have to breathe welting fumes? I have a headache and feeling very weird right now. I’ve looked for different things online. Too expensive. Someone made a snorkel by taking the filters off a respirator.
Rindert
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You should get a smoke eater to draw the fumes outside from the area where your welding.
Here’s a simple home build idea you can try and make.
Over the years I have got to know a lot of good guys that were welders many went on to suffer health problems from welding smoke and fumes.
One guy I knew could smoke, talk to you, drink a coffee and make a perfect overhead weld at the same time.
He died of lung cancer, sad end to a really nice fellow
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Here is a shop trick I’ve used for the last 20 years:
Storing all of the stripped-out nuts, bolts, washers and plastics rod clips separated out in old plastic peanut butter, mayonnaise and like bottles.
As you can see my riders lawn mower muffler went loose. The bolts holes viberations egged out. Bolts lost and the muffler fell down loose.
Old Tee-shirt. Dump out the long and big bolts bottle. Nope.
Another old tee shirt and dump out the shorter mid-diameter bolts. Easy to find sets of three’s possibilities.
Pick up the tee-shirt and pour the next-time possibles back into their bottles.
3-5 minutes, tops. To find can-use bolts.
And no more frustration 20 minutes to an hour digging through a big box of all mixed up take-offs.
No more stupid plastics mini-drawers hanging up in and out. Fast pull-out spilling all over.
No more open plastic or cardboard bin trays with all getting dust and dirt covered having to clean often just to I.D.
No more got-wet red rust lumps; unusable.
No more gotten filthy black oily dirty hands.
I spend down time stripping out the shops throw-a-way assemblies just for the nuts and bolts; plastics do-dads, rubber insulators.
One bottle category becomes full . . . . re-categorize out into two bottles. O.K. Rubber do-dads separated from plastic do-dads.
All wheel nuts into one bottle. Studs in another. Hose clamps!! Two bottles!
In the Shops I became the go-to guys for needed specialty fasteners. “Favors” trading for times I needed a third hand.
Back at mowing once re-drilled for bigger bolts. And those bolts ground notched as self-tappers.
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This is 10 bucks 40v 300a n-channel mosfet, you WILL need a big old heatsink for it. (maybe from a tv?)
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/onsemi/FDBL9403-F085T6
Then you need to generate a pwm signal to send to it to turn it off and on. There are various ways to do that with the low voltage electronics like 555, a microcontroller, etc. I don’t know if they make a p-channel or not.
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Steve,
A friend of mine had a similar storage system, but instead of the T-shirt, he had a 9 x 13 pan with a funnel inserted in a corner. He would dump the bottle of stuff into the pan and when done looking through the stuff, he tilted the pan up so the stuff would go through the funnel back into the jar. He called it a “Matterhorn.”
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You want like an old school ceramic insulator, because that is going to kick out heat, and wood will catch fire… Of course my first thought was glass, but don’t use that either, you can use resistance wire, to score and cut glass… 
Second, the resistance of stainless steel (304) is 5x greater then carbon steel wire. It can be used as a cheap substitute for nichrome wire, which is the stuff found in hair driers, and other resistive heating elements like baseboard heaters. Which greatly shortens the length of how much you would need to use for your design.
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Okay, so you propose to use 1/5 the length of wire that I would. Lets assume that your wire and mine are to same thickness, 10 gauge. Wouldn’t your wire have to dissipate 5 times as much thermal energy per square unit of surface area? I think I’ll stick with my 7.5 Ohm per 50 foot carbon steel wire.
Rindert
You can stick with it. But I highly recommend coating the wire with laquer or something to prevent an accident and/or enclose it. And also make sure the batteries are enclosed. Welding with batteries has been known to cause battery explosions.
There are multiple ways to get the same resistance because resistance is based on the cross-sectional area, the length and the resistivity of the material. Using a higher wire gauge (thinner wire) would give the same resistance with a shorter wire. But you can use plates that slide across each other and even get fancy with it and use like a triangle for one part and a contact so when you slide the triangle the surface area changes.
The purpose is to limit the current to prevent a dead short and have the batteries explode. I don’t know how much current is needed to weld, or the duty cycle of the batteries (which is probably really low since they are typically made for short bursts of high discharge for car starting)
I also wouldn’t use batteries with dead cells because the dead cells overheat since they are already shorted.
Really the main point is be safe. It isn’t worth getting hurt.
My kiddo wants to try glass melting… You can use silicon carbide (carborundum) in a microwave. You can get it for dressing grinding wheels, grinding wheels and other tools Is this something commonly thrown out at say a machine shop? So I can upcycle it or isn’t it that common or its recycled already, etc.
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Also called hexaloy. I’m told by others here it makes good gasifier nozzles
Grinding wheels and dressing stones are made from SiC grit that is pressed together with some sort of binder. The binder doesn’t stand up to heat very well. I’ve tried.
Rindert
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Duplicate posts.
I am trying to do things on my cell phone and make mistakes.
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This made me run out at this time of night to snap a photo of my jars of bolts.
Notice there are still some baby food jars.
So long ago it seems…
Today the boy said to me I should take it easy.
he’s scared I will fall off a ladder trying to cut down trees.
Im in a battle with the False Acacia trees that are over running my yard.
( dam invasive tree )
FYI:
In 1960 when this house was built there was not a stick of wood growing around here.
NOT a single tree…
Acid rain killed everything, even grass was hard to grow.
What a difference 60 years can make.
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Good information. I have seen people use it as nozzles. The youtube guy for the glass was just cutting up a grinding wheel, and supposedly used that, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t fall apart after the use either. plus they do let it cool all the way back down, so it might liquify a little and reform. I don’t trust everything I see on youtube. but it is pretty similar to the melting aluminum in a microwave. I will have to go back and see what they used for that. I was thinking they just used the microwave crisping foil, but that could be wrong.
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Apparently reading and rereading on this a bit more… silicon carbide is used as a susceptor, for metal melting apparently they also use a magnetite/graphite (magnetite works better at higher temps) and graphite paste painted on the crucible. Should I just try an old motor magnet and coat/paint that with graphite to heat it up? I’m not finding much for SiC except grinding wheels, dressing stones and sandblasting media.
I did find one something that used the blasting media mixed with waterglass as the susceptor for the kiln. but waterglass isn’t cheap but it is
Apparently glass will melt on it’s own in a microwave but it works a lot better if you preheat it. 
so maybe just graphite would work.
Honestly, if you wanted a quick way to make a handful of char to prime your gasifier, or you need a carbon rod for an arc furnace. i’m guessing you could get this to work. Im not sure what you do with the off-gases… but …
Which in part echoes:
https://www.talisman.org/~erlkonig/misc/microwave-metal-casting.html
I thought this might interest some. This is the auger I use for planting. I start my plants in cell trays and when they put on leaves I move them to 8 oz styrofoam cups. When they are well established I put them in the ground. This auger makes a perfect size hole for the plant. If you are planting tomatoes then it lets you quickly go deep enough to cover a good length of vine. I have other augers as well, but this one is the best I’ve used.
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Hi Folks,
I like to make cardboard models before I cut and weld. I just think it makes everything easier. The little triangular piece of wood in the picture has a hole drilled through it and a pencil in the hole. It allows me to make a projected line on the cardboard. When i made the curved hopper tube I projected the curvature of the bent pipe I scrapped from something else. Then I wanted to make two 45° turns in the pipe instead of one 90°. When you make a 90° turn you cut the pipe at 45°, and the two cut pieces add up to 90°. Simple. So if you want to make a 45° turn you just set your mitre saw at 22.5° and cut. Ask me any questions.
Rindert
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I’m intrigued by the pencil triangle dohicky, but i dont get how that would work.
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Okay, Let’s imagine I wanted a silhouette of this vice jaw. It doesn’t touch the cardboard all the way around.
Not perfect, but the pencil/triangle quickly gives me most of the lines I need without guessing. It will be fairly easy to rough in the remaining lines.
Rindert
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That! Is a very good idea 
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Rindert, didn’t old Speed Squares have a hole for a pencil? Or maybe that’s something my grandpa did for drafting.
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