10 things welding students need for class

Tools of the trade.

Whether you’re a youngster hitting school to forge ahead with a welding career or you’re a little bit farther down the line taking classes to enrich your life, there are a few basic things you’ll want to acquire. Showing up to class with these tools will put you ahead of the curve from the start.

Now I know it’ll be tempting to slide into your local Harbor Freight for this shopping spree; I’d suggest you don’t. Invest in quality tools. If you work anyway like I do, the tools will be getting pushed hard, and you want pieces that don’t break down. Broken tools equal downtime, and time is money.

Here’s what you need:

1. A 4 ½-in. angle grinder. A 6 in. is fine, too, if you already have one, and at some point you’ll want both anyway.

2. Various discs for your new grinder: grinding wheels, cutoff wheels, flap discs, and wire wheels. Some will thread directly to the grinder, and others will slide on and be tightened down by a two-piece backing/locking nut. Either style works. Whether it’s mill scale, porosity, flux, or weld splatter, you’ll want it gone.

3. Wire cutters. Dikes, side cutters, wire cutters, same difference. You’ll need them handy in order to snip the ends of welding wire and to clean out your MIG consumables.

4. A decent autodarkening helmet. You can spend more than $400 on a top-of-the-line helmet (and they’re worth it), but some suppliers make autodarkening lids that are around $200. At some point you may want an old-school pipeliner-style helmet with a fixed lens, but, in my opinion, having the autodarkening feature makes things easier when you are learning to weld.

5. Cutting/welding glasses. Get a pair with a #3 lens for cutting and a #5 lens for gas welding.

6. A pair of combination wrenches. At least one should be big enough to loosen/tighten gas bottle regulators if necessary. Technically, most of the gas lines that go from the bottle into the welding machine and from the machine to the torch are designed to be tightened by hand. In the real world, all these connections are used and abused, and a wrench might be needed. Having a pair of them will be handy when the female end requires being held while tightening or loosening the male connector.

7. Three wire brushes. At least two of them should be stainless, one for cleaning stainless steel and the other for aluminum. Obviously the third is for mild steel, and it can be a mild steel brush. Mark each brush with the material it’s used for. A mild steel bush will contaminate aluminum and stainless.

Label wire brushes.

8. Gloves and a jacket. TIG gloves tend to be lightweight, because you need to feel the filler rod as you feed it. MIG and stick gloves are a little thicker and offer more protection from the splatter that both processes create.

The jackets run the same gamut, from the lighter cotton jackets up to thick leather coats. As a student you’ll hopefully get a chance to try your hand at all the processes. I’d suggest a multipurpose-TIG glove and a medium-weight welding jacket. Kind of split the difference. They’ll give you plenty of protection in a school setting. They’re consumables, so down the road you can decide which style suits you best.

9. A chipping hammer. You’ll need this mainly for stick (arc) welding to chip the flux off the bead and clean the slag from the edges of the weld.

10. Last, you’ll need to haul all of this around from work to school to home. I’ve always used old backpacks. Right now I have a large Army surplus pack that easily fits everything I’ve described above. A lot of students in my current classes use 5-gallon buckets to tote their gear/tools, and that seems to work well for them.

I’m sure there are some items a few folks will want to add to the list, but these are the basics I think you need. Even in school, downtime is money. You’re there to learn, and spending half the class looking for the right tool is a waste of everyone’s time. Come prepared, ready to work and learn.