Quote Originally Posted by Keith Outten View Post
For home welding I have always felt that stick welding was the best way to go, its not too difficult to learn and the weld quality is usually pretty good for round the house projects and farm stuff. It does seem that these days people who are just starting up prefer to purchase Mig machines although I'm not sure why.
Mostly because its easier to get some sort of stickum to stick (at least for me) and works pretty well with thin materials that I'm likely to be using around the shop. Its pretty rare that I want to go over 1/4" material and for the really thin stuff I just burn holes with a stick welder but can make a somewhat lumpy but mostly functional join with the MIG (and ye-gods yes it would be a horrid idea for me to weld something like a trailer hitch at this point regardless of the methodology). I've done a little bit of stick welding and if I was doing anything of any size (like farm equipment) I'd go back there in a heartbeat and re-learn it better (and add an oxy acetylene setup as well). I certainly don't dispute that TIG makes cleaner welds, and stick can make better welds and that oxy acetylene is more flexible (or any of the other counter arguments you guys made cause they're definitely valid), but the thing you guys have to understand is that you all know how to weld much better than most of us ever will so the rest of us are pretty happy with something that pretty much mostly works with minimal learning curve. For me I can get out the door faster with a MIG than the other technologies at this point in my practice/knowledge curve. This is also not to say that time spent learning oxy and tig and stick wouldn't be time well spent, it would.. but you really need to do a lot of it and keep in practice (unless you've done a LOT) to stay decent so even if I went back and re-learned it all better I'd still not be very good at it .

BTW: Keith, how do you like your fancy new welder?