What to weld rebar with for target frame

[LD1]

I had a safety guy ask me with a wise attitude, do you really think its smart to be smoking near those bottles! My reply was, YEAH WHY! IVE BEEN LIGHTING THE TORCH HERE ALL DAY! WHATS THE PROBLEM! He said, oh!, I didnt think about that, sorry! Theyre not that swift! LOL

:laughing: Best one I've heard all day:laughing:

 

[Jesse masterson]

I've used welded rebar dead Man anchors for retaining walls and never had one break yet! Just have to weld them very hot.

 

[Reyer Farms]

I had a safety guy ask me with a wise attitude, do you really think its smart to be smoking near those bottles! My reply was, YEAH WHY! IVE BEEN LIGHTING THE TORCH HERE ALL DAY! WHATS THE PROBLEM! He said, oh!, I didnt think about that, sorry! Theyre not that swift! LOL

That's about right. Did he hang around to watch the pretty lights?

 

[notme]

A quick suggestion for your target build. Rebar stuck in the ground will not hold very well, especially if your circular targets are heavy - even if they swing.

A large caliber pistol or just about any rifle will impart enough energy to knock the target over and right out of the ground. I ended up using "shoes" made out 8" long pipe sized so the rebar would just slide through the pipe and be driven into the ground. A 18" piece of angle iron was the shoes' soles. They faced parallel to the firing angle and to the rear.

A high powered rifle will blow a hole through 1/4" plate and the target won't even swing. Been there, done that. It is good welding practice for filling holes.

the op stated he's got 500 brinnell.... i'm thinking thats a hard plate like ar-500 which u aint gonna shoot thru unless u have a cannon

 

[Rock knocker]

I always built ladders socket welded into the vertical bars. I've seen ladders with the round bar just but welded to the verts

 

[Gary Fowler]

There is nothing wrong with using rebar for ladder rungs IF you use weldable grade rebar and weld it with the correct welding electrode and it does make the rungs less likely to slip on. I have seen lots of them used on chemical plants and refinery ladders. Lots of rebar has too high a carbon content to weld with mild steel rods without cracking. Anything with carbon content above .04% carbon is considered not weldable grade. I would never use a 60XX rod to weld any rebar with as it tends to embrittle the weld especially on high carbon rebar. Use a 7018 or 8018 and you will have better luck regardless of the grade.
That comment about welding it hot is incorrect also. You dont want to put any more current into the rod than is necessary to burn the welding rod. Preheat of the rebar will help reduce the possibility of cracked welds on high carbon material. IF in doubt of the rebar grade, pre heat it to about 250F and use 3/32" 7018 rod as the less heat input the less chance of the weld breaking when it cools.

P.S.: The reason for no smoking rules is not so much where you have hot work going on but the tendency for smokers to wander off with a lit cigarette in there mouth into an area with flammables. Smokers tend to forget they have the cigarette in their mouth or hand when they need to go somewhere other than a designated "HOTWORK" area.

 

[Jesse masterson]

From my exsperience sometimes cranking up the amps gives me deeper penetration and strenth, but I won't say your wrong just opinions differ.

 

[Reyer Farms]

There is nothing wrong with using rebar for ladder rungs IF you use weldable grade rebar and weld it with the correct welding electrode and it does make the rungs less likely to slip on. I have seen lots of them used on chemical plants and refinery ladders. Lots of rebar has too high a carbon content to weld with mild steel rods without cracking. Anything with carbon content above .04% carbon is considered not weldable grade. I would never use a 60XX rod to weld any rebar with as it tends to embrittle the weld especially on high carbon rebar. Use a 7018 or 8018 and you will have better luck regardless of the grade.
That comment about welding it hot is incorrect also. You dont want to put any more current into the rod than is necessary to burn the welding rod. Preheat of the rebar will help reduce the possibility of cracked welds on high carbon material. IF in doubt of the rebar grade, pre heat it to about 250F and use 3/32" 7018 rod as the less heat input the less chance of the weld breaking when it cools.

P.S.: The reason for no smoking rules is not so much where you have hot work going on but the tendency for smokers to wander off with a lit cigarette in there mouth into an area with flammables. Smokers tend to forget they have the cigarette in their mouth or hand when they need to go somewhere other than a designated "HOTWORK" area.

Hey Gary you are spot on right on all counts. Any weld should have qualified welding procedure to govern the process. I should have been more aware of mixed company. The safety guys are sometimes the only friend you have on a job. They also have to look out for the idiots who just bounce around without thinking. I don't smoke as I feel it is wrong to burn something that taste so good. Hot work permits are a good thing especially when you don't really know the area you are working in.

About the targets- you will probably be fine. If you make a big an upside down u and weld a ring on your target. No weld to rebar is needed, target just hangs.

 

[joshuabardwell]

What is needed to weld the rebar together? I have zero welding skills and I've looked on my local craigs list and see a few Lincoln 225 for around 200 dollars. I'd have to use the dryer plug to power them but that should be fine. Or I could go cheaper and hit the local Harbor Freight and pickup their Wire Welder, 90 Amp Flux for 109 dollars and then use a 20% coupon. Its 110 volts so it would be easier to power but can it weld rebar for what I need?

You have gotten some good advice thus far, and I don't have a whole lot to add. One thing to add is that, if you intend to run a 220V welder off your dryer outlet, keep two things in mind.

First, the dryer outlet is probably not going to have the same receptacle as the welder plug, and the cost of a pigtail that will convert from one to the other is going to be in the $75-$100 range. For perhaps twice that, the average person may be able to put in a 220 outlet somewhere reasonably close to the home service panel and be good to go. In my opinion, it's worth a little bit extra to do it right.

Second is that your dryer outlet is most likely on a 30 amp breaker or something like that, whereas that Lincoln 225 is rated at between 50-63 amps, depending on whether you're at 220 or 230 volts. You need to have that Lincoln on a 50 amp breaker and appropriate wire. Technically, you could run it at reduced output on a smaller breaker, but me, personally, I don't like to push my luck that way, and depending on the thickness of what you're trying to weld, it may be a very frustrating exercise trying to get the welds hot enough without popping the breaker all the time.

If you go with a 110 machine, you are committing to only working with smaller material. That 90 amp flux-core machine says it will get you up to 3/16", and even if we assume that's honest and not "optimistic," that's not very thick. I have heard it said that wire feed is easier for new people to learn on than stick because there's less manual dexterity involved--just "pull trigger / go". On the other hand, wire feed requires a lot more complicated setup, with rollers and tips and so forth, so there is more to go wrong. It's a toss-up, frankly. If you just want to git-r-done, I think I would suggest wire feed. Personally, I really wanted to learn the fundamentals in a way that I felt I wouldn't get if I started on wire-feed, so I have been learning on stick. I am sometimes surprised at the number of weldors who, yeah, they can burn a rod if they have to, but they really don't know stick. Seems like stick ought to be the bread-and-butter, but what do I know?

If you only had $200 to spend, I would not hesitate to recommend a used Lincoln buzz-box or something similar over a new wire-feed unit from Harbor Freight. There is just no comparison. Those old Lincolns, they're just a big transformer. That's pretty much it. There is almost nothing to break or go wrong. They just keep working, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years at a time. And if you can find an AC/DC unit, so much the better (although do have the seller demonstrate to you that both the AC and the DC work, so you don't end up buying one with bad diodes in the DC rectifier like I did). With the Lincoln, you're getting a quality unit at a good price. I'm not one to bad-mouth HF on principle, but with the HF unit, you're getting something cheap, made to attract on price and not quality. You can make a value wire-feed welder, but by the time you're down to 110 volts and $120 for the welder, you're past "value" and on into "dangerously cheap," in my opinion. The Lincoln will be a quality tool that you continue to use for years to come. The 110V HF wire-feed unit, you will quickly outgrow if the welding bug bites you at all. And if, some day, you do want a wire feed unit, you are probably going to want something better.

That's my two cents! Best of luck to you.