Boy, I guess I'm gonna be a pariah if I state my opinion on here, the way it's going, but here goes, anyhow! I bought an old used Lincoln "buzz-box" 40+ years ago, and learned on it and used it for twenty years. My Mom (who had learned how to O/A weld on jerry cans during the war) taught me how to gas weld, and I built my first boat trailer that way out of steel I'd salvaged from the old city dump. A cousin taught me one evening how to arc weld, and I found and bought the old Lincoln. Since then, I've repaired my trucks, built trailers (which I still use), designed furniture for the house & patio, and built and installed hi-rise signs all over Missouri and surrounding states. We have graduated from the old buzzbox (sold it years ago, still in good working order); we now have two Miller bobcats on the sign cranes, a large Lincoln wire-feed in the shop, and a couple of Hypertherm plasmas. My son (Mcfly) and I have built trailers, tractor implements, or anything else we need. We have signs 80 feet in the air that weigh as much as the family car, which were put there by a crane than is held together in part by our uneducated, self-taught welds. I don't remember ever having a welded part break.
All that drivel to say that if you wanna learn to weld, buy a decent piece of equipment, cabbage onto every piece of scrap steel you can, ask for advice when you need to, and GO FOR IT!
There's a whole world of things out there waiting for someone to weld them up ... don't listen to the naysayers! There's nothing wrong with learning for yourself.
