Welders... Help me spend money!!

[Anonymous Poster]

Century welder = JUNK! Put the money toward a Lincoln or Miller and you'll have a welder for a lifetime.
Buying a welder from anyplace other than a welding suplier = more problems than you want to deal with, and nobody to help you when you have a problem. Do you really think a 17 year old kid working in a discount store knows anything about welders, other than they are heavy?
You can di it right, or do it TWICE!

 

[jrlichina]

I'd have to highly disagree with the statement Century = JUNK. I've had my Century 250 amp MIG for 7 years, work it hard on a weakly basis and have had no problems in any way. Don't confuse the 200 amp or 250 amp models with the cheaper 110v models, these big units are as heavy duty as a Miller. And as for service, I have a local service center 15 miles from my house(although since it never breaks I never need them). The difference in cost between the Miller I couldn't justify(about $600.00, that buys a lot of wire and gas). As I said before I like Miller, Hobart, etc. welders, they just cost quite a bit more.

 

[soarkrebel]

I will have to agree with you . i do have a 110 unit, 130 amp century mig. for me ,just a hobbiest, it works fine. It has paid for itself a few times over by building and selling deer feeders. it works great on thin barrel metal. Now i use lincoln ac 225 for heavy stuff. but for what i do it works fine. i have had no problems with it.
Now as far as buying from a retail store like lowes. lets look at lowes price, i looked at it yestersay,$229.00 for a lincoln ac 225. Now at welding mart ,http://www.weldingmart.com/Qstore/c000001.htm, $282.00!
And your local welding supply store will still talk to you. buy your rods from them and gas and oxygen and they will still be happy.
I don't care if a seventeen year old kid knows about welding . i know what i need to know. i don't have a money tree on my property so i buy where the best price is.
Now welding mart is a internet company but they sell in retail stores also . the price is higher in a lot of welding supplys.
I am not bashing welding supply stores. i love going into them and dreaming about what i would love to have. but i have to be picky about how i spend my money. i want to get the most for my buck.
Oh yeah my century was used and for having $175.00 in it i think i made out. MY tank ( which was purchased at a welding supply ) cost me $86.00 and a flow meter was i think about $80.00.
And i was just in my supplier of wire and argon/co2 and they were happy to take my money on thursday.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

I have found Lowes and Home Depot absolutely outrageous on their prices for consumables. I also know the machines they sell are not the same grade as the ones you get at the welding supply.

But something to keep in mind is the welding supply has about a thirty percent playing room in their consumables pricing. You go in and fill your eighty dollar tank and it costs you more than what it costs me to fill my big one. I pick up a box of grinding discs and I get forty percent off the marked price without asking. You might get ten if you ask real nice like.

Over a relatively short period of time the difference between the welding supply price and the box store price of the welder is gonna be passed in the savings on the consumables. That doesn't include the difference in the product. The best example for that would be the difference between the eighties Ford F100 and the F150 pickemups. They looked the same at casual glance. But when you looked closer you noticed the brakes etc were all off the sedan shelf for the F100.

If you make your welding supplier a partner in your welding experience the savings and support will mean savings over the life of the partnership. But if you approach them like they're wearing orange or blue aprons and dummies you're gonna pay retail every visit.

I'm probably as tight as you with the dime. My newest welding machine came into my shop via trade out of my labor. But even with that break you have to add my cost was eleven eighty seven and change versus the eighteen hundred they had marked. My little plasma was going for twenty two when I bought it for fifteen. My big plasma had a sticker on it for forty four plus. It had been put out as a loaner on a warranty support. It was also one year old. I got it for a grand. That's a Miller Spectrum one thousand. It'll cut one and a quarter inch like butter and the box of consumables that came with it had about five hundred dollars worth of stuff. I picked it up for less than twenty five cents on the dollar and got full factory support from my welding stuff store. We are a team.

Occasionally I'll build a cedar privacy fence. I use galvanized schedule forty pipe posts. It's just the way I do it. If they want it done different then they get someone else. My fence supplier sells me the brackets and bolts for attaching wood rails to pipe posts for eighty dollars a hundred. That's eighty bucks for a hundred brackets, two hundred galvanized carriage bolts and nuts, and four hundred lag screws.

If you walk into Lowes or Home Depot you're gonna spend a hundred and seventy five if you buy the parts as a unit. If you go and buy them as individual pieces you're looking at two hundred and fifty dollars.

And the real glitch of the whole deal is what you're buying at Lowes or HD isn't the same grade as what I buy at my supplier. And the same is true of the welders there too. The nine hundred to a thousand dollar gas drive (portable) machine the box stores sell isn't the same machine you see in the welding supply for fifteen. If you look close you will see there is a ton of difference between them even though they both say Lincoln.

I shop at the box stores. In the next month I'm gonna buy a thousand to twelve hundred eighty pound sacks of Maximizer sacrete at three ninety nine a sack from a Home Depot. I buy shovels and wheelbarrows and some stuff for the house from them.

I'll be the first to admit I have a case against the whole concept of the box stores. Where it starts is the concept encourages name brand companies we've come to trust to put out products that are junk. They do that to get the price down and attempt to sell a kazillion of them.

Then there's the fact that real hardware stores carry things you don't need very often. They charge a bit for that and that's acceptable to me. Box stores move in and won't carry anything they can't move umpteen thousand a week. The real hardware store can't stay in business because all the stuff they seel real often is much cheaper at the box store. Then when you need the unusual or the real quality item it isn't to be found.

I also am not partial to spending my money with the competition. Home Depot and Lowes have not only spent considerable effort courting me for my business. They're working overtime to take it away too. I walk in and they offer installation on fencing competing heads up with me.

Well, not really. I can guarantee they aren't offering the same installation as I do because I can see they aren't offering the same grade of materials. We won't mention their installers. That's one department where you definately get what you pay for. You pay peanuts you're gonna get squirrels or elephants, maybe a combination animal.

They're gonna do the same to the installers that they've done to the manufacturers. And from my perspective that's a crime.

Sorry for the rant, well not really.

I feel better.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

WHarv, you and I are on the same page here. In the past 40+ years, I've had exactly 2 welding suppliers, I switched because the first one changed ownership, and in place deals changed.
My last machine, Miller/onan powered/Propane, came from a trade too, and now my 4 cylinder Lincoln is looking for a new home cause I can't justify owning it.
I think the problem with saving a few bucks comes from guys who are looking for welders, and think owning one will make them a weldor, just like owning a clawhammer makes them carpenters.
You're also right on the money about the difference in machines between the ones sold by welding suppliers, and the ones sold in box stores. I learned this 40 years back when I was looking for an electric typewriter, and bought the one from the typewriter store after looking at the ones in the discount store, same model# on both Smith Coronas, but one was metal, and the other was plastic parts. The problem is you need to realize what you're looking at.
I too like having a buck in my pocket rather than in the suppliers, and I've bought a few of my 8 or more machines at auctions, for a lot less than over the dock at the welding supply, with the full realization I would be the guy fixing them, or paying to have them fixed if needed. I've even been to a few auctions where I called my supply house to send the truck to pick up their tanks before they went across the auction block. Good relationships that last 30+ years are getting harder to find in today's world, and they go both ways. Over time they pay, rather than cost.

 

[jrlichina]

So the Craftsman welder you buy from Sears is inferior to the same Miller unit you would buy from a welding supplier, I don't think so(Since Craftsman brand labels Miller products). I think the point is that you should always know what you are buying and not put everything into where you actually purchase it from. If I can buy a unit cheaper right from the manufacturer I will, if I get my consumables cheaper from a welding supplier I'll do that too.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

HI,

I can relate to the development of a relationship with a dealer of any product or supply, but...

I just can't imagine that a weekend warrior welder, like I would be, if I bought a welder, which I would like to do by the way...Just can't believe that I could ever get the treatment thay from a dealer like you guys get.

The reason is that you obviously buy more in a day that I would in a year probably [or 2?]. What works for the pro may not for the amature...

MY GUESS is that, as an small-time do-it-now-and-then-hobby-welder, I could not develop a relationship with the welder dealer even if I tried hard to do so.

Yes, there are exceptions to everything, but in general this is probably true.

Such is life...

Bill in Pgh PA

 

[g42guy]

I would say that I have to agree with Bill.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Bill all I can say to that is back when I was a 16 year old kid buyin gas rod 2# at a time, and soapstone 1 piece at a time, the guys at the welding supplier did all they could to help me. When I was 17, and scraped the money together to buy my Lincoln buzbox, they threw in my first 50# of 6013 for free.
Might just have been they were great people, or it might have been they figured they were making an investment in securing a lifetime of business relationship.
When that supplier was bought by the "BIG" company, the relationship with that supplier went to hell, and I went looking for a new supplier. I knew I'd found a good one when the fellow talking to me yelled to the back room, "Hey Ted another Jackson customer just arrived".
35 years later, I still buy from Ted. His sons, daughters and grandsons work there, and Ted's business is a lot bigger, but they still remember my birthday, and I still get a calender. When I was laid up with a busteed hip, Ted told me don't worry about your bill, we can wait till you're mended and we'll eat just fine till you pay.
I'm not the only customer treated that way, every customer is. There are plenty of suppliers who operate that way, and it's up to you to find one. I guarantee you'll be happy if you do. Even weekend warriors need help selecting machines and consumables.

 

[Charlie_in_TX]

Franz, this is in no way ment as a flame, that is the point. My welding supply store dosn't know my name. They don't know if I have an account or not. They don't remember the last time I was in. They don't know when I'm layed up. Why? Because I am a hobbiest, I am only in to buy supplies a couple times a year. It would be unreallistic to expect them to know anything about me. Since I get little better service at the welding supply store (worse service if a 'regular' like you shows up) I go to whoever is the cheapest and most convenient. For me that is usually TSC where I can get 6011s for a little less than $.80/lb and they are open when I need them.