Best place to find welding practice pieces

[Bryce]

So I took the leap and bought a decent mig welder and have been practicing on thicker bits of steel.

What can I use to practice that will be Closest to the panel work on our vans? And where could I get it from? Heard washing machine panels etc but not very often people get rid of them!

Cheers

[Rosie n' Jim]

My local auto factor sell 0.9mm panels for repairs. Nice clean metal and not expensive. 

[SurfT25]

Try your local scrap yard.
Went to one near me, told them about practicing welding.
They were happy to let me take away a damaged car bonnet for free

[cobblers]

See if you have a steel fabrication place anywhere near, they will have a scrap bin full of stuff that they might let you have a rummage round in if you ask nicely. They'll have stuff of various thicknesses, so you can get used to welding thicker stuff which is more forgiving and will allow you to get a feel for what effect the welder settings have without immediately just blowing holes in the panel. Once you have do a real nice job on bits of 4mm plate, work your way down to body panel thickness stuff.


Old car panels are OK but you have to clean all the paint off which is messy, but they are good practice.
I learned to weld using the window holes we cut out of t4s and t5s when I used to work converting vans.

[Bryce]

Thanks everyone. I have been practicing on 4mm plate and I havnt half distorted it but that has been laying long lines which is completely different to body work. Be a while before I venture into chopping bits out the van!

Will have a Google for local fabrication places/scrap yrads for scrap but all I've come up with so far is ebay which says it be mixed with galvanised and I know that's not fun to weld.

[RogerT]

If you’re going to be doing body work, you’ll be mostly using 1.6mm (for durability and ease of welding) or 1.2 (to match what you’re welding to and to make fabrication easier) so just buy some off eBay and cut bits off for practice, you’ll easily use the rest.

Admire your process, I just wellied in with shyte welding, and am only now taking the time to perfect the settings on my machine. I found the wire speed control is exponential! Even though it has a linear pot, so it now has a much bigger knob.

Anyone want to see a photo of my big shiny knob?

[RogerT]

Meccano. I’ve since added a scale to the white painted bit.