Thick Aluminum Welding

[The Metal Butcher]

Yep you just found out why most shops won't let you in the door without steel toe leather boots
That's really weird about the penetration on that one, I wonder WTF happened?
Sometimes it's easier to get the torch right if you hook your first two fingers around the back cap, choking your hold right up next to the torch body. The length of the back cap can give you some "leverage" against the weight and drag of the cables etc. Gives you a fine finger-tip "twitch" level of control. You can get some nice "orbital" motions that way sometimes. Course they make robots that do it nowadays but they *aint* cheap.

I had steel toed boots. They are my work ones and they suck. Wasn't many electrostatic discharge boots at the store my company deals with. My classic Redwing 899s which are 2" longer and lace up tight would have never had that issue. However, they are 8 years old and require a re-sole. I just haven't gotten around to it.

Yes, that would probably work good. Probably awfully hot though. I wear a thicker glove for my torch hand. In this case I had it backwards since I was offhand.

[nickel-city-fab]

I like the red wing 2218 "logger max" boots -- never had a prob with them. Currently getting the old pair rebuilt, and ordering a new pair.

Wildly enough -- I used to give people fits by welding without gloves. On the hotter jobs, I had to wear a glove on the left hand for the rod feeds, because the torch was pointed right at it. The TIG heat goes in the direction the torch is pointing, so you can get away with it. I used to catch the back cap between the first and 2nd finger, and have the "neck" of the torch inside my thumb pocket. So the length of the torch body was laying against my arm. Kinda sad my new job doesn't do much TIG. So I'm planning to buy a size 26 torch and some argon with the disability money ( I'm off work till July, had complications after surgery) hoping to make a buck on the side by doing machine parts repairing at the home shop.