A practical, visual resource for welding in the farm, home, blacksmith, auto, or school workshops.

Its comprehensive sections describe all the major types of welds before progressing into trickier methods. With this comprehensive guide, you’ll understand everything you need to know, from arc, TIG, MIG, and gas welding to plasma cutting, soldering, welding plastic, and more. Filled with helpful visuals and photography, detailed explanations, expert suggestions, and step-by-step directions, this go-to guide to welding also covers common pitfalls and mistakes, and how to avoid or correct them. The new, updated edition will include brand new chapters on general welding skills and understanding metals, expanded information on abrasives, and four new step-by-step projects and plans, including a fire pit, welding cart, and more.

Your comprehensive handbook to successful welding!

• Learn hands-on welding to start repairing and creating metal equipment and structures
• Over 400 step-by-step photos of welding processes and the differences between good and bad welds
• Detailed sections describing specific types of welds, equipment, common faults, troubleshooting, and more
• All major types of welds are covered, including arc, MIG, gas, TIG, and plasma cutting
• Avoid common mistakes and correct them, with welding problems laid out section by section along with solutions
• Tips and suggestions help beginners improve and intermediate operators broaden their technique
• Go beyond metal with advice that extends into the wider workshop such as on drills, cutting threads, and basic blacksmithing

Take a trip to a simpler era, when inventors crafted solutions that required neither chips nor circuit boards – just plain old American ingenuity. This collection features a variety of tools, presented with original photos and text. Can you identify these mystery items without looking at the descriptions?

All of the tools come from the pages of Farm Collector, a magazine for collectors of vintage farm equipment. In the monthly What Is It? feature, readers contribute photos of objects and others pitch in to identify the items (often sharing memories of personal experiences with long-forgotten tools). The popular articles have been running for 12 years, and this collection draws from that rich archive to present some of the most inventive of inventions and most curious of curiosities.