People that can weld, how/where did you learn?

I did a course at a local college. Was a terrible course, but got me going, so it served a purpose.

Fun fact; Not long after the college was knocked down to make way for a housing estate.

I did a 3 month workshop course as part of my engineering degree and the vehicle restoration course they used to run at Colchester. But I actually started welding up my anglia with a hobby welder and pub gas years earlier learning what worked best as I went. They don't teach you how to weld pitted wax impregnated steel on a windy day outside at college. In reality the best approach is to do a bit of research into the theory watch a few videos then it's just practice.

Tom and myself are going for 1/2 training on Saturday, it’s up in the Midlands though.

Practicing seems to be working for me, but I’m struggling to help Tom (because I don’t really know what I’m doing, so can’t advise him)

Self taught, and the one bit of strong advice I can give you to make a worthwhile result on any automotive welding is this.

Spot weld everything.

Trying to blast out big long seams just blows holes until you are confident on your welder and talent. Practice on offcut sheet and take it in stages. Weld a stitch, let the glow fade, continue. You will get some fantastic professional results that way, and as your experience grows, you will eventually get to the point where your feed and control go on to continuous welding.

Watching the boys on Project Binky is worth doing, they film a lot of their welding and their technique is great for learning.

EDIT TO ADD: You say you have cars needing welding. Don't weld the cars first, as most of the issues you will face comes from welding at tough angles, upside down, kinking the wire feed etc. Practice upright on scrap first!

I borrowed my friends welder and tried sticking some scraps together with it, then tried altering the settings to see what they did. After a short practise i started making messy welds on cars and then having to grind them back down and fill in the resulting pin holes. Eventually the amount of grinding and pin hole filling got less.

I’m planning on a couple of weekends here to at least get the basics.

www.cbwa.co.uk/

Might have a go this summer.

Local college for me, did as part of a car restoration course. We did gas , mig and stick as well and basic panel beating, panel fab and painting.Well worth the money,theshame is i moved away halfway through the course so never got my certificate

I learned via a few ways.

-Gas welding: Design Technology (DT) classes at school. It took me time but I got there
-Hitting the car itself. This went as expected. Not well. Like many, 3 things didn't help me. A curse word welder, curse word steel and not much of an idea of how to do it. The magazines will talk about welding up on scrap steel and then how just letting it 'flow' will get it right. It didn't for me.

I decided to hit the car myself as I knew the welding would cost more than I could afford for the standard I wanted, which was back then more than just patching over rot.

These things would help me down the line

1) Making the most of my equipment. Going to Argon Gas really tidied my technique up.
2) Getting a Pro-grade liner wire and a bigger reel of good quality welding wire, not the curse word Halfords sell in small reels. I have purplevanman to thank for that last point. Even with my curse word welder, he managed to do an alright job on my car
3) Watch someoone do it. While I had others weld cars for me, I was generally working at the time they were available so I could never see a master in action. When the exhaust fell off our Mondeo, my mate let me borrow his ramp to weld it. I sucked. He then did most of it. Until then, I didn't really realise that you had to have the wire directly on one bit of the metal and then drag the pool across to the 'new' metal. I always tried to put the wire with the two, having the two pieces of metal touching. I had somehow got lucky with welding OK over the years. That was a big moment in my welding improvement for me.
4) Practice. That's basically what the above was really. And the more I learned something, the more I imrpvoed as I put it into practice.

Over the years I've probably welded around 4 or 5 cars so the equipment has paid for itself a few times over. The MGB is a car that saw alot of welder action.

My father was a coded welder. Although I saw him welding things in the garage he never actually gave me a go, never mind teach me. When I was 17, me and my brother’s went shares on a mig and I taught myself how to weld. It isn’t hard. I’ve bought a Rtec mig and I’ve even had my 9 year old use it . Get some scrap and give it a go. I use settings volt 3 and wire 9 with 0.6mm wire and 0.9mm plate. It gives a great weld.