Welders

My old dad had an ex-army searchlight generator converted to a welder. It had a series of electric stove elements set up and he would connect the welding cable to whichever element gave him the required current.
It was powered by, I think, a 6-cylinder Continental engine and was still mounted on the 4-wheel trailer with kingpin steering.
He hired it to a bloke who was building a steel yacht. He had it so long and paid so much in hire fees over the years, the old man ended up giving it to him.

Son in law bought a box of 4 of these at an auction and all the grandsons (his boys and my other daughters boys) got one. One bloke built his own car trailer. Cycle time? what is that? I watched him just keep blasting along changing rod after rod and it never tripped or shut down. Absolutely amazing.

About the same size as 3 cans of Coke side by side.

 

You can get inverter welders that weld 140A using power tool batteries ........but of course you can also weld using a couple of truck batteries without spending any money.

Dad had a 250a Lincoln that came with history.
In the late 50’s, one of the sugar trucks crashed and burned, driver killed.  
He was Laurie Scotney and the “new” bridge now bears his name.
Laurie was driving his KS5 Inter. 
The local garage bought the wreck and made a mobile welder from the front axle etc.  Belt drive to a 250a Lincoln with electro magnet RPM increase for when you struck an arc. 
It was our welder for donkey’s years.
Dad broke an axle in the ancient farm Reo so he bought the KS5’s diff assembly and wheeled that in.  
We ended up with most of the wreck!
Once we had electricity connected, the old petrol welder was sold off.
So Dad bought a Lincoln 250a “bullet” vertical welder. That thing had a massive duty cycle, would run big rods one after the other. 
A bit of an aside, one of the owner drivers was immune to electricity.  He’d lay his arm across all the spark plugs on that petrol welder and zap anyone within reach. 
 

I got one of the 250 uprights ......late Red 250MK ........it was put in a scrap bin at a closed factory,and I just pulled it out ,cant have been more than 10 yr old when it was scrapped.......fantastic welder ...I burnt tons of rods with mine when I was at Oxley ,but dont have 3 phase at home ,so it just sits waiting for the day.

DescriptionLABU, NEW GUINEA. 1944-06-17. A JEEP ENGINE GOVERNOR FITTED TO A CLAYTON AND JOEL WELDING SET BY MEMBERS OF 1ST WATERCRAFT WORKSHOP, AUSTRALIAN ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERS.

 

Very familiar CJ board with house light switches and square tank .......these units are kinda thirsty ,the Ford 10 motor uses 4 gallons an hour ,a Jeep motor was 132 cu in ,so youd expect it to use more ..........Incidentally ,the name is Clayton Joel for the company founder .........they lasted to some time in the 1980s.

Lang wrote:

Son in law bought a box of 4 of these at an auction and all the grandsons (his boys and my other daughters boys) got one. One bloke built his own car trailer. Cycle time? what is that? I watched him just keep blasting along changing rod after rod and it never tripped or shut down. Absolutely amazing.

About the same size as 3 cans of Coke side by side.

 

I have had one of those for about 5 years, first I used it for quick jobs, to save me from having to set up my portable Mig for little quick jobs. Over about a year or so I took the Mig of the Ute and only put it on when I had a fabulation job booked in that would take half a day or more. It will weld all day, but welding rods drive you mad now that we have Mig/Tig. When I started out the welder came on a forklift when you were working on construction. The thing that amazes me the most is you can weld flat out with 2.5 rods for two or three hours and the leads don't get hot, a little warm maybe. Mine has different casing, different leads, a handle on top, same size probably the same although mine was rather more expensive than what you see them for now, mine is out of Europe so probably a few copies about, but a shit hot bit of gear.

This CJ  has a Ford model A engine . Pic is from the 1939 catalogue , the catalogue is on Trove 

 

A smaller CJ  welder 

 

This is a Ford C engine CJ.

 

The sandblasters had an Essetti , cost $1100 new ,and used to need a $400 repair every six months or so......First one I ever saw or used ,and you could weld hanging off a ladder or building frame ..............when it played up,the spark would drop away to a firefly .............also wouldnt work off a portable generator ,and for some reason wouldnt work at Tyco where they had very big automatic welding on spiral wound steel pipes up to 3/4 wall and 6ft diameter.