I got my start in welding in middle school, believe it or not. Back then we were required to take shop class as well as home economics. Mr. Miller’s shop class at Memorial Middle School, in Middlebury CT back in the 1970’s was very comprehensive. They had a wide range of equipment and a lot of it was pretty high end stuff, especially the wood working tools. But tucked in the back left corner of the room under a work bench was an old Lincoln AC-225 welder like the one in the picture above. I never was very proficient with the stick welder back in those days. I could never really figure out how to position the rod, flip my helmet down and properly strike an arc without being able to watch what I was doing. Back then they didn’t have today’s modern auto-darkening helmets. But I got pretty good with the oxy-acetylene torch and brazing.
When I was 18, I worked as an EMT part time during the summers while in college. My boss, Alan Rowe, decided he wanted to clean out the garage and sold me an oxy-acetylene torch set that I had for decades, until my brother-in-law borrowed it and never returned it. (You know who you are!). I repaired the rusted out floor of a 1966 Scout with that torch. By the way that Scout was one of the most ill-advised purchases I ever made. I purchased it from the late Howard R. Salisbury. Howard was a friend of my dad’s and a bit of a legend in town. But that Scout needed more repairs and restoration than I could afford. When it blew the rear end, I junked it.
After I graduated college and moved away from my parent’s home, I never really had the space to do any welding and I kind of dropped this hobby for a long time. In 2010, my wife gave me the green light to purchase an oxy-acetylene torch set from Craig’s List for $150 as a father’s day present. That got me back into the desire to weld and do metal work.
My first electric welder was a Lincoln AC-225 welder that my dad purchased around 1975 or 76 (actually the same one in the pic above). He was doing a lot of snow plowing as a side hustle back then and he used to break his plow quite often. As a result he bought the welder and made his own repairs. He bought the welder at Vaszauskas Brothers Farm in Middlebury. After dad stopped snow plowing, that welder sat unused for a long time. He gifted it to me 2012 as he no longer had a need for it and wanted the garage space back. My brother Rob was kind enough to install a 240 volt circuit in my garage that I ended up using for every welder since.
Being an alternating current (AC) only welder, this machine was very limited in the rods you could weld with. for the welders out there, it would pretty much only run 6011, 6013, and 7014 rods. I never became very proficient with this welder. AC welders are loud. They make a humming noise that I actually found a bit unnerving. In retrospect, I was just being silly. I will say however that having fixed amperage settings was a distinct disadvantage with this welder. It had set amperage values that stepped up 15 amps with each click of the dial. 60, 75, 90, 105, 120…nothing in between. I ended up replacing this welder in 2014 with a Hobart Stickmate, that I absolutely fell in love with. I ended up selling this welder to my neighbor, John Albrecht for $50. I hope John is enjoying it. I will have to ask him when I see him next.