bolt or rivet is the easiest for home shop, nice solid aluminum marine rivets properly peened over hold very very and look good..
as far as cheap welding, not many choices...I bought a used tig head [hf / wand only] a few years ago for 600 CDN, works well plugged into my old Smith welder..only drawback for me is the cost of the argon contract as I use it very little, in a corner of the shop someplace...
I tried the aluminum stick electrodes a bit, fair job, a little messier than tig, but no contract to worry about, good for aluminum trailer repairs on larger pieces, need a DC welder though..
I also tried the prefluxed sticks that use oxy / acetylene, and they 'kind of' work, came with a brush to preclean, then melt a bit of the special rod on, clean / wipe again, and then weld.. not like a real good weld, melting point of these rods was noticably lower than the parent metal, and were a bit picky on what varieties of aluminum it would work with. It was more like brazing than actual welding, but worked ok for reapir on things like lawn mower starter brackets and such. Messiest of them all, but still holding [I think]..they were a couple of bucks each from Acklands Grainger..
I remember back probably ten years or so, of a wierd looking oxy / acteleylene head , looked like a pistol grip or garden hose nozzle, worked well on thin aluminum as far as I recall...needed a bit on the carburizing for the flame, don't remember the name, but I think they were made in Australia..  |