He has his heat to hot and not enough wire feed, he also needs to practice a bit more before trying to weld two pieces together.
It's just a matter of adjusting either till you get a nice bead, save all of the alphabet writing until you know what your doing, it will only frustrate you. Keep your tip even with the weld bead until your aware of what your watching, which should be, your stick out being consistent, your bead being a consistent width, speed of travel and no spatter, which when the welder is set properly you will have hardly any spatter at all.

That weld will break apart shortly after some stress and weather reaction happen to it !

It's not necessary for a gas shielding on self shielding wire, however Co2 or 75-25 will go a long ways for making better welds with it, it won't hurt the art of welding with self shielding wire either. Once you weld with gas shielding one won't usually go back to without because of how easy it makes welding.

Shielded wires don't have the same buzz sound as do solid wires, they are more of a spray sound due to higher amps.

Shielded wires are much more aggressive as well for penetration, and not really needed for such small projects, unless your expecting a ton of stress applied to the weldment, but can understand the need if you don't have funds for extra gas shielding.

You should also use the smallest diameter wire you can find for small projects, .023 or .030 would make your day a whole lot easier. Small solid wire would be best with shielding then the self shielded if you don't have gas coverage.

Your stick out should be no more than 3/8's of an inch away from your project for proper shielding, with the nozzle even with the contact tip or just a tad over it, if it gets behind it then you lose the shielding process fairly easily when turning to a corner or outside in breeze's. Then things can get really ugly quickly !!

Yes, but you need to change the polarity. Negative with no gas and positive with gas. Dual shield wire. I've used both. I burned dual shield real hot on half inch plate.

You know that would be my luck, so I feel sorry for you for having luck as bad as mine.

Ive used it for some stuff but at the end of the day I use gas shielded and if I’m outside, doing stainless or need penetration which seems to be most of the time I use a welder like this, the picture is from https://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?700307-Idealarc-250.

just tig weld is the only way for trap mods and h stands. No splatter or barely any clean up and a dc tig welder can be bought at a good price. Just my 2 cents worth. There is also a learning curve like anything. I have no welding back round but a lot of youtube videos with a lot of good information and now i can weld almost everything and i just passed the 5g welding test with tig and all self taught just take your time and practice when ever you can.

I use my idealarc for dc tig works really good you just don’t have remote amperage control.

For those following and possibly interested... now is the time, I think there are additional 15% supercoupons available also...

Tonight's festivities...

I think I am going with this design over the first as it would prevent the trap spinning when an animal hits the triggers... or maybe that is a non-issue?

I'll add. The drive wheels are different for gmaw than flux cored wire, so those need to be swapped when you change wire.

So, the welds in the video a
bove did not turn out well and failed on me. I assume that is because the "butt joint" welds probably require some unique method that I don't know, or I'm just too inexperienced. Either way, I came up with a work around that avoids the butt joints altogether in favor of a "seam" weld. I repaired the one from earlier (150 sized) and built this 110 sized stabilizer tonight...

Butt welds in this case can be difficult, but with more experience I think you will be able to get it, the seam weld is probably the best so you can get more practice, just keep welding you’ll get better.

Progress!

I am in welding class right now from 6pm to 10. Monday thru Thursday. We r mig welding with aluminum and steel. I like it.

Lookin better.Getting a lot of splatter,try to turn the heat up a tad.Or else your metal might not be REAL clean before you are starting.

No heat adjustment, just min/Max and wire speed.
I was told that the FCAW is going to spatter a lot, but the stock is definitely not clean. It's full of drawing oil and coolant. I'll try wiping it down and sanding the oxide later and see how it goes

I started out with the HF 170 mig welder and did kinda OK. Bought a Miller and became a pro in a couple of hrs. Night and day between the 2 welders along with cost.