Customer Reviews

How To Weld (Motorbooks Workshop)

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has it all with clear photos and illustrations for several methods of welding. I've got a few other books but this one I would put at the top. The author is very clear in what he's trying to convey to the reader on the correct ways to weld. He shows examples of poor welds to help you identify what you are doing wrong and how to correct your work. There's great exercises to help build your technique. I'm primarily interested in Wire feed welding now and its been 20yrs since I've last welded at all with a stick and this book helps out tremendously. It is a great read for experienced and novice welders in my opinion and the next best thing to sitting in a refresher class.

Great book that really helped me to learn the basics of the basics and ruin the couple of hundred I spent on a welding machine. Goes into detail on metal type and how to weld it. Great book for the bucks to learn how to weld.

This publication has helped to determine what kind of welding I should learn. I want to purchase the right equipment and learn myself, this book has given me confidence and I look forward to when I use this book after the equipment is purchaced.

I am new to welding and have consulted a number of instructional books, and "How to Weld" is, by far, the best of the consumer books I've found. The organization, descriptions, illustrations, and photos are great. Where other books skimp on details, the author provides clear, concise, detailed information. Most of the books I've read have surprisingly little specific information when it gets to actually laying down welds: so much text is usually spent with the (important) preamble of safety and description of the mechanics of getting ready to weld, that only a few pages are actually devoted to welding for any given method. "How to Weld" has far more content in all areas than the other books in this class--each section is larger, has more illustration, and shows many examples. One reason the content is so much greater is that this is a large format book (8 1/2 x 11 inches) with a smaller font while many other books are smaller format with large fonts (and few illustrations, often no color at all).

Pros:
Layout is great: each section [e.g. gas welding, brazing, SMAW (stick), GMAW (MIG), GTAW (TIG), etc] has it's own color-coded tab, so it's easy to navigate to the section of interest.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and this book probably has several hundred full color photos of all aspects of the processes.
Illustrations from the American Welding Society (one of the welding certification agencies) are used to clearly show the characteristics of good and bad welds.
The author has a very effective and informative writing style. He not only describes "how" but also "why" such that the reader can understand the rationale for doing something in a particular way.

Cons:
Given the wealth of information in the book, the index is rather barren (2 page index for 200+ page book).
Given the number of abbreviations, it would be nice to have a complete list of common acronyms. There is figure with many of the abbreviations in the first chapter, but it is incomplete and organized by welding technique, not alphabetically.

Bottom line:
For a new welder, this is the book to buy. It will be useful for beginning and intermediate welders, and is a book to which I refer often. It might be worth browsing through some other welding books at your local library, but this is the one that you should have in your own shop library.

Good for anyone from the beginner to the experienced welder. This book has clear explanations, good pictures and diagrams, and will make a useful reference in our shop. We got a copy from the library and decided we had to own it!

I have read this book now cover to cover and as an older guy that is just learning to weld, I have found the book very usefull and full of good information that is laid out in an easy to follow manner. Great Read!

Bought this book after reading many reviews here. Glad I did because this book is awesome. I have a very limited background in welding but enough to know just the basics and this book is excellent. Step by step with excellent explanations about each step. I love the details placed in the book that answers the questions we all have that never seem to come up when your working with an instructor. The exercises are a big plus so we can practice what we were just taught. I still plan on attending a welding class but this can only make the quality of my work that much better.

The author did a great job of explaining many ins and outs of welding. I've been welding on personal projects for about 5 years and I learn something new on every page. Either I didn't know much before reading this book or this book is really informative. I highly recommend this book to all beginning to intermediate welders out there.

I hafe to say this is the best welding book ive read.this book teaches you every thing from beginning welding all the way up to advanced.this book teaches you how to weld things you wouldnt even imagine that were even welded.

I checked this book out from the library. I liked it so much I bought it from Amazon the next day. Filled with lots of useful information, how-to's, settings, etc... I already am an intermediate MIG welder. I bought this to provide knowledge on how to increase my process skills to include TIG.