How to Choose a Welder for Your Antique Car

If you are refinishing an antique car, you may need to hire someone to do some welding to fix up the body of your car. You may want to look at a few different places to ensure you choose the best one for your needs. While choosing a shop to handle your welding, you may want to look for a place that offers the following elements.

Custom Sheet Metal Fabrication

Generally, when restoring an old car, you need certain types and sizes of metal patches. To ensure it is as easy as possible to finish your project, you should look for a company that does custom sheet metal fabrication as well as welding. That way, you only have to go to one shop for all your needs.

Experience With Welding and Autobodies

Of course, when choosing someone to help, you need to look for someone who has experience with welding, but beyond that, you may want to look for a company that has experience with autobodies. Welding experience translates well to a lot of different scenarios, but there are key challenges to working with autobodies in particular.

Aluminium Available

You may want to look for a company that has aluminum available in particular, Aluminium tends to be the most effective option when repairing a vehicle's auto body. It is lightweight and durable, both properties which are highly desirable in a vehicle.

That said, it can be challenging to work with aluminium. To get a sense of how proficient a certain company is at working with metal, you may want to look at their previous work with aluminium. If you see any warping, distortion or holes in the metal, that is a sign that you may want to look for another company.

In addition, there are special tools that are needed to work with aluminium. For example, it's difficult to put aluminium wire through a standard MIG gun, and to weld effectively, many people use a spool gun. If a company doesn't have experience with welding aluminium, they can order in the aluminium, but they may not have the tools to handle this job correctly, which is why you may want to ask about their experience and approach in advance.

Commitment to Safely and Training

Finally, when comparing different places to do your welding, you need to look past the quote. Look at how safe the place is, and ask them about the qualifications of their welders.That helps you decide if you are making an ethical decision about the company you are hiring. 


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