Help Welding Fence Posts

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New to Welding and have some old metal fence posts ( the type used for barb-wire )  that I tried to stick weld. What a mess ....Can these be welded? Any help is appreciated, Thanks, Jim
Reply:I have some old metal fence posts ( the type used for barb-wire ) that I tried to stick weld. What a mess ....Can these be welded? Any help is appreciated, Thanks, Jim
Reply:Yes and no. I'm sure someone will chime in with a contrary opinion, but in my experience these things are crap metal. Yes you can, but it's not a realiable weld. Like if you want to weld them in as corner braces or use them as strut material in some inconsequential location. No you can if you are going to suspend youself in the air with them. You wanna keep the heat down and poor it to them, stop, clean and do it some more. Again, the qualifier, the posts I have dealt with haver been garbage steel but by no means can I give advice about every post by every known manufacturer.
Reply:There are (were) a few of the posts that you described along the fence at the back edge of my property.   While I was home at lunch, just for giggles, I took a 3' length of hydraulic ram shaft and went at them like Barry Bonds.    Each fence post easily snapped in half and (although I'm not a metallurgist) at the broken ends it looked just like cast iron.There are no small projects
Reply:I agree. I've always thought metal T-posts are some sort of cast iron, too. They sure don't have much strength or bending ability. They snap without much provocation.Don
Reply:i thought they were made from melted down nissans and toyotas... ...zap!I am not completely insane..Some parts are missing Professional Driver on a closed course....Do not attempt.Just because I'm a  dumbass don't mean that you can be too.So DON'T try any of this **** l do at home.
Reply:i'm thinkin some are a high carbon steel. the last 4 i pulled out of the ground bent in half, didn't seem too brittle . but if you have high carbon posts , they'll probably weld as crappy as coat hangers .[SIZE="5"Yardbird"
Reply:Not sure about the metal. I've sure pounded enough of them in and they seemed pretty hard. Try some 6010, 6011, 6013 and see what happens.
Reply:Thanks for all your comments…I guess these fence posts are mystery metal and can vary from post to post.  I also removed them from the ground and had quite a time doing it. The post I tried welding on was bent quite a bit (not brittle)  by the time I got it free.  I’ve tried welding with 6013 and 7014 after wire brushing. Results were almost a decent bead to a complete mess with burn through. I had much better luck using reduced heat with minimum DCEN amps as Sandy recommended. I will probably attempt to make a tool stand for a bench drill press now that I think the pieces will hold together.  Jim
Reply:Most T-posts are extruded crap steel. They are extruded almost molten and cut to length hot. Lots of impurities because for there intended use it doesn't matter.50% of the time its easier to pull the post and fab up something out of 1" pipe  to stretch wire from. I'm starting this project right now, I have to put up a small 4 wire fence over about a 1/2 mile of rocky ground. Where we cant drive posts, we drill a 2" hole with a rotary hammer and set them in rock, when we can't do that we weld up self standing frames out of 1".  pipe. It's not worth it to weld t-posts, for every one that turns out good, you've wasted hours ruining 3-4 others.Last edited by Aric; 07-22-2006 at 10:36 AM.
Reply:It's not worth it to weld t-posts, for every one that turns out good, you've wasted hours ruining 3-4 others.
Reply:Hey thanks again, I sure questioned myself trying to weld the T Posts and knew there must be something wrong here. I hope the tool stand concept isn't too much of a pain to complete!!