Cheers for the advice chaps, especially about the eye protection.

Make sure you wear EYE PROTECTION . I had a terrible experience and got a bit of molten metal in my eyeball .. Was only grinding for a min or so a quick job thaught ffft .

Had to go hospital to have it picked out with needles whilst awake and in pain ..

a few folk on here will vouch for that as got taken by em form tthe old unit .

Thankfully my eyesight wasnt damaged .

Same here mate, except I WAS wearing the fully closed goggles! Fuck knows how the spark got through but I ended up scraping the shard off the surface of my eyeball with my fingernail Had heard so many horror stories about people needing scalpels etc to scrape the metal out in hospital, so I thought fuck that I'll do it myself!

Steven, that's a pretty fucking scary tale lol I'll make sure I get some eye protection.

And I'll make sure I don't get the same type as Phataz lol! How the fuck did metal escape into your eye with goggles on man?!

What would you say is ideal then, just goggles with side protection, or is a full clear mask that I've seen preferred? :S

I've seen a grinder I like, think I'm going to order it along with eye protection and a decent welding mask for my new Clarke, as the mask they give you with it is pretty shite!

Can you get welding masks that would double up as eye protection for grinding etc?

Woah not liking all these other horror stories.

I would say the moral of the story is always use protection. But as they say, even that isn't always 100% effective, haha.

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/...ding-headshield

Has anyone here got one of these masks for welding btw? It says NOT FOR GAS WELDING very strongly.. does that mean when using something like CO2 for MIG Arc welding, or is 'gas welding' actually something different?

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/...ding-headshield

Has anyone here got one of these masks for welding btw? It says NOT FOR GAS WELDING very strongly.. does that mean when using something like CO2 for MIG Arc welding, or is 'gas welding' actually something different?

No it means not for Oxy/Acetylene welding, which is often referred to as gas welding. I have one very similar but labelled by sif. I use it for tig, mig and stick. The old skool type often have a flip-up screen funtion, but these typically are not light-reactive lenses.

Get a light-reactive lid and a grinding screen (and googles, as they're good for different applications).

As for grinders, discs etc. Bosch or makita 4.5" grinders take the everyday abuse. Bosch tend to be favoured.

Disc-wise i found bronco slitters often tended to skip about a lot when first cutting into metal. I favour rasta, klingspor and phoenix inox slitters. As for flappers I find abracs ones a bit shoddy, taf being a longer lasting brand, Depends on application though.

Edited 19 September, 201114 yr by randombadger69