Campbell Hausfeld 115v stick welder and kit unboxing , use and review

Hello everyone and welcome. This year for Christmas I got a substantial upgrade to the backwoods lifestyle in the form of a 115 Campbell Hofsdale welder and this is the welding kit. It comes with theoretically everything you need to start welding and I did need a little welder like this not just for the projects that I do for fun but when you know sometimes things break around the house I can weld them up. I haven't welded in many years and even then I used a 220 volt welder and it was mainly for like you know roll bars, push bars, things like that for you know four-wheel drives that I used to have. So let's open this up check the contents out and see if we can do a little welding. We got some welding gloves. These welding gloves are thick and they fit real well. Of course you've got the instructions which you should always read first. Got a pack of what looks like 1 16th welding rods, a slag hammer, and a brush. Got a welding shield and handle. Don't know how well that'll hold up but we'll try it and see. The welder itself looks like it's really well made. So there's all the contents to the welder and kit. My first project is going to be to weld this wrought iron banister back in place. Somebody who was above the legal limit stumbled through it knocked it off. This has some rust on it where it's been out in the elements for a while so my first step I got to clean all this up. I got everything cleaned up and I've got the railing wedged in place and I guess I'm about ready to start welding. I'm using the 1 16th rod that was supplied with the kit and I've got my voltage set to low. Now I'm going to try some Hobart 1 16th welding rods to see if they're any better. Here's my first weld with the Campbell Hossfield welder. The welding rods that come with the kit were kind of hard to get arcing. On this end I used Hobart 1 16th welding rods and the welds turned out much better even with me being a novice. My next project I'm going to weld my trailer jack back onto my boat trailer and I did not weld this on here. It was on there when I bought this boat however I was the one that knocked this off. This will be a good project for this little Campbell Hossfield welder and I'm going to use a 5 64th welding rod and the high setting on the welder. Here's the weld on the trailer jack and I just welded over the weld that was already up there so it looks kind of wonky but I did no prep work whatsoever to it other than hitting it a little bit with a wire brush and it still welded up great. So here's the weld after I got it painted and this is the welding rods that came with the kit and this is the Hobart welding rods and here is the trailer jack after paint and this is with the Hobart welding rods and this is actually welded over a weld. I did no prep work other than a brush. Okay Campbell Hossfield 115 volt welder and starter kit if you will. Gotta say I'm a fan. The welder performed great both on the low setting with the 1 16th welding rods and on the high setting with the 5 60 force welding rods. Reviewing the components of the kit itself starting off with the welding shield. A lot of people have complained about it and I don't know if they've redesigned it or fixed it or whatever. Mine like I said it snapped together great. It has a number 10 shade lens in it and just welding you know those parts it was easy to hold in place and so forth and so on and it may break on down the road. I don't know it seemed like it was kind of well made. The welding rods that come in the kit are questionable. You could weld with them. I had a hard time getting them to arc correctly on the low setting. Swapped over to the Hobart rods and you know it worked great. So I don't know if it was just a bad batch of welding rods in my kit or what. Welding gloves the welding gloves were thick. They fit great. Even you know the spider didn't go through them nothing like that. So can't complain about those and they're a cool blue color too. Make you look like a redneck Avenger. The slag brush slash hammer worked great. Again it seemed like it was well made. Probably lasts for a long time. So all in all if you're looking to buy one of these Campbell Hossfield welders I would. I mean I think they retail for like $109 and again I got mine for Christmas and it's truly one of the you know greatest Christmas presents I've gotten since the Red Ryder BB gun. So anyway thank y'all for watching. We'll see y'all next time.