Stick Welder, good enough?

Hi guys, I'm new to this hot rod game. My question is, can I use my Lincoln A/C stick welder to box my frame and set up a suicide front end? Or do I need to start hiding money from the wife to pick up a 220 MIG welder?
I'm pretty decent with the stick welder, I made a trailer with it and most recently I modified the fishing boat trailer by fabbing up a folding tongue. What do you guys think?

I am an old stick welder from way back. I remember when that was the choice for everything. Only big factories had migs, and they were big and expensive. If you go back and look at anything built before about 1975, it was probably welded with a stick or gas. If you are good at it, it will be fine.

to me, stick is easier to use for welding the heavy stuff, but i'm also very amatuer at this point as i've only just started learning how to metal work.

As the guys said, stick welding is still a very acceptable means of joining metal together, and in the right hands can produce a pretty and strong weld.

When I built the frame for my '27 my Son was not a welder yet, so I had to tack weld stuff and pay a weld shop to do the final welding. I found a guy who was a welding instructor at a local vo-tech, paid him to weld the frame for me. I told him I wanted it mig welded, because that was the latest buzz word. He laughed and said he was going to arc weld it. I wanted the welds to be pretty, and he gauranteed me they would be.

Long story short, when I picked up the frame it looked like a machine had done them. They were perfect stacks of nickels. So yes, not everyone has to have a mig or tig to build great stuff.

Don

Glad to hear this. It's what I suspected, it's just, all that you hear about is MIG and TIG. I looked at two popular welding books yesterday and they didn't even mention stick welding. I'm glad that I can focus my efforts on becoming a better arc welder rather than getting a MIG.

Ok, new guy spouting off here. I was in the pipeline business for over 18 years. I have weld everything from live propane lines to thin sheet metal. I have a tig,mig and still prefer my lincoln 200 amp arc welder to do any work I need to hold. It is great for welding frames or anything that needs to hold. I generally use a 6010 or 6011 rod to tack and put a string or root pass in something ,then weld it out with a 7018. You get good with all things you practice. You can even take a 3/32 rod and weld body panels once you get used to the heat range. With an arc welder you get superb pentration, mig generally lays on top and tig is a pain in the butt. Lots of high end shops use the tig because it is so clan and makes a really nice weld. If you are going to weld a chrome moly frame you need to tig it but most if not all mild steel or carbon steel can successfully be stick welded. Besides Im old and don't like change. TP