I have Dad's old stick welder here. When he wired up my shed he put in a 15A outlet with a 20A fuse.
Yesterday we were practising on his hobby gas less MIG which has the teeny wire and I can tell I have not welded for a while. When working as a fitter in a factory I used to love using the industrial MIG in our workshop. Nowhere near as good as the full time welders but pretty good by my standard.
We are in the process of making up a tail rack for one of my motos, hence the need for practice. Meanwhile the MIG wents tits up with the wire feed. He'll sort it out tho'.
Just out of curiosity, how did anyone with no experience and no money survive into the 80s? At least until we had proper training. When working in those days I went to after hours TAFE to be taught how to weld properly, amongst other things. Those types of courses are sadly, no more.