How To Tig Weld (Most People Miss These Tricks)

How To Feed Your Filler Rod Properly When Tig Welding

Alright—if you’re running a pass and your hands get in the way of your vision, or you run out of reach and start shaking, you’re not alone. Most of the time it’s not your vision, or your lenses in your helmet’s fault.  It’s usually the little stuff. The habits with posture and technique. The warm-ups. The setup. So let’s fix it.

Filler Rod Feeding: Don’t Overthink It

Most new welders struggle with feeding the filler rod. You end up getting your hands in the way, or running out of reach. Here’s what I teach in my programs, and it’s a game-changer:

Practice Feeding During Your Dry Runs.
Before getting going with a weld, it’s common that most people practice running a dry line with their torch hand. I want to ask you though, how come you don't do it with your filler hand as well? You use the opportunity to warm up the torch hand, why don't use it as an opportunity to warm up the other hand also?  Before you strike an arc, trace the path you’ll be welding with your torch hand (known as a dry pass or a dry run.) Practice moving the torch hand along your welding path while keeping your filler hand stationary—that’s key. I recommend to keep the filler material and approximately 6 inches away from the welding area where you will stop your pass. (if you need a video breakdown of this, check out THIS VIDEO LESSON right here.)

Before you start moving your torch hand to do the dry pass, feed your filler material all the way out until it meets right in the welding area. Now you can start travelling with your torch hand, however this does one important thing now. As you begin to advance, this will force you to start backing up the filler material in your feeding hand. You are essentially practising feeding backwards. When you reach the end of the pass, you can then reverse the travel direction so you are now travelling backwards, however at this point you will start to feed outwards with your filler hand, so now essentially feeding the normal and correct way. Typically people can advance the torch along the welding path with good stability doing a dry run, so you are going to use this as a guide to practice feeding, he will try and chase the torch back-and-forth by feeding in and out with your hand. Doing this as you are practising dry runs with proper posture is going to help you build this muscle memory much more quickly for feeding the filler material.

And when it clicks? You’ll feel it. The whole process just flows better.

Use a Scribe—Seriously

Want cleaner passes and better consistency? Use a tungsten scribe to mark your weld path. You can use a ruler to mark out a clear line, this is a great way for you to to have a solid reference that you can follow as you are welding.

•  On lap joints, scribe a line along the bottom plate.
•  For pipe or curved shapes, scribe a bottom reference to track as you go.
•  It’s simple, but it’s what keeps your weld from drifting and looking sloppy halfway through.

Want More Help?

I walk through all this—and a ton more—in my online programs. You’ll learn why these techniques work, not just what buttons to press.

👉 Take a Free TIG class here: Free TIG Welding Classes
👉 Watch the full filler rod breakdown on YouTube: Watch The Lesson Here 

These classes are packed with actual solutions. Not fluff. Just real-world tips I use every day in the shop.

Welding’s meant to be fun. If it’s stressing you out, it probably just means something simple’s off. Start with these tricks, get warmed up—and I promise you’ll feel the difference.

Now go lay down some clean passes and celebrate.

Dusty James
Fill and chill. Talk soon. Peace.