[Aussie Mike]

That's the best advice. When I decided I was going to learn to weld I enroled at the local tech school and did their MIG certificate course. It only cos a couple of hundred and it was a night class 2 nights a week. One night for practical and the other for theory. It went for about 3 or 4 months from memory.

It was very humbling to turn up to the first practical session and find your best welding efforts look like cockatoo sh!t compared to what the instructor was showing us. Not a problem though, the instructor soon showed us where we were going wrong.

Cheers