Elise Ramsdell, Consumables & safety editor

My corner of the site is everything around the arc: contact tips, liners, nozzles, spool guns, wire, gas, and the safety gear that keeps you welding past your first weekend. It's also the warranty paperwork nobody reads until a wire feeder quits.

Consumables are where listings get vague. "Fits most MIG torches" can mean the wrong thread, the wrong tip size or a steel liner when you're feeding aluminum. So I go by the torch model and the part numbers in the manufacturer's parts list, and I read the reviews that mention fit before the ones that mention price. Aluminum gets extra care. Many MIG machines sold as aluminum-capable need a spool gun that costs extra, and I want that in the first paragraph of a guide, not the last.

Safety copy gets the slowest read on the site. I compare our wording with the warnings in the operator manuals and the PPE guidance the makers publish, and any sentence that makes a bargain auto-darkening helmet sound good enough gets rewritten.

Part numbers, parts lists, warranty exclusions: my job is the paperwork, done properly.