Vintage Forney Arc Welder vs. 20v Tool Set: What Should a Shop Buy First?

I've handled tool and equipment purchasing for our small repair shop for about eight years, and I keep a mistake log. Not a fancy spreadsheet—a plain notebook where I write down what I ordered, what it really cost, and what I should have ordered instead. The November 2022 entry is the one I quote the most.

We had roughly $500 left in the equipment budget that quarter, and two ways to spend it:

Option A: a vintage Forney arc welder from a farmer who was closing his shop. $200, ran well, all original.
Option B: a 20v tool set—drill, impact driver, two batteries, charger, and bag. $450, complete.

I chose A because it looked like the smarter deal. Then I bought B six months later anyway. Before you repeat my mistake, here's the comparison I should have run before ordering A.

The $200 welder cost $433 before it made a cent

Let me defend the machine for a second. The Forney arc welder, vintage 1980s if I had to guess, was in beautiful shape. The fan spun, the transformer hummed, and it had original paint. What it didn't have was everything required to weld with it.

The farmer's setup had a homemade electrode holder and a ground clamp made from actual vice grips. The power cord was cracked near the case. I wouldn't let my guys run gear like that, so it all got replaced before the first rod was struck.

• Electrode holder and ground clamp—$38
• Cord repair parts and a proper plug—$20
• A welding hood without a cracked lens—$90
• Gloves, chipping hammer, wire brush—$35
• 10 lb box of 6013 electrodes—$25
• Forney grinding wheel 4-1/2 in. metal 5-pack for cleanup—$25

That's $233 in extras, and it turned a $200 welder into a $433 welder. Add the $40 of electrodes I burned while relearning to run a bead, and the total was nearly identical to the $450 20v tool set I passed on. The sticker made the welder look cheap. The real number didn't.

It's tempting to compare just the two prices and call it a day. Now I ask a second question before any equipment purchase: what's not included?

Time to the first paying job is the spec that matters

I had stick welded a little in high school, which is not the same as being useful with a welder. The Forney ran perfectly while I laid down welds that looked like a stack of dimes hit by a truck. The learning curve was my fault, but it still cost me six weeks before I made a weld I'd let a customer see.

The 20v tool set, when I finally ordered it in May 2023, made money its first morning. That same week, we fixed a binding door on a steel equipment rack. The hinge pin was seized solid—a typical job that has nothing to do with welding.

How to pop a door hinge pin that's rusted in place: spray penetrating oil on it, wait ten minutes, then take a punch that's slightly smaller than the pin head and tap the pin upward from underneath. Hinge pins go in from the top, so they come out from the bottom. Tap—don't swing—and once the pin starts moving, push it the rest of the way with a screwdriver.

That repair took 20 minutes. It used a hammer, a punch, and the drill/driver to put the hinge back together. That kind of work was paying our bills that month, while the welder sat in the corner waiting for a job big enough to justify its existence.

The dimension where the welder won (yes, it won one)

I don't want to oversell the cordless side. A 20v tool set can't fuse steel, and it can't repair a cracked equipment mount. In March 2023, a customer brought us exactly that job: a mount that had cracked along an old weld. We quoted it, clamped it, and ran a few beads with the Forney. The weld wasn't pretty, but it held, and the job paid $400.

In one afternoon, the vintage welder covered its entire cost. That's the dimension I underestimated. The cordless tools are skill amplifiers—they make you faster at jobs you already know how to do. A welder is a capability creator. It lets you do jobs that were physically impossible before, and when a paying weld job comes in, nothing else in the shop can replace it.

But here's the part that matters more: the weld job took four months to walk in the door. The 20v set earned its keep in the first week. And if we had bought the cordless set first, we could have subbed that $400 weld repair to a local fabricator and still kept most of the labor. The welder was justified, but it wasn't urgent.

Ongoing costs: consumables, batteries, and the CXS 12 drill set

Nobody warns you that a welder slowly eats money. Electrodes run about $25 for a 10 lb box, and if you're practicing, they disappear. Grinding wheels disappear faster. We go through a Forney grinding wheel 4-1/2 in. metal 5-pack every couple of months, and at roughly $25 a pack as of early 2025, that expense adds up. I checked current prices before writing this.

The cordless side has been cheaper so far. In 18 months, no battery has died, and the two-battery kit means we've never waited for a charge. We did add one more tool that first winter: a CXS 12 cordless drill set for the small fasteners on cabinet hinges, motor covers, and control panels where the 20v drill is too bulky. It was extra money, but it gets used at least once a week.

I can only speak to our situation, and in our situation the cordless tools cost less to keep running.

So what should you buy first?

Here is my blunt answer, and it is not never buy a vintage welder. The Forney is still in our shop, and I would probably buy it again. I would just buy it in the right order.

• Buy the 20v tool set first if you do maintenance, repair, installation, or any mix where drilling and driving happen daily. It will bill hours in week one.
• Buy the arc welder first if you are a fabrication shop or a mobile welder with paying weld work waiting from day one. For you, the welder is not a tool purchase; it's the production line.
• Mixed shop like ours? Buy the cordless set first, then add the welder when a specific paying job shows up and justifies it.

The usual caveat applies: our shop is six people doing light fabrication and mechanical repair, not a production welding operation. If your context is different—structural steel, truck bodies, farm equipment—the order probably flips. This isn't a universal ranking; it's what our own job mix taught us.

The real lesson in my log isn't about Forney, or welders, or cordless tools. It's that a bargain you can't use is not a bargain. My $200 welder turned into a $433 welder with a six-week delay before it produced anything. The $450 set was exactly $450 and ready on day one. That kind of transparency is worth paying for, and I now factor it into every purchase I make.