One of my best purchases last year was a little MIG welder from HarborFreight. It was around $100 with coupons. It doesn't come with any accessories, so I bought an auto-darkening welding helmet for around $40, leather welding gloves, slag chipper, etc. also at HF.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=98871
The MIG welder is flux core only with no gas option. This means you get a lot of splatter and slag, but you can always grind those off. I'm happy with the increasing quality of my welds on iron and steel. I used it to make the rear carrier on my scooter EV -- and most recently, a firewood rack for 1/2 cord of firewood. The little MIG welder runs on 120 VAC which is very handy since I can just use the current power outlet in my back yard.
Unfortunately a flux core MIG welder means that I can't weld aluminium (which needs gas), which is a bummer since the weight/strength ratio of AL is ideal for EV use. I need to upgrade to a gas MIG welder -- or a TIG welder. I'm leaning towards the latter but I really need to ge a 240/220 volt outlet installed since it's not worth trying to buy a 120 VAC TIG. But getting a TIG welder would be great. I could even weld titanium if I wanted to. :-) Maybe Santa will get me a Lincoln TIG welder for Christmas....
I use steel from a local steel reseller, Logan Steel. They sell surplus steel bar and sheet for $1 a pound, which is quite reasonable. Their billboards are ubiquitous in southern CT.
The other useful tools I'm using are an offset grinder to prep my welding stock. Also, I converted my HarborFreight compound sliding miter saw to be a metal cutting saw by putting in a 10" metal cutting disk. Very useful, especially when I'm cutting a lot of stock. What I like about my miter saw conversion is that I retained the ability to do 45° cuts (or any arbitrary degree) as well as relatively long cross-cuts, which a lot of dedicated metal chopsaws can't do.
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