Hey, I thought of this last night when I was getting something out of my shed and I knocked my two welding helmets off their nails on the wall -- and I noticed the difference between them... My advice to the novice weldor would be, when you're buying your first "cheapie" helmet (non-self-darkening) go with one of those helmets with the BIG glass, not the little tiny 1x3 glass that most cheapie helmets have.

Basically, what I'm talking about is the difference between this:



and this:



The reason I'm saying this is that, as a beginning weldor, you'll find that half the time you think you're striking one place, and you're really somewhere completely different. Now, that being said, I really prefer the small shield helmet now, since it gives me a little more intimacy with my work (I crouch down a lot closer...) but when I started out, half the time I couldn't even see where I was striking because the shield was so small. At some point I was welding at someone else's house and forgot my helmet, so I picked up another at Home Depot, and it had the larger shield. It was much easier to see where I was striking with the larger shield.

Now that I can easily strike it within a mm or so of where I want to, I use the small shield just for personal preference, but the larger shield is nice to have around for on-lookers who might be standing back at a distance and would benefit from the extra visible area.

All of this is just personal preference, of course, but since we're talking about cheapie helmets here (the two above are on Harbor Freight for under $20 each) I figured I'd throw out my advice on the subject...

HTH,
Chris