← Back to Bead Board
The Tack Box

Free tools for welding and fab shops.

No login. No email. Just answers. Built by the Bead Board team because we do this math every day and got tired of running it on the back of a cut list.

01

Welding Shop Rate Calculator

What should you actually be charging per hour? Enter your overhead, billable hours, and target margin. Break-even rate and recommended rate, live.

Find your rate →02

Welding Cost Calculator

Estimate a weld job down to the inch. MIG, TIG, stick, flux-core. Labor, filler, gas, markup. Download a clean PDF for the customer.

Estimate a job →03

Metal Weight Calculator

Plate, pipe, bar, tube. Every common steel, stainless, and aluminum spec. Imperial or metric, one piece or a hundred.

Weigh it →04

Welding Gas Usage Calculator

How many bottles do you need for this job? Pick your process and cylinder size. Get total consumption, cost, and days per bottle.

Count your bottles →05

Weld Filler Metal Calculator

How many pounds of wire or rod for a joint? Fillet or butt, any process. Spool count, box count, and estimated cost.

Calculate filler →06

Welding Job Pricing Calculator

Build a bid from scratch. Tasks, materials, consumables, overhead, margin. One page that tells you what to charge for the whole job.

Price a job →
Reference

Charts & guides

07

Welding Settings Chart

Pick your process, metal, and thickness. Get amperage, voltage, wire speed, gas, and filler — MIG, TIG, or stick.

Look up settings →08

Wire & Gas Selection Guide

Which wire type, wire size, and shielding gas for your process and base metal. MIG, TIG, stick, and flux-core.

Find your wire →09

Welding Symbol Chart

Every AWS A2.4 welding symbol — searchable, visual, with dimension callout rules. The cheat sheet that replaces the PDF.

Look up symbols →

Why we built the Tack Box

We do job tracking and quoting for small welding shops. We talk to shop owners all the time and the same questions come up: what should I charge? what does this weld actually cost me? how much does a 4×8 sheet of quarter-inch plate weigh?

So we built the calculators we were already running every day, put them behind no login, and published the math. Add your shop name and logo and the PDF you download is yours, not ours.

Free welding calculators and reference tools

The welding shop rate calculator figures out what you should actually charge per hour based on your real overhead and billable hours. The welding cost estimator breaks a weld job down by process: MIG, TIG, stick, or flux-core, with labor, filler, gas, and markup shown per inch. The metal weight calculator covers every common shape and material: steel plate, steel pipe by NPS and schedule, round bar, square tube, aluminum, and stainless.

Every calculator runs in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server. Your shop name, logo, and contact info are stored on your device only and show up on the PDF you download. The math is sourced from ASME B36.10M, MatWeb, Lincoln Electric, ESAB, Miller, and TWI.

See how shops use Bead Board: quoting • job tracking • mobile + offline • time tracking • job photos.