My family just moved and I now have a large beautiful shop and I want to start practicing my welding. Right now money is tight, so I'm trying to make due with what I have.

The welder is an Lincoln ”tombstone” 225 amp AC machine. It says it wants a 50 amp service.

I have a 20 feet of grounded 10-3 heavily insulated wire that I obtained for free. My understanding is that I could run a 40 amp service with this wire.

Here are the questions: 1: Is 10-3 grounded wire suitable for a 40 amp service?

2: If I have a welder that wants a 50amp service and I plug it into a 40 amp service, would that be suitable for practicing and learning to weld?

3: Would the appropriate wire size would be 8-3?

4: Am I missing anything?

The 40 amp service would be useful down the road for our mill and lathe, so it is not a waste of time to run until I can afford 8-3 wire.

Sorry for any botched terminology. I'm still learning.