From my experience buy scrape all the bucks you can together and go borrow some more and buy a welder one lever higher than what you can afford. Thats the way to be happy with the welder you buy. I went the ultra cheap route, I have a lincoln 85 amp mig welder, I lay a decent bead on real clean metal, any dirt paint or rust and the bead looks for crap. I am pretty happy with it for what I paid and have no complaints, I use mine for welding exauhst tubing, frame rails, and body panels. It welds 1/8" mild steel plate easiely and have welded 1/4" using the triple pass method and grind method. Did you say you wanted to weld 1" thick angle iron? Your gonna need to fork out some bucks to do that, You may want to consider buying a light duty mig welder for small stuff and getting a stick welder for when you do thick stuff.