Editorial policy

Who writes this site

Every article, roundup, comparison and guide on Arc & Bead is written by Ryder M., the hands-on owner behind Magoo Media Group. There is no anonymous team byline and no unattributed content.

Sourcing

Every technical figure is attributed inline. Product specifications come from the manufacturer's own product page, spec sheet or manual. Standards come from the body that publishes them — the American Welding Society, OSHA, ANSI, the National Electrical Code, or the Compressed Gas Association. Every page carries a Sources section naming them.

Where a figure could not be confirmed, it is omitted rather than estimated. This is why some machines on this site carry fewer specification rows than others.

Ranges are labeled as ranges. Where a settings chart gives a starting range rather than a single number, it says so, and it says that your machine's own documentation governs.

Claims this site will never make

These are absolute, not aspirational.

That we have tested a product. There is no test lab. The word "tested" does not appear as a claim about Arc & Bead anywhere on this site.

An invented credential. No certification, license, qualification, years of experience or employment history will be claimed for our author that has not actually been established.

A first-hand usage claim that did not happen. No "in our shop", no "we ran this for a month".

A fabricated testimonial, review, star rating or review count. There are no testimonials on this site because there are no real ones to publish.

A price we cannot verify. No prices, no price ranges, no dollar-sign bands.

A numeric product score. A score implies a measurement we have not made.

How We Pick sets out what we publish instead.

Structured data

The machine-readable version of a page has to say the same thing the visible version says.

So this site emits no Review, reviewRating or AggregateRating markup, and no Product node with an offers block. Those types assert a first-hand scored verdict and a live price, and we have neither. Roundups are marked up as an ItemList, which honestly says "here is an ordered list of our picks".

Imagery

Photographs on this site are licensed stock images of the relevant class of machine or work. They are not photographs of individual products, and every product card states that in visible copy beneath the image.

Alt text describes what an image shows. It never implies whose workshop it is, who used the machine, or that any pictured work is ours.

Affiliate relationships

Arc & Bead earns affiliate commission, disclosed in the footer of every page, above the fold on every commercial page, and beneath every buy button.

No manufacturer has paid for placement or been given the opportunity to review a page before publication. Commission does not decide recommendations — the full statement is on the affiliate disclosure page.

Dates

Every content page shows a published date and a last-updated date. The updated date changes only when the content actually changed.

A refreshed date on unchanged content is a lie to the reader and to search engines, and we do not do it. The same applies to the lastmod values in our sitemap, which are read from the content rather than from the build timestamp.

Update cadence

Roundups and budget roundups are reviewed quarterly, because a roundup whose top pick can no longer be bought is the worst possible state for a buying guide. Reference tables, comparisons, pillar guides and safety guides are reviewed annually, or immediately if a standard changes.

Any product going out of production triggers an out-of-cycle update to every page that recommends it.

Corrections

If something on this site is wrong, we want to know, and correcting it is not grudging.

Email contact@arcandbead.com with the page and the figure you think is incorrect. We check it against the manufacturer's or standards body's published source. If it is wrong we correct it and update the page's last-updated date. If we believe it is right, we will tell you why and name the source.

Where a correction materially changes a recommendation rather than a detail, we say so on the page rather than editing it silently.

Safety content

Safety guidance on this site is general guidance for home welding. It does not replace your machine's manual, your consumable manufacturer's safety data sheet, or the applicable OSHA and AWS standards, all of which govern where they differ from anything here.

Electrical guidance in particular is written to help you have an informed conversation with a licensed electrician. It is not a substitute for one, and every page that touches circuits says so in the body text rather than in a footnote.

Independence

Arc & Bead links to one external brand — its publisher, Magoo Media Group. There are no reciprocal link arrangements, no paid guest posts, and no link exchanges.