I fired up my Tig-welder for an easy carbon steel butt-joint welding.
When making contact it really sputtered and the junk was flying around. After cleaning the metal (your surface needs to be dust and grease-free), tinkering with amperage settings and gas flow and switching the Tungsten, it appeared one of those very basic things:
The gas bottle wasn't open. :-)
(ten minutes after posting this, I've made the same mistake. Again... :| )