ARK Welding question?

Theres no such thing as a stupid question. Not asking the question is stupid. I've reposted one of my ramblings on verticle welding:

Vertical up welding is fairly easy to do once you get the hang of it. Electrode angle pays a very important roll, about 5* to 10* down from horizontal, 0* works best sometimes, and you need your head below the rod to see the weld puddle with a close arc length and a slightly faster travel speed.

Vertical down welds are allowed by code and are limited to 2" in length on fillet welds but most welds fail when ran verticle down as it's very easy to trap slag with in the molten puddle. I only recomend very experienced welders use vertical down. Learn verticle up first!

Now most welders watch the "slag" in the molten puddle and not the molten puddle it's self and that causes the molten puddle to fall or the weld puddle will slump before the welder moves the rod upward. Thats why we teach you to weld flat first so you can reconize the weld puddle from the slag. If you can see the difference in the weld puddle and the slag, then do not let the slag take your attenion away from the motlen puddle in the vertical position like it does to most weldors.

A vertical weave bead is made by starting a weld puddle then moving horzontial, 8 rod diameters max, then pause slightly to deposit more weld, move up 1/2 rod diameter, then back to the starting point. The horizontal move should be fairly fast so if the weld slumps in the center then your moving too slow. If the ends are under cut then your not pausing long enough at the corners. Take a stratch awl making two vertical lines will help you keep the weld straight and uniform width.

The 8 times the rod diameter maximum is so the slag does not cool before you return to deposit more metal.

My method of teaching is to have the welder try to move too fast, too slow, long arc length, short arc length, rod angle at 45*, at 5*, too many amps, too low of amps, etc: and pay close attention to the changes each makes in the weld. That way when you have a problem you will remember what caused that problem and you will know how to correct it. I reverse teach, "what makes a bad weld". If you know what makes a bad weld then you will know how to correct it when you make that mistake.

This is also where your plastic welding lens will fail you the most. You now have two weld puddles due to the distortion of the plastic lens.

Which one is the true weld puddle? Only use all glass lens.

T_Bone

You need to practice welding on something other than your trailer your building as there's a safety concern.

I would suggest you grab some scrap and take a few days and just practice running beads until they look pretty good. Then set up a few bend tests as you did before. If the welds break fairly even, then if you keep the weld clean, remove slag between passes, you should be ok.

Another good way to test welds is to cut accross the weld with a torch, then grind, then sand smooth. The smoother the finish the more weld detail you can see.

This will let you look at how much penetration, slag and weld unformity your getting in your welds.
There will be good visual detail of the molten puddle as it bonds to the base metal with the base metal being lite in color and the weld being slightly darker.

T_Bone