Re: Welding help needed

Posted by phil_n on June 03, 2015 at 20:06:14 from (207.81.65.157):

In Reply to: Welding help needed posted by jd60677 on June 03, 2015 at 17:18:47:

Also, if you start welding from one edge and just go all the way across in the same direction non-stop it will squeeze (shrink) more at the end that you ended on than at the end that you started on. You can compensate somewhat by 'back-stepping' and stitch welding. You start about an inch from one side (or edge) and weld back towards the edge, then your next stitch will start an inch from the start of the first weld and go back towards the start of the first weld until you get to the first weld. And so on till you have welded all the way across the piece. You would use larger stitches for longer welds.

You can also compensate some if you don't want to go through all that by making your root gap a little smaller on the edge you are going to start welding from so that when it all shrinks it will (hopefully) pull it square.

If you want to stop it from bowing up across the weld, as well as the previous suggestions about not welding all of one side first, you can put a thin shim under the weld area and clamp the piece down so that it is 'pre-bowed' a little and (again hopefully) the bowing caused by the shrinkage of the weld will counteract the bow you deliberately caused with the shim.

It is a bit tricky - even with tacking everything because the tacks themselves will pull and shrink and the first ones always pull more than the next ones and when you weld over the tacks they will melt into your puddle and then effectively be doing nothing. One thing I used to do that seemed to work at times was to put a little piece of 3/32 or 1/8 rod a bit in from each end of the root, make sure they are in place then put a good tack (at least a 1/2 inch) in the middle. The tack in the middle tries to pull the joint together but can't because the bits of rod are preventing any movement. Then I could tack on the ends, outside the bits of rod and nothing would move because the tack in the middle and the bits of rod are holding everything in place. YMMV.

HTH

This post was edited by phil_n at 20:18:35 06/03/15 2 times.

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