After botching many welding jobs, I have established baselines for any weld I now attempt:
1. Clamp the pieces, then add more clamps. Professional welders can strategically spot weld pieces they are welding together to control warpage. Amateurs like me benefit from clamps holding pieces in place. Lots of clamps.
2. Short welds are better than continuous welds. Notice the factory welds on farm equipment are often no longer than one or two inches. There are a few places where continuous welds are needed — attaching new edges to loader buckets, for example — but those welds should actually be short welds alternated between ends of the new edge to avoid putting too much heat at a time in a concentrated area.
3. There is no substitute for a good ground. MIG welders are fussy — their ground clamp must be attached to clean, bare, shiny metal and attached as close as possible to the welding point. Arc welders are famous for being able to “weld through anything, anywhere,” but better arc welds come from attaching the ground clamp to bare metal reasonably close to the weld point, and from removing paint and corrosion so the arc doesn’t have to fight though those high-resistance layers.
4. Keep the welding helmet close to the weld. I had a habit of holding my face far away from the welding arc, probably a natural instinct to stay away from something so hot. Look at photos of professional welders at work and the eye port of their welding helmet is often less than a foot from their arc, especially TIG welders who are “laying dimes.” Getting “up close and personal” improved my welds by allowing me to better monitor the weld puddle.
5. Quick quenching a weld isn’t necessarily a good idea. Many farmers have a 5-gal. bucket of water near their welders to quench their welds so they can be comfortably handled after welding. Lincoln Electric (Welders) advises against quick quenching any weld. Their experts say quick-quenching stresses the metal adjacent to welds and can lead to situations where the weld “holds,” but the metal near the weld fails due to crystallization. Slow-cooling to ambient temperature produces optimum strength for welds and surrounding metal.
