Advice please

[waddycall]

I've been building my new hot water cylinder stand today from 50mm box and thought if take the opportunity to get some stick welding practice as I'm keen to learn the process. I even treated myself to some fin cord 6013s.
Generally I'm pleased with how the welds went as my experiences with stick welding are usually nightmarish. One problem I couldn't get over was the difficulty I had getting slag off of the fillet welds. If I turned the amps down then I had problems with slag holes in the weld. I guess the arc length was around 2mm and definitely no dragging.
The picture shows one of the practice pieces and you can see all the chipping hammer marks. The butt welds on the side were practically peelers with the slag falling off when the parts were moved.
I'm keen to get the hang of this so all comments/advice appreciated.
All welds were down hand.
Fin cord 6013 2.5mm
70 amps
D.c.e.n.

Thanks,

Pete

 

[wheresmejumper]

The slag on fillets is always harder to peel off than on a butt,those welds look fairly spot on.
on 2mmish steel itll heat up pretty quick,so thatll add to the slag difficulty

 

[BrokenBiker]

nothing wrong with those welds. peelers are great but rare IME. slag will always be harder to get off a fillet

 

[Welderpaul]

Welds look good.

Use a wire brush in a grinder to flick the slag off rather than belting hell out of it with a chipping hammer and leaving loads of pit marks in it.

 

[BrokenBiker]

also, when I was doing a welding course I was told to scrape not peck. run the pointy end of the hammer down the weld, and use the flat end on the edges

 

[waddycall]

Thanks for the replies. Never thought about material thickness affecting slag removal. Wire brush in grinder sounds like an easier option. Good to know the welds look ok too. I'll have quarter of a ton sat on welds like those so nice to hear! Cheers, pete

 

[Liquid Metal]

One thing that might be worth trying to get in the habit of doing is trying to not start or stop on a corner, but start before the corner, then weld around the corner then along the side, finishing before you get to the next corner if that makes sense??? Wont make any difference with what is pictured, but on a load bearing part any cracks will always start in high stress areas and stresses concentrate on/in corners.

 

[norlander]

concur with slag being harder to knock off in fillets (knocking off slags in the pub is easier), also, I've noticed that in general, the slag is tougher on some of these modern rods and peelers are less common (maybe its thought to be bad for the weld so the composition has been changed to make the slag cover stay-dunno???).
Normally I scratch the slag off with the bare end of the next rod, if the slag is tough I grab me chipping hammer with both hands and twist and work the point into the slag and then scrape it out.
Very tidy welds-nice job.