Back side of welds on thin steel

[Rich Feldman]

Found these old pictures & thought they would be fun to share.

Here is one end of a steel railing, at a place where my cycling group stops almost every week.
I have never seen a proper cap on the end post.

.
On that day in May, 2017, I looked into the square tube to check out the heat affected surface behind the welded joint.
A colorful and fuzzy efflorescence had developed.

[John Futter]

Good pen (penetration)
but the weld is fugly.

a good welder would have left a perfect fillet and the inside would almost be a mirror

but it is stuck so you can lean on it with security that it is not going to fail and tip you over the edge

[Richard Hull]

A friend who is a welder once told me, when I asked about current settings on my welder.... "if it don't blow a hole in th' work, its a good weld and your current setting is OK". That philosophy will not play well in the vacuum biz which is highly specialized and so many other considerations enter into the effort than just mechanically sticking a couple of hunks of metal together.

Richard Hull

[Rich Feldman]

Wish I had chosen a better Subject line.
Viewers might overlook the fact that the fuzzy efflorescence was slowly moving.

[John Futter]

LOL