Originally Posted by
sdodd
Thanks for the comments! Yes- lots of discontinuity in all of my stops and starts. And, a hole or two filled and some burned edges on the miter of some of the similarly sized tubes. Though, surprisingly, I was able to get decent welds between the top tube and down tube on my headtube with a big cup and a long stick out of the electrode. I had more of a problem continually bonking my head trying to see around the tubes.
While things might not look super pretty, Ron Sutphin was observing/ inspecting and Mike DeSalvo was teaching and helping as well. If anything seemed like it was a structural issue, I'm sure they would have mentioned it and had me redo. This was all after a BB/Seat tube weld/break test (on scrap parts) to confirm that I was getting good penetration. So, hopefully, no failures in the coming years/miles. Some of the weird looking places were 'fixed' later in the process and some are just shadows where a lumpy area is making an OK area look like a gap. Not totally pretty, but as my dad would say, "at least people will look at it and believe you welded it." =P
Ah if you filled in those spots that should be fine. Yes burn-back on the "ears" when the tubes are similar sizes can be very tricky. I sometimes do a trick I saw on Justin Voss's YT channel which is to put a few tacks in place first in the tricky spots, like "teeth", and then weld across to them.
I think stops and starts are actually good to do. Some people pride themselves on being able to weld 1/4 of the way round a tube or more without stopping. But you might be better just to do 1/2" or so and then move around the frame to distribute the heat and let things cool down. This is usually what I do. And wherever things are a bit sketchy, use the minimum heat you can to get a bead on there, even if it's sitting up a bit, and then just burn it in with a second pass. As soon as there is some weld there you won't get holes nearly so easily.