Time to play...Rate My Weld (please)

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ok, so I have been practicing some with my new Miller 211 and feel like I am getting *ok* welds.  I sledge hammer tested one T joint like in the following picture and finally got the metal to break about 1/4 inch from the weld after about 20 hits but the welds themselves held.  This does give me some amount of confidence that I have some fusion going on.This is welding 16 gauge into 11 gauge (the 16 is the T piece coming into the 11) on the Miller 211 set to .030 wire auto at the border between 18 and 16 gauge.  I am using 75/25 gas and solid core wire.Some improvement I can see right away is that the weld is very slightly concave....perhaps I am spreading out a bit too far as I stitch the 11 to the 16.  I am terrified of blowing holes in the 16 with the 0.030 wire as I can't get 0.023 wire to feed properly in the miller 211.All three pictures are of the same weld, with the last pic showing the weld before being wire brushed...you can see the heat zone...kind of poor at the start of the weld, but spreads out as I go down.Edit: oh I forgot I started at the top on a tack...probably should have ground that down first and I bet I would have had a nicer start...Anyway, any hints are helpful...here are the pics:Last edited by IGBT; 02-18-2013 at 06:37 PM.
Reply:Not bad. I wouldn't worry too much about it being concave. With thin material it's hard to get a small enough bead. Keep in mind with a fillet joint like this, once the weld leg equals the base metal thickness of the thinner material, more weld won't really make it a stronger bead. In fact too much weld material can hurt the joint. Since you are welding 1/8" roughly to 1/16", you really only need the legs to be 1/16" to 1/8" roughly. I doubt that concavity is less than a line drawn between 1/8" up the legs on both sides.On corners, remember that start / stops at the corners are natural weak points and places where welds will start to fail. Try and wrap the corners if at all possible. Keep practicing, you are doing fine from what I can see..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan