Vertical Welding

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I have a question, most of you guys with experience can answer this one no problem. I figured I'd ask you guys here because my high school shop teacher doesn't know a lot about welding he's fairly young and I really doubt he has actual "on the job" experience. He's still a great guy and he's excellent on the machines in the shop, but he doesn't know much about welding.Anyway we are basically welding a rectangle its made out of square bar (can't remember the width at the moment) approximatly 1/8" or so thick and there is a bar going across width-wise in the middle of this rectangle. The other student I'm working with and I are taking turns going at it. It's a lot of small welds and the helmets we have at school are crap. But I'm not going to go on about those helmets or this post is going to end up looking like a college essay because of my hatred of those terrible helmets. I have kids screwing around to thank for that one.Getting to the point, some of the welds we have to make on this frame are vertical. The frame is sitting on a work bench and the ends are being welded veritcally while the surface is done horizontally. My question is, for the vertical welds is it better to start at the bottom and go up or start at the top and go down?Also any other various techniques/advice would be greatly appreciated.Thanks-Brian
Reply:First rule, weld it flat of horizontal if at all possible, it is so much easier to get a good weld.What welding process are you using?If the frame can not be re-positioned, then you want to go vertical up.Going vertical down there is the problem of the weld pool (and slag if stick welding) getting in front of the puddle, causing poor penetration, lack of fusion, slag entrapment, etc.  Vertical down can be successfully done on something like an outside corner weld on sheet metal, but you have to move very fast to stay ahead of the puddle, and it's not pretty.I have seen successful stainless steel MIG cladding done by machine vertical down.  For this application, down was chosen for low penetration (low dilution of the stainless with the carbon steel base metal), and the speed.
Reply:I'm using stick welding, sorry I should have said that earlier. There really aren't any other ways to reposition the frame without welding off of a ladder and I don't have access to a ladder at school plus I doubt that the shop teacher would let me weld off of a ladder even if I could get my hands on one. Repositioning it isn't very convenient.  -Brian
Reply:Sorry to double post guys, but I didn't see where the edit button was. I was just looking at a tape measure and I realized that the steel that I was welding in class wasn't 1/8" like I had initially posted. That was just off of the top of my head as I had to go out somewhere. I looked at the tape measure and the steel is more like 1/16" not 1/8". I did it with stick and I didn't blow through, I'll admit my weld is a bit sloppy but that'll come with experience.I'm going to try and get some pics up for you guys to see. I won't have pics until next week sometime because I have to wait until my sister can loan me her digital camera. -Brian