[raticus]

any tips to prevent it? I'm a TIG welder that just got a job at a TIG and stick shop, they hired me knowing I had no stick background so they're giving me time to learn... Been practicing with 7018 and after a few days started to get the hang of it, passed some coupon bend and dye tests and now after 2 weeks I'm half decent, already working on several stick projects. My biggest problem is trying to prevent porosity on my starts and stops, sometimes I get lucky, but most of the time it's almost a given. And with the types of work I'm doing, no porosity is allowed so I have to go back and grind it out and TIG the spot, which is a PITA and it looks freakin' horrible mixing up stick beads with grinding with TIG and more grinding, it ends up a solid weld but looks like crap and takes too long to fix... really tired of doing that.

So any tips, what's the deal? I've tried things like burying my electrode on my starts and delaying moving it to try to force any porosity from happening, which works fairly well sometimes, but then I end up with a fat glob of a start... and as far as stops, I'm kinda doing the same thing which helps, pulling it out with a quick motion, but still not 100%.

Right now I'm doing this project welding mounting blocks on a steel plate that requires 4 passes around the block, it comes out fine after my 2nd pass but once I build it up on my 3rd and 4th, then the ugliness happens...

[weldin mike 27]

Watch jodys videos on stick welding. He talks about "lighting up" ahead of the weld start and quickly going back to the actual weld start. That's how you avoid starting porosity. Sometimes you need to run over 50mm before it lights up neatly, depending on the brand of rod.

[Poland308]

Yup the rod has to burn off a little of the flux before you have enough shielding to move. Starting up ahead and going back to where you want your actual bead to start allows you to weld back over that little stretch of porosity. Thereby eliminating it.

[tweake]

i'm told a preheat helps as well. light up ahead of your weld, long arc it, bring it back to the start (which helps preheat it) then drop down and go.

[Oscar]

Yup, I've seen all of these techniques in Jody's videos. You have to watch all of them, each and every single one of them, lol.