Hello Allan!
Just a quick update. Things are going extremely well with regerd to my "on - post" GMAW course. You had mentioned that I should plan on making plenty of restarts and tie-in's. Well, tonight I was practicing making 6mm intermittent fillet welds with a 2-4 pitch. These welds were inspected for consistancy and then I was asked to make the tie-in's to form a well defined consistant bead , with no craters of less than 85% fill. I got 100% fill with no discontinuities.
I see now the difference in switching from SMAW to GMAW. I also see that there is a difference in the skill level between the two processes. IMO, SMAW requires the higher degree of skill. I had a bit of difficulty at first putting away my one handed SMAW approach and using a guide hand for this process. However, as the very nature of welding requires practice, I have overcome this problem and am now MIG welding properly.
As for the "BOSS" welding, we are using an inverted gun angle (gun upside-down) to achieve an uninterupted weld. As You know very well, this is not as easy as it sounds. This being said...I am determined to get it correct and fully intend to have this properly done by this time next week...I hope! I will then move on to Vert-Down and Horizontal all by the end of next week. Oh, also attempted a couple 13mm multi-pass fillets tonight. I almost nailed it dead to rights on the first attempt...1mm on the small side. If I had placed a couple more tacks on the other side, it wouldn't have drawn in and I would have had it. I really should have remembered that from SMAW. Oh well, learn, practice and re-learn. There is always something to learn...and i love learning.
Hope things are well with You.
Respectfully, Jeffrey S. Grady