NO.

But it is a good practice to do so. It would be a shame to spend money machining specimens out of a test plate that contained internal defects.

No.

Unless you have gross defects, RT does little to improve the chances of having satisfactory tensiles and the bend usually don't require machining.

Do the bends first. Look closley at the scrap pieces, get the tensiles machined at a machine shop vs. the testing lab (the cost is less in all of my experience), and look at the tensiles before sending them to the lab to get pulled.

AWS D1.1 has this requirement which then of course adds cost to small shops that have to qualify a procedure.

I guess that structural steel is more difficult to weld than that nasty old piping and pressure vessel stuff. :)

Have a good day

Gerald Austin
http://www.weldinginspectionsvcs.com/