DONK,
I'm going to give you three different point of views on this one...

As a current Certified Welding Inspector:
The code that is governing the weld in question, whether it is AWS, Mil-Spec, or ABS has definitive inspection criteria that specifies how many discontinuities are allowed before a weld or parts of a weld are considered rejectable. Another document to be considered is the Welding Procedure Specification that includes the fit-up and weld size criteria for that paticular joint. Any Inspector has to have this information before determining whether or not this weld is rejectable.
If it is rejectable, then it should be repaired according to the specified code/WPS repair procedure. Every Code I've seen gives the right for an authorized Inspector to call for re-certification of a Welder who's poor performance, in the Inspector's opinion, deem's necessary. These points may also be reinforced in the Contract Specifications. My main point is that any Code adhering, authorized Inspector can only do what the applicable rules say in black and white, and as long as the Inspector knows that he/she is right, then that Inspector should stand his ground.

As a previous Shipyard Fabrication Foreman:
Welder's who know what they are are doing, can make acceptable welds all the time, can pass a drug screen, and who show up for work are quickly becoming endangered species. Most of the time when a Welder becomes expierienced enough to have the qualities I just mentioned, he also gets smart enough to get the hell out of the shipyard and find a better paying, more safe job. If you combine the fact that a shipyard is constantly dealing with a personnel dilema that I only partially mentioned above, the fact that they only got this job because they were the low bidder, and the fact that the Superintendent is constantly screaming for more work to get done faster, that means that they have to make every foot of installed weld count, in order to stay somewhere close to on schedule. This all means that if you want them to spend extra time doing re-work and especially re-qualifying a Welder, you will most likely have to force them to do it through a management level person who can authorize the expenditure. This brings you back to what I said about the Inspector. He has to be able to prove his point and back it up in black and white print in order to force the production hungry shipyard to back up and perform re-work.

As an ex-Navy Sailor:
I spent 3 1/2 years on a "new" ship as a repair welder. I was one of the busiest guys on the ship. The clear examples of beautiful welds were far outnumbered by God-awful gorilla welds. These welds on both bulkheads and piping kept me very busy repairing cracks and leaks and made me break into a cold sweat with worry while we were taking a beating in heavy seas.
Have pity on the poor Sailors!
Help ensure that their home is put together right!

It is up to you to consider every side of the situation before completing your decision on what step to take next.

Good Luck!
Tim

TO TIM,I also am a CWI/AWS and VT LEVEL 2 US NAVY iaw ASNT-TC-1A.The welding was and is unaccepable IAW MIL-STD-1689.You see we have a level 3 examiner;SCWI/AWS,LEVEL 2 UT,RT,MT,and PT in our dept. us navy civil service.He is the person telling me not to write a QDR[QUALITY DEFICIENCY REPORT].He wants to wait let the contractor do a VT which he will and then have a chipper grind off the garbage. By the way the US NAVY is its own worst enemy.By this i mean where i am at a contractor hired a retired rear admiral from NAVSEA to be the head of ship yard operations and this ship yard has 10,000 people. So where do you think that leaves our CAPTAIN who is the CO of our SUP SHIP. President EISENHAUR warned about the military/defense relation ship and this is precisely what he was talking about. This is known as the swinging door policy.This ship yard where i am at had a fire in no 1 E/ROOM which will amount to at least a million dollars or more of damage[yard worker was doing hot work and punctured a fuel line full of fuel];so there goes our tax dollars up in smoke so to speak and a phoney JAG investigation.Mean while we try to do our job and get a good ship delivered to the fleet. DON KUMPUNEN QA SPECIALIST

He3llo there Donk,
I am the QC manager of a steel fabricator in a steel fab plant. I have encountered (almost on a daily basis similer situations here in our plant.
I while the applications are different I do see some similarities. In reading the replys to your post, and based on my experience I would like to add the following. I think one of the main points is the idea of "the inspectors opinion". Where there is specific guidence given on the subject it is a no brainer. Some codes do not necessarily require re-cert but attempt to prod to contractor into taking a closer and closer look at specific wlder by increasing the frequency of inspection as in ASME B31.3 spot and random if I remember correctly.
Where the code leaves it to "...opinion" it becomes more difficult to convince others to go along with what is a judgment call.
I have to agree with the idea that finding good welders is often it seems difficult, and sometimes to be honest, the tests that we administer per code are far, far easier than the actual production work that thier taking the test to qualify for. Being in the same position as your supervisor I can understand his position as well. What I use as the deciding factor in many cases is the welders attitude. I have heard many excuses for poor work and some are actully valid in terms of fitup, access, equiptment problems etc. That does not relive us of the necessity to provide a code quality weld but it does mitigate some of the responsibility away from the welder. In other cases I run into production personnel making code interpretation which they are neither certified and in some cases qualified to make. All of the forgoing are issues that need to be addressed at the management and or supervisory level and to a somewhat lesser extent on the shop floor. As well everyone makes mistakes, or has bad days. Sometimes just a little undetrstanding on the part of the inspector can go along way. Again not exceptable as an excuse to leave an unacceptable weld as is. There are many things that can be said but I think you see my point.
The one thing that I will not tolerate tho is the guy that looks at you and says "I dont care". That man gets to take a retest immediatly if not shown the door first.
I have learned that I as an inspector am not perfect , I make mistakes and sometimes dont realize it untill 2 or 3 projects down the road when the issue comes up again and I have input from a different source.
I guess what Im trying to say is that the"opinion" that the code refers to is really not on the quality of the weld, but on the overall situation and individual in question. Mistakes can be valuable as long as they are used as a learning tool. In my humble opion, anyone in the welding industry that is not open to continuing to improve the quality of thier work, wether a welder or an inspector needs to find a new job, and one bad weld by a welder or missed call by an inspector should not in most cases be cause for professional execution.

Donk, I used to work in a major Naval contracting shipyard as a welder, so I couldn't help but respond to this post, although I'm probably not the level of respondee you're looking for. The run of the mill welder there is not certified, and is qualified as long as he's active in his process. Of coarse, like everywhere else, there are always slugs and there are aces, but ALL the welds were inspected to Navy specs, and are not passed untill they are right. To the former Navy repair welder, I don't know where your ship was built at, but I probably worked on a dozen hulls that got turned over to the Navy, and none were reported back in the condition you describe. You must put into the equasion(spelling?) that building a ship is a HUGE undertaking and there are many stresses that come into play, and there will be faults.
Back to Donk, you needn't worry about the welder if you are concerned about weld quality, the inspection dept. is who you need to address.
I would like to write more, as I'm not sure I've got my point across, and hope I don't sound as if I'm rambling, but I'm at work and have to go. Sure was nice to forum with others in the shipbuilding bussiness, I miss it but don't miss the conditions. Stay Safe!
-Buffalo

TO BUFFALO and others,The situation where i am at is that the shipbuilder has a lot of welders that are inexperienced and some do not take pride in their work.The requirements are there MIL-STD-1689 and other standards.Recently the ship yard had a commercial ship contract and the regulatory agencies;LLOYDS,ABS,etc. were really bearing down hard on the welding quality[as well they should because of the requirements invoked].I think some times a ship yard is spoiled when doing NAVY work.When they get into commercial work they take a beating cost wise and quality wise.I came out of a navy yard[BOSTON NAVY YARD]and i know the quality of work was good.