Gravity is either your friend or your enemy. When welding it is normally acting against you in vertical or overhead positions, but when welding on the flat though it helps keep the weld in place. After some considerable difficulty whilst patching the bulkheads it became obvious that my enthusiasm outweighed my ability... Not even fast freeze welding rods were able to compensate for my inept welding. So I was quite looking forward to welding over one of the smaller skylights which would be on the flat and allow me to see whether I could still weld or not.

The first problem was cutting out the old skylight. Several cutting discs later and the skylight was removed, but it still needed some serious shaping in order to accommodate the steel blank which I'd had laser cut. Once it was the right size the edges were angled off to provide a nice 'V' for the weld to sit in. I did consider welding a few metal tabs to the underside of the roof in order to support the inserted plate but in the end I clamped some wood under the hole to support the steel while I tacked it in place. Much simpler...

Steel is in place and tacked with welds so the wood supports underneath can be removed.

This is a halfway decent weld. However the small hole in the weld is what is known as a 'slag hole'. The flux covering of the arc rod burns off as the welding rod melts. Some of the flux creates a gaseous protective barrier around the weld, some of it liquefies and then hardens as a black covering which then needs chipping off. This hole was probably caused by incorrect rod angle or just moving a bit too fast. If these happen on structural elements or pipework etc then they can seriously weaken the weld. Since this isn't structural, it's not too much of a nightmare.

Slag holes can be filled with a spot weld. Not pretty but it seals the weak spot and will stop rust penetrating in the long term.

After some faffing with amperage levels I got my welding mojo back and produced some nice results. This one is possibly a tad 'hot' as you can see from the slightly elongated ripples in the weld seam, but overall it's a nice finish with no slag holes.

So it would appear I have a bit of my welding mojo back. I obviously need more practice at the positional stuff but I have done some practice with the fast freeze rods so hopefully they will help. I have another small skylight to do tomorrow and first thing is to fire up the plasma cutter with a new arc tip to make short work of the metal frame which needs removing. Having spent the best part of 6 hours doing the last one, I hope the lessons learned will reduce the time I need to spend on this one. After this, it's onto the portholes, which, being vertical welds will be much more of a pain in the derriere...

For anyone who is interested in stick welding there is a good series by a guy whose Youtube 'handle' is ChuckE2009. He does some really informative stuff on all types of welding and hot work. Below is his basic stick welding playlist which is worth a look.