Puddle Welding ((hot)) -

moving before the puddle freezes. That creates a “wagon track” — a groove full of slag and porosity. Wait until the red glow fades to black. 5. The Great Debate: Art or Crutch? Among welding purists, puddle welding occupies a strange moral category.

Hold the arc in one spot. Watch the base metal melt into a shiny liquid circle. Do not move. puddle welding

The name evokes something primitive: melting metal into a liquid pool and letting it be . No weaves, no stringers, no travel angle. Just a puddle. And in that puddle lies an entire philosophy of repair. Let’s clear up a core confusion. In professional welding terminology, “puddle” usually refers to the weld pool — the localized zone of molten metal during any arc or gas process. But in field slang, puddle welding means something specific: a technique for filling large, irregular holes, gaps, or worn surfaces by depositing overlapping, stationary “puddles” of weld metal, often with little to no joint preparation. moving before the puddle freezes

And that, for the people who actually do it, is more than enough. Hold the arc in one spot

If you have a ½-inch hole in 1/8-inch steel, a continuous bead would fall through. But by building overlapping puddles from the edges inward — like a spider weaving a web — you can “cap” the hole. The first puddles freeze to the edge; subsequent puddles freeze to those puddles. After 20 or 30 deposits, the hole is solid.