Will you be willing to show us what some common "bad" passes look like? I mean common errors and how it shows up in the bead? (it might be hard to critique ones own weld on the net, I'm not sure?)
I have practically no experience on pipe, and any plate experience I have was in a 1yr course quite some years ago. As a matter of fact, I some how snaked out of the stick portion of class and went on to do other things. Had a lot of trouble with my 6010, and spent most of my time fooling myself with stuff like 7024. Later rediscovered stick and did some minor "maintenance welding", but usually the results were marginal, or as the other guys would say, "good enuf"
Common NDT procedures are great, but they could be somewhat difficult for us "dabblers" to perform in the garage. I do recall having to make 100 passes on a plate forming a 10x10 block of beads and then chopping it to learn about porosity and inclusions etc. That's a bit much, but many of us could chop one or 2 passes, and maybe even learn something if we had some battery acid. Simple bend tests always seemed quite revealing (and heart breaking)
