The day I realized I'd been welding my own patches wrong for 5 years

I was doing a quarter panel on a 2012 Civic last month and my helper asked why I was stitching the patch in from the outside edge inward. I said that's just how I've always done it, and he showed me a video from some old school guy in Ohio who starts from the middle and works outward to control the heat spread. I tried it on the next job, a rusty fender on a Silverado, and the panel barely warped compared to my usual mess. Has anyone else had a basic habit like this that took someone else pointing it out to fix, or am I just the last to get the memo?

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linda_clark21d ago

My dad taught me to weld when I was 16, and he always started at the edges too. It took a buddy of mine who builds race car frames to show me the middle-out method about three years ago. Now I do it on everything from exhaust hangers to rocker panels, and it's cut my grinding time way down. Felt pretty silly at the time, but better late than never I guess.