New guy saying hello with some new guy type questions

[kllrbee]

Hey all,
Just joined up here. Im new to the welding world. Picked up a MM211 last week. I dont have anything to compare it to, cuz Ive never had a welder before, but so far it seems great.
I finally got a chance to play around over the weekend. Set it all up and laid down some beads yesterday. Decided today that I would start first project... and of course....its a cart.
Im not going to ask for ideas or anything like that.
My question is what do I do if I have a "bad or ugly" weld? Waht I mean is I obvioulsy dont have enough experience to lay down nice looking welds, but it seems each one I lay down is better than the last. The penetration is fine, as I have tested them by trying to tear the the weld apart by putting it in a vise and beating on it with a BFH. They are just ugly though. So do I need to grind or flap disc them off and start over? Can I just go over them? Or do I just ignore them if the penetration is okay?
Sorry for the newb question, but I dont really know what I would type in to search for a question like this.
Thanks

[550]

Hey all,
Just joined up here. Im new to the welding world. Picked up a MM211 last week. I dont have anything to compare it to, cuz Ive never had a welder before, but so far it seems great.
I finally got a chance to play around over the weekend. Set it all up and laid down some beads yesterday. Decided today that I would start first project... and of course....its a cart.
Im not going to ask for ideas or anything like that.
My question is what do I do if I have a "bad or ugly" weld? Waht I mean is I obvioulsy dont have enough experience to lay down nice looking welds, but it seems each one I lay down is better than the last. The penetration is fine, as I have tested them by trying to tear the the weld apart by putting it in a vise and beating on it with a BFH. They are just ugly though. So do I need to grind or flap disc them off and start over? Can I just go over them? Or do I just ignore them if the penetration is okay?
Sorry for the newb question, but I dont really know what I would type in to search for a question like this.
Thanks

I was once told, you either get better at welding or better at grinding :-)

I would grind them down, and then re-do if you so chose. It's up to you.

Do you have some pics? I'm sure the penetration is OK for what you need it for, but it's hard to tell if maybe your welds are suffering because of lack of heat or too much (same with wire).

[Kevin Meier]

In my experience, particularly with MIG, it is not possible to go back over a weld and make it look better. If you want to make it look better you need to grind it out and try again. Otherwise you will need to lay enough bead over the bad-looking weld to completely cover it. That's not going to make it any better, it's just going to be a bigger ugly weld.

[bob_e95482]

In my experience, particularly with MIG, it is not possible to go back over a weld and make it look better. If you want to make it look better you need to grind it out and try again. Otherwise you will need to lay enough bead over the bad-looking weld to completely cover it. That's not going to make it any better, it's just going to be a bigger ugly weld.

^^^What Kevin said.