no i am not a professional welder but thanks, but i do do a fair amount of welding at work,i work on a hopper dredge my position is called dragtender,leverman, operator,in case you dont know what a dredge is we maintain the ship channels so that those big boys from china can bring us everything we buy at wallmart,...the ship im on is 400ft long and can hual 13,800 cubic yards of material, ive been dredging for 15 years and a lot of stuff breaks on these rigs,so you get lots of practice welding like it or not,the best advice i can give on welding is just keep at it,..it'll come,and a true professional welder would make mine look like dog slobber,but remember the motto "ugly but strong gets the job done"!!!!....chris