Had to be condensation or micro rust or just general dirty conditions. Did the same exact thing today without dunking at all, instead waiting for the piece to cool, same steel cleaned to almost sterile and only one small bit of porosity. Also moved the ground clamp closer.

Thanks for your input afsatcom and thanks for the welcome mike. I've eliminated the issues and can now continue to learn on the right path.

I'm going to agree with that. Tungsten hasn't ever turned black on me.

Sorry, it's a flowmeter but has a psi gauge before the flowmeter, so when I open the bottle it reads psi and then has a finer adjustment for cfh on the flow meter that only gives me a reading when I purge the lines or have the pedal down. It's a cheap one though and I don't really trust it for some ...

I was having a slow leak somewhere between bottle and solenoid, as id close the bottle valve the pressure inside the line and flowmeter would very slowly decrease to zero after about 60 seconds. Now I've got it down to about a half hour before psi drops to zero. Do any of you Teflon tape your thread...

Tightened and checked and tightened more all my gas lines last night. I'm almost certain it's a moisture/contamination issue. Will try a new piece today.

Hey all, This is my first post. love the site, love the forum, love tig welding. I am just starting to learn tig and have been running practice beads on a piece of flatbar mild steel, 1/4 "thick 3"x 6" or so. Dipping it in water to cool between every 4 or so beads to keep heat down an...