Welding Tips and Tricks

I think I may know the answer to this one, but would like another opinion. Running a few beads on a mild steel project this am and argon bottle got close to empty. I switched over to a fresh bottle I picked up last week at LWS, purged the lines to the torch, changed nothing on settings or equipment, and everything went straight to hell.

Brown soot all around the weld, sputter and spatter, funky green arc, and little what bead I could manage was as porous as could be.

Did LWS sell me a mixed up mess? Bottle is labeled argon, but it darned sure doesn't weld like argon. Its Saturday and no more project this weekend. Has that ever happed to y'all?

BTW, I switched back to known good bottle of argon and everything welded perfectly. Again switched to new bottle and it was as if I was welding w/o gas.

Guess I will be going back to LWS next week.

Glad you realized what the problem was straight off & did'nt beat yourself up trying to figure what you'd done different - I envy the price & availability of argon across the pond but bad gas seems to happen so often I'm almost glad we have basically a monopoly here - call our robbing bar stewards at BOC what you like but I never had bad gas & never heard of it either here - guess they have some good points.

May I suggest taking a pineapple to the LWS !