when excess metal is collected underneath the weld (due to gravity), it leads to certain undesired situations such as short circuiting the tube gap region, quenching the arc or a local explosion, etc. Any of these situations can thus result in an unfilled gap on the weld line on forging. Such weld specimens are likely to fail in the ball test. Thus, only the specimens from trials 2 and 3 are considered for various non destructive tests to determine their strength.