A novel approach was taken for introducing discontinuities into test weldments, since it was found that the introduction of discontinuities into welds by controlling welding procedure and environment was difficult and discontinuity sizes and distribution were not representative of those encountered in practice.An unskilled welder was employed to fabricate the test weldments using an acceptable welding procedure.The resulting weldments contained a random distribution of small discontinuities as a result of unintentional operator errors.The discontinuity sizes and distributions occurring were observed to be more representative of those encountered in practice.