Lots of you guys will know this stuff but some may find it helpful. Here are a couple of photos of a Mercedes I'm working on for a friend. This car was butched back in the 70's. I'm trying to put it back together. All the spot weld flanges are damaged with brazing. The brass needs to be removed and replaced with steel so I can spot weld the car back together.
Some of the flanges are good for the most part, So I'm not cutting them off completely and making new ones. Were I can, I use a piece of copper and simply run a couple beads of weld across the copper and then grind/file the weld back to the thickness of the metal.
Your wire feed will actually arc on the copper. So you can even start your arc just off the edge of the metal your repairing and then move into the damaged edge.
This also works good for a backer on small holes. The copper will pull some of the heat out of the weld causing a rapid cooling effect.
A simple source for copper flatbar is soft copper tubing. If you've done any home plumbing repair you probably have a piece of copper tubing under the work bench. Just hammer it flat and your in business.