You can read about welding for a year. The first real bead will still teach you something new.

Reading builds a picture and the first real attempt corrects it, because much of the skill lives in your hands, your eyes and your timing rather than in any description. The heat behaves differently from how it read, your posture matters in a way nobody mentioned, and the feedback arrives faster than words. That does not make the reading useless. It just cannot be finished on paper.

Whatever you have been studying without doing, find the smallest real version and try it this week. Expect the first attempt to be poor and informative, then go back to the reading.