The problems encountered by ultrasonic testing of austenitic stainless steel weld joints are discussed in the paper. Due to low thermal conductivity and the occurrence of single phase between the melting point and the room temperature, coarse and oriented grains are formed in such weld metals more in thick sections. This leads to higher scattering at the grain boundaries and low signal to noise ratio, and extensive beam skewing. Experimental results to understand these problem are explained.