Todays Project - What did you do today?

[Rickabilly]

As far as wet rods go, I don't mean to be contrary, but in my experience it is much ado about nothing, Except for when the rods have developed rust on the connection end or white fluffy corrosion of the flux I simply add about ten amps and let them dry them selves out in use, once you have acheived a certain level of experience this is easy enough to do. If they have been wet enough to rust no amount of drying will fix them as the rust under the flux can never be dried away and will cause oxidisation of the molten weld pool (fine porosity) and the white fluffy flux corrosion is actually where certain compounds have been removed by the action of water, this changes the chemical composition of the flux and as a result you will be left with inconsistent weld metal chemistry, potentially serious hydrogen embrittlement, so I don't take that risk either, and no amount of drying will put those chemicals back.

An exercise that we used to use when training " plant welders" was to break all of the flux off of a rod and t practice striking an arc with bare wire, once you become competent welding without flux soldiering through with wet rods is easy enough. Incidentally welding without flux is a really bad idea, do it only to practice unstable arc control, as the resulting weld will be porous, hydrogen rich and nasty to look at.

Given that the new packet of rods were " wet " as well I'm guessing that maybe wet rods was not the original issue. Possibly unstable arc or just under powered and the ever present issue of dirty parent metal or dodgy current return cable.

Regards. Rick