joshuabardwell
Elite Member
Everyone has their own opinion. Here's mine. PS: I'm a n00b, so take my opinion for what it's worth.
When I first started learning, I started with 6011 because I read that it was a good bread-and-butter rod with excellent penetration and ability to burn through less than perfectly clean surfaces. My welds looked like junk. I had a box of 7018 that someone threw in with a bunch of other stuff I bought, but I stayed away from it because, being a low-hydrogen rod, it needs to be kept in a rod oven, and I don't have one of those. Later, at a welding workshop, someone said, "Ah. Heck with that. Just burn some 7018." Lo and behold, my welds got about 1000 times better. Something about the way 7018 burns means that I'm more able to be successful with it than 6011. With 6011, the slag is hard to clean off and there are usually slag inclusions in the bead. With 7018, the slag usually peels off easily and there are no inclusions.
What about 7018 being a low-hydrogen rod and needing to be stored in a rod oven? It's true. And if you were doing code work, you would need to follow that. But I have heard folks talk of being on large construction projects burning 7018 all day, not a rod oven in sight. Apparently, 7018 still does an okay job if it hasn't been stored in an oven. Not as good a job as if it had been, but still plenty good for lots of stuff. On top of that, if you can get a quality weld with 7018 and a junk weld with 6011, which do you think is going to be stronger, low-hydrogen or not?
Maybe somebody here can link to results of a bend test between 7018 out of an oven and 7018 stored on a shelf. I bet either of them will beat, for example, 6013.
It's true that 7018 has the annoying tendency to form a slag covering over the electrode tip every single time you stop welding. I keep a flat file handy and use it to scrub off the coating every time I restart. This is a real PITA when tacking up, so I usually use 7014 or even 6013 (whatever I have laying around) for tacking. When I'm actually working, I'll typically burn a quarter to a half or even a whole rod at a time, so scraping the tip isn't much of a hassle. If I was doing production stuff, where every minute mattered, I might feel differently.
I mostly run 7018 now, but 7014 is also relatively easy to run. As others have pointed out, you can drag 7014, meaning you touch the tip to the work surface. This avoids having to manage the arc gap, and gives you one less thing to concentrate on when learning. You can drag 7018 as well, but the weld will be colder and you may not get the results you want. 6013 is another common rod. It's relatively easy to produce good-looking welds with 6013, but it's also relatively easy to produce welds that look good but actually have a tunnel of slag in them, or that have poor penetration. So I wouldn't recommend 6013 for a beginner.
Eventually, I plan to really spend some time focusing on 6011 and try to figure out what I'm doing wrong with it, because IMO if there are two rods a weldor should know how to use, it's 7018 and 6011. But for the time being, I still have a lot to learn on 7018. It's said that a beginner should pick one rod and really stick to it until they get some skill. Switching up rods while you're learning means that some of the things you learned on one rod won't transfer over. For example, with 6011, you typically use a whip motion or a circle motion, whereas with 7018, you typically just move the electrode along smoothly, without backing up. Going back and forth between them while you're learning might just confuse you. For me, I'm going to stick with 7018 until I feel I've got a handle on it, then start branching out. I feel like 7018 is a simple enough rod to run that I can start to focus on seeing what the puddle is doing and how what I do affects the bead, as opposed to just trying to keep everything together. By way of analogy, when a person goes to racing school, they don't start them out on a 500 HP monster. The beginner wouldn't even be able to get that car off the line without stalling it, never mind keep it on the track. You start racing with a little four-banger and learn the basics, then move up.
I have heard some folks say that they find 7018 hard to run. I guess it goes to show that each person has different proclivities. Also, as Shield Arc points out, different brands of rod burn differently in different machines. The bottom line, I would say, is find something that you have some success with and stick with it until you get your fundamentals down. When you can consistently produce good welds with your start-up rod, then you should start thinking about branching out to other rods.
That's my two cents! Happy welding!
