Some time ago I purchased a 50# box of E7018 Hobart electrodes. I'm not a professional welder, nor do I have occasion to do that much welding, which means that I had an open box of low hydrogen exposed to atmospheric humidity for quite some time, like a year.
I'm in the midst of building a custom steel fence on the front of my residence property and some of the welding will be done with low hydrogen. At the local welding supply I mentioned in passing the story about the opened rods and asked if low hydrogen rods actually "got old," like I'd heard for ever. They indicated that they did indeed degrade, such so that they couldn't even be reconditioned in an oven.
When I got home I called Hobart and spoke with a technician who said that once low hydrogen was exposed to the atmosphere, it immediately started
*irreversibly* degrading, and that, yes, re-drying them in an oven didn't help. I said that that would seem to indicate that a chemical reaction had taken place (with what I thought was rather inert inorganic material (rutile, for instance)) and he, sorta handwavingly (if that's a word) said, yeah.To confuse and confound the question, I found a document on the Web from Lincoln Electric that indicated that Lincoln E7018 could indeed be reclaimed by drying in an oven
Thanks, Alan