Well today I finally hooked up an arc welder I got. Managed to wire it without killing myself and so on.:) Set up a piece of angle iron and began to try my hand. Countless attempts to strike the arc, numerous rod stickups, on several ocassions I could not free it quickly so the rod turned red hot and bent like an S, etc, etc. I soon found that sratching to strike rather than tapping seems to work better for me. And finally in a whole second of pure glory I managed to lay half an inch of bead. It was shiny, no apparent porosity, had a bit of the stack of coins look. Now the question: -In that second the half inch of rod (3/32" of 6013) consumed quite smoothly. My feeling was that the mere weight of my hand pushed the rod into the pool. I say "pushed" because I got the impression, I can't be sure, that I felt a very slight up force countering my hand. My understanding is that getting the rod tip into the pool will extinguish the arc and cause the rod to stick. Is my first impression a tactile illusion?
And yet another thing that surprised me is that one can't see anything trough the welding glass but the rod tip, the arc itself and the hot bead. How does people ever manage to follow a joint?
Thanks in advance.