Reducing spatter?

I don't have much experience with 6013 however the little I do I don't remember an issue with splatter. But I was only using the small 1/16" rods with 6013 and maybe those small rods just don't splatter much anyway.

A major cause of splatter for me is not keeping the arc short enough. A long arc causes your work to get covered with splatter drops that don't easily come off. I know it well because all my work had that problem but as I learned to keep the arc shorter the problem went away. For me, the issue was caused because I wasn't adjusting fast enough for the burning rod. It would burn away, the arc would get too long, then I'd realize it and move the rod back closer to the work. But that was all it took to cover the work with splatter.

You want to keep the arc around 1/8" or less. If it goes up to 1/4" you will get a lot of splatter. I believe not keeping the arc short enough is a typical beginner problem. It sure was for me.

Too high a current can also cause splatter. So experiment with that as well if you haven't already.

Im not a welder..just a dauber..but keeping the arc too long on most rod..particularly 6013 will cause bad splatter.

This is a very common issue with newbies. Myself included when I started.

I weld a lot of 6013 and keep my rod in the puddle. Very little splatter. Arc length should be at max..the diameter of your actual rod, not counting the flux.

I repeat..Im not a welder....

Gunner

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Shorten your arc length.

Okay, I will try keeping my arc short and turning down the amps a bit.

Thanks guys!

By turning it down, you increase your chance of sticking. Leave it up there until you get the hang of it, and knows what it looks like to run right. Then, you can adjust the power.

Steve

So, just keeping arc short should do it, eh? Okay. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

When I just started welding (just recently), I feared allowing the rod to touch the metal because I assumed it would short out, kill the arc, and do generally bad things (melt the rod or heat up wires). So I was taking great care not to allow the rod to touch the the work, and in doing so, I ended up with too long an arc most the times. But then I realized you can generally let the rod touch the work with no problems at all. Most the time the flux will be what makes contact and not the rod so it won't short out anyway (drag welding), and when you try to push the rod down into the pool, it just blows the pool out of the way and melts more metal deeper down so it's almost hard to actually kill the arc by making contact with the work. It can contact and stick, but you almost have to work at it at times to do that. The real danger is in getting too long an arc and producing all that splatter instead of getting too short an arc. So just experiment with sticking the rod down in the weld and see what happens. Once I learned there was nothing to fear with getting the rod too close, my welds got a lot better and there was almost no splatter to clean up (and what splatter there was came off easily).

I think one problem is my vision. When I strike the arc it takes my eyes too long to adjust to the light and focus in on what's happening with the arc, puddle, and rod. I have an inherited eye disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP). It makes it hard to see in the dark and it takes my eyes a while to adjust to changing light conditions. I'm thinking about buying an auto-darkening helmut to see if that helps.

Thanks for the info Curt!