Electrode Chart for Arc Welding: Your Ultimate Guide!

Key Takeaways

• An electrode chart for arc welding is a one-page reference that matches each stick rod (AWS class, size, polarity, amperage, position, penetration) to the job in front of you. It exists because guessing rods by color or by box price is how good metal gets ruined.
• Every mild steel rod carries an AWS code such as E6010, E6013 or E7018. The E means electrode, the first two digits are minimum tensile strength in thousands of psi, the third digit is welding position, and the last digit tells you the coating type and the current the rod prefers.
• 6010 and 6011 burn hot and dig deep through dirt, rust and paint. 6013 is the smooth, friendly rod for thin sheet and hobby work. 7014 fills fast. 7018 is the low-hydrogen structural rod that bridges and frames are built from. 7024 lays down metal in flat work like a trough.
• Polarity matters as much as the number on the box. Most rods are happiest on DC electrode positive, but a few classics run on AC machines, and the wrong polarity shows up as porosity, lack of fusion and ugly beads rather than an error light. The basics are covered in our polarity guide.
• Amperage numbers on any chart are approximate starting points, not commandments. Rod diameter, material thickness, position and heat sinking all push the real setting up or down, so you tune by reading the puddle.
• 7018 and the other low-hydrogen rods absorb moisture from damp air. A rod that has been sitting out in a humid garage can put hydrogen into the weld and crack it later. Storage rules and rod ovens are not industrial paranoia, they are cheap insurance.
• Technique changes with the rod class. A fast-freeze rod like 6010 wants a tight arc and a whipping motion. A fill-freeze rod like 7018 wants a short arc, a slight drag and patience. Using one technique for every rod is the single fastest way to look worse than you are.
• Practice the fundamentals on scrap first: stance, arc length, travel speed and puddle reading are what separate a strong weld from a pretty guess. Start with our welding tips for beginners and judge your own results by real strength, not appearance, with how strong is a weld.

The shop light was buzzing, the radio was low, and the bracket on the bench looked perfect. Three tidy beads of 6013 sat on both sides of a quarter-inch plate, smooth as frosting, barely any spatter, the kind of weld a beginner shows their friends. The bracket went back onto the equipment that night. Two weeks later it came back cracked straight through the middle of the weld, not beside it, not at the toe, right through the throat of the bead.

The rod had not been wrong because it was cheap or because it was old. It had been wrong because somebody picked it the way most people pick rods: it was in the drawer, it ran nicely on the machine that happened to be set up, and nobody asked a single question about the load on that bracket, the thickness of the steel, or the fact that the joint was welded flat today but would be bent and hammered from overhead every day after that. A different rod, in the same size, on the same machine, would have taken an hour of extra work and would still be holding.

That is the whole reason an electrode chart exists. Not because stick welding is complicated, and not because welders enjoy paperwork, but because the number stamped on the end of a rod encodes real information about strength, position, current and penetration, and because the difference between two rods that look nearly identical in the box is often the difference between a repair that lasts and a repair that comes back. This article is that chart, explained in plain language: how to read the code, what each of the common rods actually does, how to match rod size to metal thickness, what amperage ranges to start from, how polarity and storage change your results, and the mistakes that send most beginners back to the grinder.

What an Electrode Chart Actually Is

Strip away the jargon and an electrode chart is a compatibility table. Down the left side sit the rod classes you can buy off the shelf: E6010, E6011, E6013, E7014, E7018, E7024, and the specialty rods for stainless steel, hardfacing and cast iron. Across the top sit the questions you need answered before you strike an arc: what positions can it weld, what current does it want, how deep does it penetrate, what size does it come in, what amperage does that size want, and what is it genuinely good for. Somewhere in the middle, for any rod and any situation, is a cell that tells you whether you are holding the right rod.

Charts like this exist for stick welding (shielded metal arc welding, or SMAW) more than for almost any other process, and the reason is simple: stick rods are consumables that change hands constantly. A MIG welder runs one spool of wire that was chosen once; a stick welder might flip through four different rod classes in a single afternoon, because the root pass wants one thing, the fill wants another, the field repair wants a third, and the stainless bracket wants a fourth. The formal background for all of it sits with the shielded metal arc welding reference, and the standards that define every code on every box are published by the American Welding Society, which you can browse at AWS standards.

It is worth saying what the chart is not. It is not a substitute for the manufacturer’s data sheet. Rod makers publish recommended amperage, polarity and storage conditions for every product, and their numbers come from testing that specific flux, so when your box disagrees with a generic chart, the box wins. The chart is also not a substitute for reading the puddle. Metal thickness varies, joints fit up differently, a plate sitting on a cold steel table pulls heat away faster than the same plate clamped over open air, and every one of those things nudges the correct setting. What the chart gives you is a sane starting point and a shortlist, so that your first arc of the day is in the right neighborhood instead of in the wrong decade.

One more clarification, because it confuses nearly everyone at the start: the chart describes the rod, not the machine. Your machine only has to produce enough current for the rod’s range and switch polarity if the rod needs it. A basic DC stick machine with an amperage dial covers every steel rod in this article, and a cheap AC/DC machine covers all of them including the few that insist on AC. If you are still deciding what the machine itself is doing when you flip the leads, our companion pieces on electrodes in general and flux-core welding explain how the same ideas play out in the wire processes, and MIG versus TIG shows where stick fits in the wider family.

Decoding the Electrode Classification: What E6013 Really Means

Every mild steel stick rod in a North American welding store wears an AWS classification stamped on the carton, printed on the wrapper, and often pressed into the flux at one end of the rod itself. The code looks like part number soup the first hundred times you see it. Then one day it clicks, and from that point on you can read a rod’s entire personality off four or five characters without opening the box. Take E6013 as the example and pull it apart one piece at a time.

The Letter E: This Is an Electrode

The opening letter simply tells you the item is a covered consumable electrode for arc welding. A rod that starts with E is meant to be clamped in the stinger, struck against the work, and consumed as you weld. That is almost the entire job of the letter, but it also quietly separates stick rods from the classifications used for filler wire. A MIG wire is coded with an ER prefix, a TIG rod likewise, and a stick electrode gets the bare E. When you see the letter, you know you are in stick-land.

The First Two Digits: Tensile Strength in Thousands of Psi

The next two numbers are the ones your structural inspector cares about. They give the minimum tensile strength of the deposited weld metal in thousands of pounds per square inch. E6010 therefore produces weld metal that tests at a minimum of 60,000 psi. E7018 produces a minimum of 70,000 psi. E8018-B3 style low alloy rods jump to 80,000 psi and beyond, which is why pressure vessel and boiler work uses different codes than farm repairs.

The practical consequence is matching. You are allowed to weld a 70,000 psi plate with a 60,000 psi rod the way you are allowed to tow a truck with a rope rated for a motorcycle: nothing dramatic happens immediately, but you have quietly cut the strength of the assembly down to the weakest link. For non-critical brackets and light repairs, a 60-series rod is perfectly fine. For anything that carries load, suspends weight, or will be inspected, use a 70-series rod on 70-series plate unless a drawing says otherwise. Strength on paper is only the starting point, though, which is why we treat the question properly in how strong is a weld.

The Third Digit: Welding Position

The third digit tells you where you are allowed to use the rod without the puddle falling on your boot. The system has only three values, and they are easy to hold in your head:

• 1 means all positions. Flat, horizontal, vertical up, overhead. If the rod ends in 1, you can weld it wherever you can physically reach.
• 2 means flat and horizontal only. These are deposition rods, built to move metal fast with gravity working for you. Try them overhead and the puddle sags, the arc blows through, and you will blame your settings when the real answer is the third digit.
• 3 means flat only. Even more restricted, used by a handful of high-deposition rods.

Notice that E6010, E6011, E6013, E7014 and E7018 all end in 1. Those five rods cover almost every repair situation a working welder meets, and their all-position capability is a large part of why they became the standard. E7024 ends in 4, so its third digit is 2: flat and horizontal only. That single digit is why 7024 is a production rod for shop benches and a poor choice for a bracket you have to weld standing on a ladder.

The Fourth Digit: Coating and Current

The last digit is the one that describes the flux covering, which in turn tells you how the arc behaves and what current the rod prefers. The flux is doing four jobs at once: it shields the puddle from air, it cleans the metal as it melts, it adds alloying elements, and it shapes the arc. Different chemistries do those jobs differently, and the industry settled on a numbered shorthand for the families:

• 0 – high cellulose sodium. Deep, forceful arc, aggressive penetration,DC current, electrode positive. The classic 6010 character: digs through mill scale, rust and gap without complaining.
• 1 – high cellulose potassium. Same cellulose family, with potassium added so the arc will run on AC as well as DC. This is the 6011 trick: field repair rods that work on any machine in the yard.
• 2 – high titanium sodium. A quieter, smoother arc with lighter penetration. Historically associated with the 6012 family of mild, general-purpose rods.
• 3 – rutile (titanium dioxide) based. Easy arc start, soft arc, friendly puddle, light-to-medium penetration. This is why E6013 is the rod everyone hands a beginner.
• 4 – iron powder additions. More metal per amp, faster travel, good bead profile. E6014 and E7024 live here.
• 5 – low hydrogen sodium. The hard, crack-resistant covering of the 7015 family, DC electrode positive, requiring careful handling.
• 6 – low hydrogen potassium. Same low-hydrogen idea with potassium so the rod will strike and hold on AC. This is the E7016 family.
• 7 – iron powder low hydrogen. Low-hydrogen chemistry with iron powder for speed, historically tied to flat and horizontal rods like E7028.
• 8 – iron powder low hydrogen, all position. The E7018 covering: low hydrogen plus iron powder, capable of all-position work, usually run DC electrode positive with many rods also qualified for AC.

You do not have to memorize all nine. Knowing that 0 and 1 mean cellulose and bite, 3 means rutile and friendliness, and 5 through 8 mean low hydrogen and structural duty gets you through a surprising amount of real work.

Five Digits, Suffixes, and the Extra Characters

The basic code is four digits after the E, but the classification system is allowed to grow when a rod needs to say more. Sometimes a fifth character appears, sometimes a suffix is bolted on, and sometimes an approved alternate designation such as AC is appended to a familiar class. A few of the forms you will actually meet:

• E7018-1 and similar suffixed codes. The trailing number signals that the rod carries supplementary requirements, in practice extra toughness or impact testing beyond the base classification. If a drawing or procedure calls for the suffixed version, the plain rod is not an automatic substitute.
• E7018 AC and other AC-labelled rods. A plain E7018 is happiest on DC electrode positive. Rods explicitly labelled for AC are formulated so they will strike and run acceptably on AC-only machines, which matters in shops and field trucks that do not have DC. The label, not the class number alone, is what tells you.
• Low alloy codes such as E8018-C1 or E9018-B3. Here the tensile digits climb past 70 and trailing letters identify the alloy family: chromium-molybdenum for elevated temperature service, nickel grades for low-temperature toughness, and so on. These are the rods for pressure vessels, boiler tube, and specified structural steel, not for the drawer in your garage.
• Stainless and nickel rods, which use their own numbering entirely. E308-16, E309-16, E312-16, E316-16 for stainless work and ENi-CI or ENiFe-CI for cast iron. The middle digits identify the filler alloy rather than tensile strength, and the last two digits are a welding-position and current shorthand all their own. We will come back to these in their own section because they deserve it.

The habit worth building is simple: before the arc starts, look at the code and say out loud what each digit means. Ten seconds of that habit has saved more welds than any gadget ever bought. It also gives you the vocabulary to read the chart below, to talk to an inspector in their own language, and to know when a rod in your drawer does not belong on the job sitting in front of you.

The Classic Mild Steel Rods: What Each One Is Actually For

Six rods cover the overwhelming majority of stick welding that gets done on this planet: 6010, 6011, 6013, 7014, 7018 and 7024. If you understand those six, you can walk into almost any job, look at the metal, and pull the right box off the shelf. Everything else in the store is specialization. Here is each rod told straight, with the situations where it shines and the situations where it hurts.

E6010: The Deep-Penetration Workhorse

E6010 is a DC-only rod with a cellulose flux that burns with a forceful, somewhat violent arc. The covering is packed with organic material that breaks down into a gas envelope with real pressure behind it, and the practical result is an arc that digs. It cuts through mill scale, light rust, paint residue, primer and the kind of surface preparation that would make a TIG welder faint. On a root pass with an open root, 6010 is the rod that reaches the back side of the joint and fuses it.

It runs on DC electrode positive (reverse polarity), which concentrates heat in the rod and drives it into the plate. The puddle freezes fast, which is why 6010 is called a fast-freeze rod: you can point it vertical or overhead and the metal solidifies before gravity can gather it into a droplet. The technique that suits it is a tight arc with a slight whip or oscillation, pausing at the toes to let the puddle wet out and moving forward to keep the heat concentrated. Travel speed is quick. If you move slowly with 6010, you will pile up a narrow, crowned bead that cracks at the toes.

The trade-offs are real. The arc is harsh and spattery compared to a rutile rod, the bead profile is narrow and stands proud of the plate, and the slag comes off in thin, tight curls that hide undercuts if you rushed. 6010 is also strictly DC. Put it on an AC machine and it will sputter, wander, and refuse to do the job it was designed for. Where 6010 earns its drawer space is pipeline root passes, pipe welding of all kinds, structural tacking, galvanized and dirty steel that nobody wants to clean, and any field repair where the alternative was grinding for an hour. Use it when penetration matters more than appearance. Do not use it on thin sheet where its bite will blow straight through, and do not use it where a slow, fluid puddle is what the joint needs.

E6011: The Same Bite, Any Machine

E6011 is the cellulose-potassium version of the same idea, and its single great virtue is that it will run on AC as well as DC. In practice that makes it the field rod. Farm equipment, old trucks, construction site repairs, job-site welders with a basic AC buzz box: 6011 is the rod that digs like 6010 without caring what machine is bolted to the wall. It is also the rod most often recommended for welding through galvanized coatings and for pipe work where a deep, clean root is required and the power source is whatever happened to be there.

Technique and character mirror 6010: fast-freeze puddle, tight arc, whip or small zigzag, quick travel, aggressive penetration, and a willingness to burn through surface contamination. On DC it behaves very much like 6010; on AC the arc reverses polarity sixty or one hundred and twenty times a second, which makes it slightly less forceful and slightly more forgiving. Many experienced welders keep both rods and choose based on the machine on the truck that morning.

Two warnings belong here. First, deep penetration is a two-sided tool: on thin material, 6011 will punch holes just as readily as it will open a root. Second, burning galvanized or plated steel puts coating metals into the fume, and fume exposure is a health issue, not a taste issue. Set up ventilation before you start rather than after your eyes sting, and see welding safety tips for the basics that should surround every arc you strike. For sheet metal, pipe roots and dirty repairs, though, 6011 remains one of the most useful rods you can own.

E6013: The Rod Everybody Learns On

E6013 is a rutile rod, and it behaves exactly like the reputation suggests: soft arc, quiet hum, minimal spatter, smooth flat bead, easy restarts, and almost no technique required to produce something that looks presentable. It runs on AC and DC, it starts reliably on cold or slightly rusty metal, and its penetration is deliberately shallow, which is precisely why it is safe on thin sheet. If you hand a beginner a 6013 and a junk drawer of scrap, they will produce a usable bead before lunch.

Its ideal work is light fabrication: sheet metal patches, thin wall tubing, hobby projects, decorative ironwork, maintenance repairs on non-critical parts, and anything where the metal is thin enough that a cellulose rod would have burned through before you got three inches of bead. Because the puddle is fluid and forgiving, it also suits flat and horizontal work on light frames where appearance matters more than raw strength. It is the default answer for AC-only machines doing general repair, and it is a genuinely good rod, not a beginner’s consolation prize.

Its limits are equally clear. Penetration is light, so it will not dig into thick plate, it will not bridge a poor fit-up, and it struggles to burn through contamination. The puddle is fluid and freezes slowly, which makes it a poor choice for vertical and overhead work compared to a fast-freeze rod. A 6013 weld on a heavily loaded joint is only as good as the fusion underneath the pretty bead, and pretty beads hide lack of fusion beautifully. Rule of thumb: 6013 for thin, light, visible, low-stress work; step up to 6011, 7018 or whichever rod the chart points at as soon as the joint gets thick, dirty or structural.

E7014: The Fast-Fill Iron Powder Rod

E7014 takes the friendly arc of a rutile rod and adds iron powder to the flux, which means more metal comes off the rod per amp of current. The bead comes out wider, flatter and fuller, travel speed goes up, and the arc stays soft. It runs on AC or DC and it works in all positions, which is an unusual and useful combination: speed, smoothness and versatility in one box.

The extra deposition rate is where 7014 earns its keep. On multi-pass work in the flat and horizontal positions, it fills a groove faster than a plain rutile rod while still being easy enough for a less experienced hand. It also tolerates slightly less than perfect fit-up better than 6013 because it puts more metal in the joint. Fabrication shops like it for general frames, brackets and guards where 7018’s low-hydrogen handling rules are more ceremony than the job requires.

The limits come from physics. Iron powder makes the bead want to run flat and wide, which is wonderful in flat work and increasingly awkward as you climb into vertical-up and overhead positions. And because the covering is not low-hydrogen, 7014 is not the rod you choose for constrained, crack-sensitive structural joints. As a rule, if the job is general fabrication in flat and horizontal, 7014 is faster than 6013 and nicer to run than 6010; if the job is structural or inspected, the chart will almost always point you at 7018 instead.

E7018: The Low-Hydrogen Structural Standard

If one rod deserves to be called the most important stick electrode in modern construction, it is E7018. Bridges, buildings, heavy equipment, pressure-rated fabrications, seismic detailing, transmission towers: the drawings frequently specify low-hydrogen electrodes, and 7018 is the one you will find in the rod ovens of virtually every structural shop. Its flux is a basic, low-hydrogen covering with iron powder added, it produces weld metal with 70,000 psi minimum tensile strength, it runs in all positions, and its bead is smooth, dense and free of the spatter and porosity that plagues cheaper rods.

Why the obsession with hydrogen? Because hydrogen is the quiet assassin of steel welds. When moisture reaches the arc it breaks into hydrogen, some of it dissolves into the hot metal, and as the weld cools and shrinks the trapped hydrogen can open cracks hours later, sometimes days later, in a joint that looked perfect when you chipped the slag. The phenomenon has a name everyone in inspection uses, hydrogen-induced cold cracking, and the three usual accomplices are hydrogen, a hard susceptible steel, and restraint stress. You cannot do much about the steel or the stress on a bridge column. You can absolutely do something about the hydrogen, and that is the entire reason for the handling rules below.

Technique with 7018 is its own small skill. It wants a short arc, because the covering needs to stay close enough to the puddle to shield it properly; drag it too far and the arc blows, spatters, and drags atmosphere into the metal. Drag angle, steady travel, no whipping. The puddle is fluid and the bead stacks nicely if you are patient. Vertical-up with 7018 uses a small weaving or stepped motion with pauses at the sides. Restarts matter: 7018 does not like being restarted after the crater has cooled without being chipped, because the exposed flux at the restart can reintroduce contamination. Get the restart clean and the rod behaves beautifully.

Everything about 7018 points back to storage. When we reach the moisture section you will see why a rod oven is not luxury equipment, and why a 7018 rod that has spent a weekend in a damp garage bag should be treated as suspect. If porosity shows up in your 7018 work anyway, the causes are diagnosable and usually environmental, and our page on porosity in welding walks through the checklist. For now, hold onto this: 7018 is the rod that carries load, and load-bearing rods come with handling rules.

E7024: The Flat-Position Deposition Machine

E7024 is the rod you choose when the work is in front of you on the bench or in the pan, gravity is cooperating, and the goal is to move a large volume of metal quickly. Its covering is loaded with iron powder, the third digit in the code says flat and horizontal only, and it delivers the highest deposition rate of the common mild steel rods. Beads come out wide, flat and smooth, and travel speeds are fast enough that a production shop can lay serious metal per hour with it.

The classic applications are exactly what you would guess: long horizontal fillets, gussets, tank work in the flat position, heavy plate fabrication where the parts sit on the table, and any situation where someone is being paid by the inch of completed weld rather than by the artistry of the puddle. It runs on AC or DC, which makes it friendly to shop machines.

The restrictions are hard, not soft. Never try 7024 overhead or vertical: the iron powder keeps the puddle fluid and gravity will drop it on you. Fit-up has to be reasonable because the rod is laying metal in rather than digging a root. And like 7014, its covering is not the low-hydrogen basic type, so specified structural work still belongs to 7018. Used where it belongs, 7024 is the fastest way to fill a flat joint with a stick in your hand.

Stainless, Dissimilar Metals, and Cast Iron Rods

The mild steel drawer is not the whole story. Sooner or later a job walks in that the six classics cannot touch: a cracked cast iron gearbox housing, a stainless handrail, a mild steel frame that has to accept a stainless bracket, a piece of machinery with unknown steel in it. The chart handles these through a second family of rods with their own numbering, and knowing three or four of them by heart saves more trouble than any other piece of rod knowledge outside the mild steel six.

Stainless stick rods are coded around the alloy they deposit. E308 (often bought as 308L for the low-carbon version) welds 18-8 stainless, which is the 304 family that makes up most kitchen equipment, handrails and food processing surfaces. E309 (309L) has more alloy and is the rod for joining stainless to mild steel, for overlaying mild steel with stainless, and for dissimilar joints where the two sides will not agree chemically on their own. E312 is the heavy hitter for truly dissimilar or unknown steels, with a high-alloy, somewhat ferritic deposit that tolerates dilution from almost anything. E316 adds molybdenum for the grades that resist pitting in chemical or marine exposure. The practical tips are simple: keep heat input lower than you would on mild steel because stainless distortion and sensitization are both heat-driven, brush with dedicated stainless tools so you do not implant carbon steel grit into a stainless surface, and never use a carbon steel brush on stainless. When dissimilar metals are involved in the structure rather than just the weld, the corrosion question does not end at the rod: our piece on preventing galvanic corrosion covers what happens after the weld cools.

Cast iron rods are the other essential specialty. Grey cast iron is brittle, carbon-rich, and prone to cracking as it cools, so the two common stick solutions are nickel based. ENi-CI rods are essentially pure nickel and leave a deposit that machines easily, making them the choice for rebuilds where a later cut with a lathe or mill is expected. ENiFe-CI rods are nickel-iron, stronger and cheaper, with a deposit that is tougher but less easy to machine, and they also tolerate dilution from steel better, which matters when you are repairing a cast iron housing that has been welded to a steel mount. Heat control matters more than rod choice: preheat slowly where practical, use small stringer beads with peening between passes, let the part cool gradually rather than quenching it, and consider that sometimes the better repair is to stop and machine the part instead. If you want the full walk-through of that process, our guide to welding cast iron to steel covers prep, rods and cooling discipline step by step, and our look at nickel-based welding wire explains why nickel is the element doing the heavy lifting in both rod types.

One more family deserves a mention because it confuses people coming from MIG: stick welding does not use shielding gas bottles. The gas comes from the flux burning on the rod, which is why stick works outdoors in wind that would ruin a MIG or TIG weld in minutes. That same fact is why stick rods must be kept dry: the protection system is chemical, not bottled, and chemistry is sensitive to water. The wire-process cousins of these ideas are covered in flux-core settings and flux-core wire types, where the flux inside the wire plays a similar role in a different package.

Matching the Rod to Thickness and Joint

Rod diameter is a heat-management decision before it is a strength decision. A bigger rod carries more current and deposits more metal, which is wonderful on thick plate and disastrous on thin sheet. A smaller rod keeps the puddle controllable and the heat input low, which is exactly what thin metal needs and exactly what a two-inch fillet does not. The chart below is the standard starting guidance used in welding shops and classrooms; treat every number as an approximate range and adjust by reading the weld.

Joint geometry changes the answer as much as thickness does. A butt joint with a good fit-up wants a root pass that penetrates, which points toward 6010 or 6011 on DC, followed by fill and cap passes from 7018 or 7014. An outside corner on thin sheet concentrates heat in one edge and begs for a small rod on low amperage. A T-joint on quarter-inch plate is the natural habitat of 7018 or 7014 at full heat. A lap joint on thick plate in the flat position is where 7024 starts to make sense. Read the joint before you read the drawer: how thick, how well does it fit, what position will you be standing in, and what is the metal carrying afterwards.

Fit-up deserves its own sentence because it is the most ignored variable on the list. Rods do not fix gaps. A generous gap in thin material will swallow your heat and your patience no matter which rod you choose, and the honest solutions are tack, clamp, pre-bend, or trim before you strike the arc. Deep-penetration rods tolerate a tighter, dirtier joint better than friendly rods, but no rod tolerates a gap that its size cannot bridge. If you are learning, practice joints on scrap plate you cut yourself so you control fit-up deliberately, then vary one thing at a time: position, rod, amperage, travel speed. That is the fastest path from reading a chart to knowing one.

Amperage Ranges by Rod Size: Starting Points, Not Commandments

Every rod box prints a recommended current range for each diameter. Generic charts restate roughly the same numbers, and the table below collects the commonly published starting ranges for the classic sizes. These are approximate general guidance for normal steel at room temperature, in flat position, on a well-fitted joint. Read that sentence again before you set your dial: every condition in it can move the number.

How do you know you are in the right range without a meter on the machine? Listen and look. Too cold, the rod stubs and sticks, the bead piles up narrow and tall, the slag crawls over the toes, and the arc sounds reluctant. Too hot, the arc sounds harsh and loud, spatter flies, the puddle races ahead of you, the bead goes wide and flat, and on thin material the arc blows through. In range, the puddle is round, bright and calm, the bead is about one and a half to two times the rod diameter wide, the slag behind it is thin and lifts in a continuous curl, and the rod sounds like frying bacon rather than a nail gun. Those four cues will serve you better than any printed number once you have learned them, which is why practice on scrap matters more than memorizing tables.

Two practical modifiers belong next to every number in that table. First, position: vertical-up and overhead usually want the dial turned down from the flat-position number, because the puddle you are fighting gravity with gets too fluid when it is too hot. Second, heat sinking: a small part clamped to a big steel table will pull heat away fast and may need more current than its thickness suggests, while the same part sitting on a wooden block will not. And for the record, stick amperage is the same conversation that MIG welders have about wire feed speed and voltage, and TIG welders have about pedal position: our MIG wire size chart, flux-core amperage chart and TIG settings chart all circle the same idea: start from a published range, then tune with your eyes.

Polarity: DC Positive, DC Negative, and AC Explained

Amperage tells you how much heat is available. Polarity tells you where that heat goes, and on stick welding it changes rod behavior dramatically enough to make or break a weld that the amperage dial says is perfect. The three settings are DC electrode positive (DC+, often called reverse polarity), DC electrode negative (DC-, straight polarity), and alternating current (AC), which flips direction many times per second.

The default for most modern stick work is DC electrode positive. With the rod in the positive side of the circuit, roughly two thirds of the heat is generated at the electrode rather than in the plate, which makes the rod burn faster, the arc deeper, and the penetration stronger. This is why 6010 is specified for DC+, why 7018 is normally run DC+, and why a DC stick machine is such a versatile tool: it covers every rod in this article except the handful that truly require AC-only operation. If you own one machine and want it to do everything, a DC model with a stable arc at low current is the right buy.

DC electrode negative puts more heat into the workpiece and less in the rod. Bare stick electrodes do not like it: the rod runs cold, penetration drops, and the flux does not behave as designed. DC- has its place in other processes (it is the usual polarity for TIG on steel and aluminum, and for MIG on aluminum), which is why polarity keeps coming up in our other process guides as well. On stick, the rule is simple: unless the rod data sheet explicitly says otherwise, do not weld stick on DC electrode negative.

AC is the compromise and, for a certain kind of shop, the whole answer. Machines that only produce AC are cheap, rugged and common on job sites, and the rod makers responded by formulating versions of their classics that will strike and hold on AC: 6011, 6013, 7014, 7024 and AC-qualified grades of 7018 all run happily there. The trade-off is arc force. AC is slightly less penetrating than DC+ on the same rod because the current is only pushing in one direction half the time, so cellulose rods lose some of their famous bite and root passes can be fussier. AC also has a practical quirk worth knowing: arc blow, the magnetic deflection of the arc, tends to be less severe on AC than on DC, which is one reason welders sometimes prefer AC on out-of-position work near heavy steel. The full treatment of what polarity does inside the puddle, including how it changes transfer modes in the wire processes, lives in our polarity explainer.

The chart-level summary is small enough to memorize. 6010 is DC+ only. 6011, 6013, 7014 and 7024 run on AC or DC (check the box for the recommended polarity of that specific brand). 7018 is DC+ preferred with AC-qualified grades available. Specialty stainless rods with a -16 ending run on AC or DC; the -15 ending means DC+ only; -17 means DC electrode negative only, and yes, that exception exists, which is exactly why the last two digits of a stainless rod code are worth reading before you clamp it in. When in doubt, the box, not memory, settles the argument.

Moisture, Storage, and the Truth About Rod Ovens

This is the part of electrode discipline that separates professional structural work from amateur work, and it is entirely about hydrogen. The low-hydrogen flux on 7018 and its cousins is basic chemistry that behaves beautifully when dry and behaves badly when wet. It absorbs moisture from humid air, from a damp concrete floor, from a rod bag left in the bed of a truck overnight, even from the sweat on your hands if you handle rods bare-handed for long. When a damp rod is struck, that moisture decomposes in the arc and hydrogen goes into solution in the molten metal. The weld looks completely normal while it cools. Then, hours later, a crack appears.

The prevention rules are boring, cheap and effective:

• Keep low-hydrogen rods in their original sealed packaging until the moment you use them. The foil or plastic wrap each rod ships in is the first line of defense. Once a bundle is opened, the clock starts.
• Store opened 7018 in a heated rod oven or a rod holding oven. Industrial shops hold these rods at the reconditioning temperature the manufacturer specifies, commonly around 250 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 120 to 150 degrees Celsius) for holding, with higher temperature bake-out cycles for rods that have been exposed. A small rod oven costs far less than a rejected weldment.
• Do not bake rods on a grill, in a toaster oven, or in the shop oven that cooks your lunch. The manufacturer’s time and temperature schedule is the only schedule that restores the flux correctly without damaging the covering.
• Observe exposure limits. Most specifications allow a low-hydrogen rod to sit out of the oven for only a few hours before it must be re-baked or discarded. If you cannot remember when it came out, treat it as exposed.
• Handle rods with clean, dry hands or gloves. Greasy fingerprints on the covering transfer contaminants straight into the arc.
• Re-check everything after a storm, a move, or a storage cleanout. A box that survived a humid summer in the back of a shop is a box worth inspecting before it goes into a structural joint.

The mild steel classics are more forgiving, which is part of why they dominate repair work. A 6013 or 6011 rod that has picked up some dampness will usually still run, maybe with a bit more spatter or a couple of extra pores, and on a non-critical repair that is acceptable. Even so, the habit of keeping all rods off the floor and in sealed containers pays for itself. And when a weld does come out porous despite your care, the fault tree is well mapped: our page on porosity in welding lists the usual suspects in order of likelihood, from damp rod to oil in the joint to a breeze across the arc.

Hydrogen is also a fume question as well as a metallurgy question. Welding fumes are a respiratory exposure, full stop, regardless of which rod is burning, and rods with special coatings deserve extra respect. Ventilation first, respiratory protection where ventilation cannot do the job, and a respirator that actually fits your face rather than one that sits in the drawer. We keep the current recommendations together on our best welding respirator page, and the wider habit set is on our welding safety tips page. The occupational baseline that regulators expect any shop to work from is published by OSHA’s welding, cutting and brazing guidance, and it is worth reading once even if you only weld on weekends.

Technique for Each Rod Class: How the Hand Has to Change

Here is the secret that turns chart readers into welders: each rod class wants a different hand. The same amperage, the same plate, the same joint, and yet a 6010 held at the technique a 7018 wants will produce a narrow, proud, rough bead, and a 7018 whipped the way a 6010 wants will pour porosity and undercut into the joint. Below is what each family expects.

6010 and 6011 (fast-freeze, cellulose). Tight arc, as tight as you can hold without sticking. Work angle slightly downward on fillets. Move in a controlled whip or a small zigzag: establish the puddle, pull back a fraction of an inch to let the arc dig ahead, step back into the puddle, repeat. Travel speed is brisk. On a root pass, keep the rod angle pointing into the joint and let the arc force open the keyhole. The bead will come out with pronounced ripples and a raised profile; that is normal. If it looks smooth and glassy, you are probably too hot or moving too slowly.

6013 (rutile, friendly). Slightly longer arc than cellulose rods, steady drag or minimal weave, smooth continuous travel with no whipping at all. The puddle wants to be watched from directly behind the rod, and the goal is a flat, even bead about one and a half rod diameters wide. Restarts are easy: strike near the end of the previous bead and blend forward. On thin sheet, stitch techniques with small pauses can keep heat down, but the simplest improvement a beginner can make is slowing down just enough for the puddle to wet the edges instead of skating across them.

7014 (iron powder, fast fill). Medium-short arc, steady drag, moderate travel speed. The iron powder does much of the work, so resist the urge to hurry. In flat and horizontal fillets the bead lays down wide and smooth. Out of position, slow down slightly and narrow the weave so the extra metal does not sag.

7018 (low hydrogen, fill-freeze). Short arc, drag angle of about 10 to 15 degrees, very steady travel, tiny weave or straight stringers. The puddle is fluid and the covering is close to the metal, so consistency beats aggression. On vertical-up, use a small stepped or crescent weave with a brief pause at each side to tie into the toes, moving up in increments. Do not whip. Restarts are critical: chip the crater, grind if needed, overlap the restart and keep going. When the rod gets short, either toss it or use it somewhere appearance does not matter, because a stubby rod is hard to control and the last inch of a 7018 is where new welders usually leave their worst work.

7024 (high deposition, flat only). Longer arc than 7018, drag angle, fast confident travel. This rod wants to be pushed along the joint at speed; hesitation creates a lumpy bead. The result in a flat fillet is a wide, smooth deposit that looks machined.

Stainless and cast iron rods. Stainless wants a shorter arc, less weave and less heat than steel habits suggest, with faster travel to keep the sensitizing temperature range out of the picture. Cast iron wants small, patient stringer beads with peening, never long passes, never rushing.

None of this is mysterious, and all of it is learnable in an afternoon on scrap if you pick one rod and one joint and change only one variable at a time. That practice loop is the backbone of our beginner tips, and it is worth repeating: technique is not talent, technique is reps with attention.

Common Mistakes (and What They Look Like in the Puddle)

Almost every stick welding problem traces back to a short list of causes. Learn to recognize these from the bead itself and you can diagnose most of your own work without anyone looking over your shoulder.

Picking the rod out of the drawer instead of off the chart. This is the mistake from the story at the start of this article. The fix costs ten seconds: identify the metal, the thickness, the position and the load, then let the chart shortlist the rod. Drawers full of random rods are how brackets come back cracked.

Wrong polarity for the rod. Symptom: an arc that will not stay stable, excessive spatter, erratic behavior, or a rod that simply will not dig. Match the polarity to the box before you blame your skill. If your machine cannot provide the polarity the rod needs, change rods, not standards.

Amperage guesswork. Too cold gives a piled, narrow bead, sticking, and cold lap where the metal sits on top of the plate without fusing. Too hot gives blowthrough on thin metal, a wide washed-out bead, violent spatter, and undercut at the toes. Start from the printed range, then adjust in 5 to 10 amp steps while reading the puddle.

Arc length too long. On stick, the ideal arc length is roughly the rod diameter. Longer than that, the shield gas from the flux cannot cover the puddle, the arc wanders, spatter increases, and porosity appears. New welders stretch the arc because they cannot see the puddle; the cure is a better helmet shade and a shorter arc, not a longer one.

Travel speed and angle drift. Too fast gives a thin, narrow bead with poor fusion and possible undercut. Too slow gives a fat, crowned bead with excessive heat and distortion. Angle changes cause the rod to dig on one side and sit on top on the other. Keep the puddle about one and a half rod diameters wide and you are approximately right.

Damp or dirty everything. Damp rods, oily plate, mill scale left on, paint not burnt off, gloves soaked with cutting fluid. Stick welding tolerates more contamination than TIG, but tolerance is not immunity. A minute with a grinder or a wire wheel before the arc starts is the cheapest quality control available. Porosity afterward is the tell, and the usual porosity causes are listed in our dedicated page for exactly this diagnosis.

Ignoring position rules. Running a flat-only rod overhead because it is what is in the drawer is how gravity teaches people to hate vertical welding. If the position is not flat, the third digit of the code must be a 1.

No plan for the joint. Bevel, root gap, pass sequence, interpass temperature, and which rod does which pass. A structural joint is often 6010 or 6011 for the root, 7018 for the fill and cap. Welding a heavy joint in one giant pass with a hot rod invites porosity, lack of fusion and cracking all at once. Plan passes the way a mason plans courses.

Skipping cleanup between passes. Chip the slag completely, wire brush, look at the metal, then weld again. Slag inclusions are invisible until the part fails, and they are one hundred percent preventable by thirty seconds of brushing. This discipline matters more on multi-pass 7018 work than anywhere else.

Testing welds by eye. A pretty bead is not a sound bead, and an ugly bead is not automatically weak. If the joint matters, test it: cut and etch, bend coupons, load it to failure on a jig, or at minimum grind into it and look for fusion. Understanding what strength actually means and how it is judged is covered in our strength article and in the companion comparison is TIG stronger than MIG, which shows how often appearance and strength disagree.

For context, these same categories of setup errors follow welders into every process. The MIG versions of them are documented in our flux-core settings notes and the wider process literature collected by the engineers at TWI, where the root causes – heat input, contamination, hydrogen, technique – repeat themselves regardless of which consumable is in your hand.

A Simple Workflow: Using the Chart in Real Time

When a job lands on the bench, the chart works best as a short sequence of questions rather than something you read front to back. Run it in this order and you will arrive at the right rod and the right dial setting before the machine is even switched on.

• What is the base metal? Mild steel, stainless, cast iron, or something unknown. This picks the rod family: mild steel classes, 300-series stainless, or nickel cast iron rods.
• What is the thickness? This picks the rod diameter from the thickness table, and it tells you whether you need bevels and multiple passes or a single pass.
• What position will I weld in? Check the third digit. All-position rods (ending in 1) are legal anywhere; anything else is restricted to flat, horizontal or flat only.
• How critical is the joint? Load-bearing, inspected, pressurized, or safety-related work goes to low-hydrogen 7018 with proper storage. Light, non-critical repair can use 6013, 6011 or 7014 as convenient.
• What current do I have available? DC machine means any rod. AC-only machine limits you to the AC-qualified grades: 6011, 6013, 7014, 7024, AC-rated 7018, and stainless rods rated for AC.
• Set the dial. Start mid-range in the approximate amperage table for that rod and diameter, strike an arc on scrap of the same thickness, and tune by 5 to 10 amp steps until the puddle behaves.
• Check cleanliness and storage. Joint ground clean, rod dry, gloves clean, ventilation running. Then weld.

That is the entire method. Six questions and a scrap test bead will put you on the correct rod more reliably than years of drawer habit, and the more often you run the sequence the faster it becomes instinct. Manufacturers like ESAB publish rod-selection and amperage references for their own product lines that follow exactly this structure, and they are useful cross-checks when a job specifies a particular brand.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I read an electrode classification like E6010 or E7018?

Read it from left to right. The E means it is a covered arc welding electrode. The first two digits are the minimum tensile strength of the deposited weld metal in thousands of pounds per square inch, so 60 means 60,000 psi and 70 means 70,000 psi. The third digit is the welding position: 1 for all positions, 2 for flat and horizontal, 3 for flat only. The fourth digit describes the flux coating family and the current the rod prefers: 0 and 1 are cellulose types that dig hard, 3 is a friendly rutile type, 5 through 8 are low-hydrogen types used for structural work, with iron powder additions in 7, 8 and 4 making the rod deposit metal faster. Extra characters such as a suffix or an AC label add toughness requirements or current qualifications on top of the basic code.

What is the difference between 6010, 6011 and 6013?

All three make 60,000 psi weld metal and all three weld in all positions, but their flux chemistry and intended jobs differ. 6010 is cellulose sodium, runs on DC electrode positive only, penetrates deeply and is the classic root-pass and pipe rod. 6011 is the cellulose potassium version that will run on AC as well as DC, giving you the same deep bite on a job-site AC machine, and it is a favorite for field repair and galvanized steel. 6013 is a rutile rod with a soft arc, light penetration and an easy puddle, which makes it ideal for thin sheet, hobby work and beginners, and it runs on AC or DC. In one line: 6010 digs on DC, 6011 digs on anything, 6013 is gentle on thin metal.

Which rod should a beginner learn with?

Most instructors start with E6013 because the arc is forgiving, the slag releases easily, the bead looks presentable early, and the risk of blowing holes in practice plate is lower. The usual progression is 6013 for puddle basics, then 6010 or 6011 to learn penetration and out-of-position control, then 7018 because that is the rod structural employers expect you to run well. Practice all three on scrap before you care about project work, and build your fundamentals from our beginner welding tips so the habits you form are the right ones.

What amperage should I use for a 1/8 inch rod?

As a general approximate starting point: around 70 to 120 amps for E6010, 75 to 125 amps for E6011, 60 to 100 amps for E6013, 90 to 150 amps for E7014, 80 to 130 amps for E7018, and 140 to 190 amps for E7024, all at 3.2 mm (1/8 inch) diameter. These are approximate ranges only. Position, thickness, fit-up and heat sinking all move the real number, so start mid-range on scrap of the same material and adjust until the puddle is calm, the bead is the right width and the slag lifts in a thin curl. Always defer to the range printed on the rod manufacturer’s box when it differs from a generic chart.

Why does 7018 have to be kept dry or stored in an oven?

Because its basic low-hydrogen flux absorbs moisture from the air, and moisture in the arc puts hydrogen into the molten weld metal. Hydrogen can diffuse into the cooling steel and later cause cracking that appears hours or days after the weld looked perfect. Keeping 7018 in sealed packaging until use, then holding it in a heated rod oven at the manufacturer’s specified temperature, keeps the flux dry and the weld’s hydrogen content low. Rods that have been exposed for a long period must be re-baked per the data sheet or discarded. On non-critical work a slightly damp 7018 will often still run, but on structural joints the storage rule is not optional.

What does polarity mean and which one should I use?

Polarity is which way the welding current flows. DC electrode positive (DC+) puts most of the heat at the rod and is the correct, deepest-penetration setting for most stick rods, including 6010 and normally 7018. DC electrode negative (DC-) is not suitable for standard stick electrodes. AC alternates direction and is what AC-only machines supply; rods marked for AC, such as 6011, 6013, 7014 and 7024, run on it with a slight loss of arc force compared to DC+. Follow the polarity marked on the rod box, and if you want the deeper explanation of how polarity changes the puddle, see our polarity guide.

Can I weld stainless steel or cast iron with mild steel rods?

No. Mild steel rods deposit mild steel, which ruins the corrosion resistance of stainless and does nothing to handle the carbon and brittleness issues of cast iron. Stainless work needs a 300-series rod: 308 for 304-family stainless, 309 for joining stainless to mild steel or overlaying, 312 for highly dissimilar or unknown steels, 316 where molybdenum-grade corrosion resistance is specified. Cast iron needs nickel-based rods such as ENi-CI for machinability or ENiFe-CI for strength and dilution tolerance, plus slow cooling afterwards. The full procedures are in our cast iron welding guide and our article on nickel-based welding consumables, and remember that dissimilar joints create a corrosion story after welding too, which we cover in the galvanic corrosion article.

Do I need a rod oven for home welding?

Not unless you are welding low-hydrogen rods on joints that matter structurally. If your 7018 stays in its sealed wrapper and you use it within a reasonable time, a dry cabinet or a sealed bucket with desiccant is adequate for occasional hobby use. The moment you are welding load-bearing or inspected work, or you live somewhere humid, or you open multiple packages and leave rods out, a small rod oven becomes the cheap solution to an expensive problem. Buying rods in smaller quantities is the other valid approach: fewer opened packs means fewer damp rods.

Conclusion

An electrode chart is not paperwork you tolerate; it is the shortest path between the metal in front of you and a weld that holds. Read the code on the box before you clamp the rod: E for electrode, two digits for tensile strength, one digit for position, one digit for coating and current. Match the class to the job – 6010 and 6011 to dig, 6013 for thin and friendly, 7014 to fill fast, 7018 for anything that carries load, 7024 for flat production, stainless and nickel rods where the metal demands them. Size the rod to the thickness, start from the approximate amperage range and tune by reading the puddle, set the polarity the box asks for, keep low-hydrogen rods sealed, dry and in the rod oven, and let technique change with the rod class instead of forcing one habit onto every weld. Do that and the chart stops being a reference you look up and becomes a habit you think with – and the bracket that comes off your bench stays fixed.