Total beginner...

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I got my dads old 220v craftsman arc welder and Im going to try and learn to weld on some old scrap, mainly just to do stuff around the farm. My question is what type of rods should I buy to practice welding on some old scrap carbon steel.thanks
Reply:6010,sometimes called 5p or 5p plus...
Reply:6013 for sure.7014 also very smooth easy rod.Assuming your welder is AC only, so you cannot use 6010, it is only for DC.You could use 6011 for heavy material welding and deep penetration, but it is a violent arc, more difficult to make a smooth weld.When you start out, try just dragging the rod, holding the rod at a 20 degree angle off of vertical, letting the coating ride on the plate to automatically hold a nce tight arc length, and pull the weld along in a straight line at a steady rate.  You don't really need to be weaving the rod back and forth, just nice straight uniform stringer beads is good for starters.  You'll have to adjust the current for the rod diameter so it strikes an arc, doesn't stick to the plate, but is not too hot to produce lots of flying spatter.
Reply:I'm gussing it is an AC machine. 6011, 6013, 7014, 7018AC are AC rods. 6011 has deep penetration and a rough bead, the rest give less penetration and a smooth bead. 6011 has the most brittle deposit and as you go up in number the ductility increases. The first two numbers denote the tensile strength in thousands of pounds. Actual yield strength is quite a bit less with 6011 being the lowest. Any AC rod will also work with a DC machine but not vise- versa.
Reply:A few suggestions to get you started. get some clean or relatively clean steel, say 1/4" thick or thicker. Old rusty steel will be tougher to start learning on and you will need to do a fair amount of grinding to get a clean surface to work on. 1/8" 6013 or 7014 are the perfect rods to start with. Simple to use, and give you good results. I would start with these. After you have run a few pounds of these and get the hang of it and know what good beads look like you can try 6011 or 7018AC. These don't run quite as easy but are not hard once you have a good idea how to run rods. Look at the box of rods it will tell you what range the rods run at. Pick a starting amp at about the middle to 3/4 of amp range. This will get the rods to burn easily when you start. After a bunch of passes try changing the amps to the top setting or the bottom setting and see if you can tell how the rods act differently. Play around at different amps.Post up some picts of your welds and we can let you know how you are doing. Be sure and tell us how thick the metal, what dia rod and type, amp setting for that run and AC or DC if your machine does both. Don't worry if your first welds don't look great, we all started somewhere at one time. The key to good welds is practice and more practice. Don't expect to burn 10-12 rods and be good. Expect to burn 10-12 POUNDS of rods to start getting a feel for this.If you can look into a night class at a local votec school or CC. You will learn faster with an instructor to help. The costs are out weighed by the availability of "free" rod and materials to weld on. With your own machine you can practice between classes and improve faster. Don't forget to let your instructor know what machine you have at home and he can help you with that too.Good luck, looking forward to seeing how you do.