Welding Sheep Yard Mesh

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I'm making a gate.  With 38mm x 20mm x 2mm RHS frame and sheep yard mesh inside.  The sheep yard mesh is a mesh of 6mm wire forming rectangles of 150mm x 200mm.  That mesh is welded. Where the wires cross they're welded. You can't even see the weld.  I go to weld the wires to my RHS with my 1.6mm stick and I find the only way I can do it is to heat the wire into a puddle and then spread that onto the RHS.  If I try to weld in the corner, touching both wire and RHS at the same time, I'll just burn through the RHS. Or, if I'm careful to avoid burn through I'll get a good looking weld that'll just crack off.  So look at this pic of the horrible looking result I get by heating the wire - horrible looking but very strong, I'll admit, I'll go with it if I must because it does the job.  But any suggetions how to do a better looking job would be gratefully recieved.   ab  Attached Images
Reply:Here we would call those horse panels. Don't know why but it's made out of various large gage wire up to the size you're talking about. I've got a few pieces laying around here but they are all heavy galvanized. Yours doesn't look galvy but it's really hard to tell by a pic. Basically what you want to do is weld theses panels of about .230 soft wire to some box tubing of about .079 wall with a stick. Seems doable by wicking back and forth.
Reply:It's doable alright. I'm doing it. But it's an awful looking job the way I'm doing it. How would you do it? What rod, what amps, what technique?  What is 'wicking back and forth' ?
Reply:You want to wash the puddle into the fencing focusing the arc on the base material._________________Chris
Reply:What is 'wicking back and forth' ?
Reply:abrogard go down to your local WIA dealer and get some Austarc 13S rods you'll find them good for the job your doing there a great rod for welding gal to normal steel or gal to gal .I have used them for years and found to one of the better rods when it comes to gal Creative metal Creative metal Facebook
Reply:Hi, thanks for the replies. Wash the puddle into the wire?  I'm actually doing it the other way round - washing the wire puddle onto the frame.    That's because trying to start a puddle on the frame would burn through.  That's when I was using my 1/16" rods on about 50 amps.   I admit that recently it has been better since I started using the 2.5mm rods on the same amperage - it never seems to look like burning through.   But I continued to use the same approach - heat the wire into a puddle and then move onto the frame.   Finished the job now. I'll get some practice material and follow your suggestions.  I'm making it hard for myself with all this chopping and changing rods I think. Probably I should have stayed with one kind of rod until I'd  mastered it and learned something solid...  Still.....  we'll get there.   ab  p.s. thanks for the tip about the Austarc rods.