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Hi n444, To expand even further than Fred Martin did on some of the good advice you've gotten, 6013 used to be considered a sheet metal welding electrode running DC-. Now it's more of a general purpose electrode for which Lincoln lists AC as the preferred polarity. I agree with Fred that it performs well on any polarity. 6010 and 6011 have similar characteristics to each other, with 6011 doing a little more cleaning of dirty base metal. 6011 runs well AC or DC+, 6010 runs DC+ only. All electrodes with numbers ending in 8 are low hydrogen with iron powder in the flux. They have to be used within hours of being taken out of a freshly opened airtight package or a rod oven. They must be stored in a rod oven. If they are exposed to room temperature air for more than a few hours they are supposed to be reheated for an hour at 650-750 degrees F for 7018 and 7028, and 50 degrees hotter for 8018 and up. To me all of this seems excessive for home or farm welding projects. Unless you know for certain that your project requires low hydrogen welds, you might be happier with 7014. Like 7018, 7014 is a medium penetration rod with iron powder in the flux. It is not low hydrogen so it does not have to be kept in a rod oven, just a dry place. 7018 is a DC+ rod (I don't like the 7018 AC version) and 7014 is AC or DC+, and welds well with either. 70K psi rod is not necessarily 10K better than 60K psi rod. Obviously it does have 10K psi more tensile strength (the force it takes to pull metal apart) than the 60K psi rods, but the situation is far more complicated than that. For instance, a 70K metal weld in 60K base metal might prevent flexing where it is needed and shift the stress point to an area of the mechanism which is not designed for it. Just because practically anyone can lay down weld metal after a little practice doesn't mean that welding doesn't require thinking and learning. On the contrary, you could weld every day of your life, learn something new every single day that you welded, and still not know nearly everything there is to know about welding when you hung it up. That's why it's so interesting. All the best, Stan
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