Just found a better way to keep my weld rod dry on rainy jobs

I work on outdoor jobs in the Pacific Northwest, and wet rods have been a problem for me for years. Last week I tried putting a few silica gel packs from shipping boxes into my rod oven with my 7018 electrodes. It actually kept them dry through two days of drizzle on a bridge job in Tacoma. Has anyone else used that trick or do you have a different method for dealing with wet weather?

3 comments

3 Comments

margaret3041mo ago

My third year in the trade I accidentally left a whole forty pounds of 7018 rods out in a monsoon for a whole weekend, then tried to dry them out in my truck with the heat on full blast. Let me tell you, that truck smelled like a wet dog wrestling a electrical fire for about three months. So yeah, silica gel packs sound a lot smarter than my approach, your mileage may vary but anything beats my dumb method. I might give that a try on my next rainy job here in Portland, take this with a grain of salt though since I'm not doing code work either.

graygonzalez1mo ago

Silica gel packs in a rod oven huh. I dunno man, unless you're welding underwater in a typhoon I feel like people overthink this rain thing. I've welded 7018s that sat out overnight in a light drizzle and never had any cracking or porosity to speak of. Maybe if you're doing critical code work that gets X-rayed it matters, but for most general fab stuff a little moisture ain't gonna kill your weld.

rose_hart1mo ago

Man, I hear you. My buddy had a job last year where he was burning 7018 on some heavy fence posts in a steady mist, no prep, just lit up and ran his beads. Everything held fine for over a year now. I know the book says keep them dry, but real world results are what they are. If you're doing code work for a bridge or a pressure vessel, then yeah, get that oven. But for your average farm gate or trailer repair, I think we can relax a little. Stressing over every drop of humidity just makes the day longer for no good reason.