How to Strike an Arc: Stick Welding Basics for Beginners

welcome to the shop today i'm going to show you how to strike an arc when you're stick welding this is a question i've received quite a bit in the comments how do you strike an arc my rod keeps sticking and let me tell you i've been there right when i first started stick welding oh it's been about 20 years ago now it wasn't until i could just strike an arc without thinking about it that stick welding became pretty fun for me now let's talk about why you have to strike an arc right so in order to initiate an arc you have to actually contact the center core of the electrode with your work piece and then as you come off of there it makes a little bit of a spark and that will help to ionize the air so that you can actually have a stable arc between your electrode and your work piece so until you actually contact those two together that can't happen but why is that hard because as soon as you do there's just enough heat that it wants to bond this electrode and weld it actually to your work piece and so your rod will stick and that can be so frustrating now if you're looking at this you've probably seen on the internet or in a book or someone's told you either you strike like a match you know with the end or you and while that's true i think what i do is actually a hybrid of both and after you've been doing it for a while you just kind of light up and you don't really think much about it but let's go over each of those techniques uh real quick now the first thing to remember is you don't want to strike too hard right it needs to be real gentle you're just barely touching it so i would recommend starting with the strike a match type approach and again i think what i do is kind of a mixture of both you really just have to touch it now if you're going to tap it then you just tap real gently you don't want to just bam because if you do you're probably going to stick your electrode a couple other things to keep in mind are the settings on your machine and your machine setup as a whole so if your machine is not set hot enough it'll be very difficult to strike an arc without sticking in fact when you're first starting out i'd recommend setting your machine on the hot side of things as you practice striking an arc the next thing is after you uh first strike your arc i like to come right off of striking an arc and i'll hold an arc that's about a quarter of an inch long but only for a second or so and then move in to where your arc length is is nice and tight so i'm going to show you just a little drill that you can do to get started so the first thing you're going to need is a practice plate and then i'd recommend taking a marker and drawing some lines across it right and then marking those off at about you know an inch or so like i'm doing here and so when you have that plate ready then you can make uh some practice welds have a fly here in the shop coming after me anyway you can practice making those little uh you know one inch or so long weld so you're striking an arc and then you're welding about an inch and then do that again and again and again to build up that muscle memory i did a full stick welding tutorial where i go over everything from machines to electrodes to technique uh link down in the description so check that out i think it'll help you out quite a bit as you're getting started so one thing that you're you're gonna find for sure especially if you're running 7018 is you know you strike up an arc the first time it goes pretty well the next time you go to strike an arc and you just scratch them and tap them and nothing happens and that's because the center of the electrode will burn back into the coating and on 7018 you get kind of a slag over the end that'll keep it from striking an arc there and so there's a couple ways to to deal with this one and this is what i think most people do starting out and you know it seems like the convenient thing to do and it works okay is you just kind of feed on it there and you'll eventually crack the the coating but usually when i've done that you know you're likely to just stick it once it goes and that doesn't work too well so a couple of other tricks that you can use is you can keep a file nearby and just use it and knock off that slags another trick that i've tried before and actually works okay is i take some of this sandpaper that has an adhesive back for auto body work i've tried to do some of that very unsuccessfully by the way but i have lots of sandpaper left over from it and so you can take some of that and stick it right to your table a little ways away from your welding and then it actually will work okay to take your rod and you can just take and rub right on there and that can knock it off just the same as a file can but you can do it a little faster right you just rub on there and then you're ready to roll again let's talk a little bit about actually welding on a project because what happens when you strike an arc wherever you were striking an arc as you're doing the practice there you probably can see some little marks and those are called arc strikes you don't want to have those visible on your projects i'll go ahead and strike an arc where i'm going to weld over and then i'll move back while i'm holding that kind of quarter inch long mark to where i'll start welding and then move in tight if you make your arc strike where you're going to weld over the top of it then you'll never have a visible arc strike and that'll work really well for you hey well thanks for tuning in today hopefully this video has been helpful for you as you get started stick welding and learning to strike an arc be sure to check out the other videos on my channel and i have a lot of content coming out about tig welding more stick welding videos some projects so if you don't want to miss any of that click that subscribe button now and we'll see you next time

Channel: TimWelds

Views: 1,223,660

Keywords: Shielded Metal Arc Welding, Stick Welding, Arc Welding, SMAW, Rod Welding

Id: KHDDtFgF2YU

Length: 6min 5sec (365 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 22 2020