Welding Tips and Tricks

doing a little cleaning up, like sorting my filler rod and putting the plastic/rubber caps back on the container tubes since I had them open to the elements and dumb old me I didn't use my head and realize that exposed metal will corrode or rust sitting in my almost-always flooding high humidity basement. Luckily they all look good from what I can tell, but I do have a couple of boxes where I put my short pieces of used filler rod to use later on that's of course wide open to the elements, and those pieces which are pretty old, some are showing signs of corrosion, at least on the steel ones...

My question is, would you still use them even if they had some corrosion on them? I guess that's a dumb question, why use them? Filler rod is pretty cheap, but sometimes you run out and those old pieces come in handy. Should I just toss them? Guess I should put them in sealed plastic containers from now on.

raticus,
I just used some 4043 filler rod that I've had since 1981 to pad some beads while trying out a different welder. They had heavy oxidation on them on the end that was opened, but they cleaned up fine. Just scuff them with a Scotchbrite pad and use them for non-critical welds. Why throw them away?

Len

I second that. I bought an extra box of Maroon sctochbrite just for that. Half-used mild steel filler will always get "dingy" even if it doesn't get the traditional "rust". Couple quick wipes with medium finger pressure, then acetone, and you have yourself perfectly usable filler for non-critical welds.

I third that motion.... No need to scrap!