Well, I went to Home Depot yesterday and bought a box of Lincoln 6011 and 7018 1/8 in. stick electrodes. I tried the 6011 rod first at several amperage and arc force settings. I was using 1/4 in. mild steel plate. I tried tapping and scratching the rod to get the arc started and after sticking the rod like crazy I settled on scratching the rod and got a little better at it after many tries. After fooling around with trying to run beads I settled on practicing at 95 amps and 50% arc force. I found the 6011 rod made lots of smoke with little flux covering the weld and made ugly beads (probably me). I found the 7018 rod made less smoke with more flux covering the weld and the bead looked much better than the 6011. It seemed like holding a very tight arc gave the best results with both types of rod.

I have included a picture of the final welds on plate I did with the 6011 beads on top and the bottom 4 beads with 7018 rod. I cleaned all the welds in my blast cabinet so you can see my attempts at stick welding without all the flux and contamination blocking the view.
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I am used to much cleaner weld beads with MIG and TIG and find stick welding a very dirty process in comparison. After running a bead with stick I find a lot of flux, soot, and splatter as opposed to the other two processes. For some reason I want to get better at stick welding so any comments or suggestions are welcomed.