That welding rod oven in a Missouri fab shop flipped my opinion on flux core

I stopped by a small fab shop outside St. Joseph last month to pick up some steel, and the old timer running the place had a rod oven set to 250 degrees with a logbook on top. He told me he hasn't run a stick job under 5/32 without preheating the rods since 2014, and I laughed at first because I always thought that was overkill. Then he handed me a rod that sat in his pocket for two hours and one from the oven, and the arc difference on the same plate was night and day. I've been running flux core on site for years and never once thought about moisture in the wire, but now I'm wondering how much porosity I've been chasing on humid days. Anyone else actually track rod temp on the truck, or am I finally seeing the light?

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