It's not that I don't believe you, it's that I was never able to get a suitable weld with a stick machine on sheet metal.
The minimum recommended stick welding applications is
18 gauge steel which is about .047" which is much thicker than a tin can and requires a 3/32 rod, good technique as well as fitment.
I believe the recommendation is to use an AC electrode setting instead of electrode positive or negative in DC to prevent burying the slag into the weld.
The best electric machines to learn on are stick welders, because they require good technique and hand to eye coordination,
You could probably teach a monkey how to use a wire feeder, where it requires better skills to weld with a stick.
The most common minimum recommended sheet steel thickness for sound stick welding is 1/16" with a 3/32 rod set at about 40 amps. Expect warp city as the heat control is near impossible with the only control is shoving more electrode into the puddle to cool it, or pulling back out to increase the heat as the arc grows longer. Tube welding will often add the challenges of off position electrode application on the fly, or multiple stop/starts which can lead to weld porosity aka bad welds
Keep in mind that a tack weld is anything less than a full inch too, so sticking metal together doesn't always qualify it as a weld, it only aids in holding material position.
Stick welding is best suited for heavier work where it's penetrating qualities excel, where wire fed machines offer pretty welds with higher transfer rates at the cost of lesser penetration.
Most modern production sheet metal work is done with wire feed machines, either in a metallic inert gas shielded (MIG) or flux cored wire that provides a shield much like a stick electrode.
Flux core machines excel over MIG machines in outdoor settings as the wind can often play a role in blowing the shielding gas away from your puddle on a MIG machine.
Free oxygen is your enemy when electro-arc welding.
The resulting welds aren't nearly as pretty as inert gas shielded ones, but very suitable for strength.
I did a lot of ultra high vacuum chamber work where our TIG welds were leak checked with a quadrapole mass spectrometer with helium used as the test gas, so we weren't just joining stainless tubing to hold it together, our welds had to count.
For the most part, we used a 3/32" thoriated tungsten electrode on .100" wall stainless tubing.
The main advantage to a TIG machine is the ability to alter the amperage on the fly with either a foot pedal of an adjuster on the torch head.
I have seen guys heli-arc weld aluminum beverage cans together, but I never really got good enough on aluminum to accomplish that feat, but I still hope to get there one day.
A good TIG machine can be dialed back to a limiting factor of 2 amperes, and with a 1/32" tungsten sharpened properly can fusion weld as thin as .005" material.
Electrode grind shape has an effect of arc stabilization, often sacrificing durability (too thin) for a more stable arc. The high frequency starter arc was almost powerful enough to do those welds. Those tungstens looked like sewing needles and required them to be about .010 inch or less above the work.
Dip your tungsten and it was start over time at the grinder.
That requires cheater lenses in your hood as well, because if you can see your puddle, you cannot weld properly
