The cap off something like an aerosol can, with a bit of oil soaked rag sitting in it and left in the compartment with the wire will often avoid any troubles with corrosion on the wire.
Western QLD is often dry, so we don't have too much trouble, but, we still have to consider it, and for the last 20 plus years I've not had trouble with corroded wire with the oily rag in near the roll of wire, and no troubles with welder performance from potential contamination of the wire.
I reckon if you decided to weld aluminium though, in that instance you would really need another liner just for aluminium.
I like that idea and might give it a go.
However being in a near salt water location, the top layer of wire is often rusty.
But as I am more of a grinder than a welder, I dont worry too much about it.
But my friend who used to do a lot of welding often used to peel the top layer of wire off a reel to get to the cleaner stuff.
He was doing welds that needed to be good and clean.
He said the cost of the wire was nothing compared to having to re weld something that didnt quite look right.
I found out yesterday why he always sacrificed the wire in the liner when changing wire.
I usually just chop the tip of the wire and wind it back on to the reel.
He always cut it at the feed rollers and put the end back in the reel, and pulled out the wire in the lead and threw that away.
I guess I had been lucky that I had always managed to catch the end as it came back to the roll.
Until yesterday.
Great little birds nest.
I rolled it back out until I got to the nicely wound stuff, and was going to roll it back on to the reel, when I thought bugger it.
Chopped the 20 odd feet off and it went into the bin.
Having the wire not the greatest on the roll can give you problems especially if the end went under another loop.
Nice little hitch knot on the roll to give you dramas down the road.
I tried to keep wire wastage down as I was using very small rolls for aluminium and stainless.
But I found that there was too much twist action going on in the liner due to the smaller diameter coils on the small roll.
Bought a large roll of aluminium wire and found it so much easier to use than the small roll.
Not sure about buying a large roll of stainless yet. The small roll cost me close to 70 bucks about 8 years ago from memory.
Would hate to see the cost of a big roll of stainless, and havent really got much use for it.
I have stainless for the TIG and have been using that more than the MIG anyway for stainless jobs.
Cheers
Rob