The establishment of the correspondence between the important features of the topside weld pool and the penetration state is a key link in penetration control. This article presents a scheme of variable gap welding penetration control based on rough-fuzzy modeling. By utilizing the basic concepts of variable precision rough sets and conditional information entropy, relevant algorithms for attribute reduction and rule extraction in decision information systems are addressed. Raw data for modeling are obtained through current–gap combination experiments, and then rough-set-based knowledge acquisition algorithms are used to generate classification rules for the penetration state. Based on the correspondence between the important features of the topside pool and the penetration state, a fuzzy control model is established. Welding experiments under variable gaps are conducted to examine the proposed control scheme, and the results indicate that the weld has good penetration and meets the requirements of welding specifications.