old newbie with a question

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Hi all. I have a Lincoln Weld Pak 155 and will likely be selling it. I'll post that in the appropriate place. My big question is the tricks some of you use to weld pipe. I had a Rupp Centaur 3 wheeler years ago and married the frame of the Rupp to the torsion bar of a ' 71 Beetle stick. I used a 1/4 inch steel plate as the marriage plate.Now flat steel seemed to be easy for me to do but curved surfaces like pipe gave me nothing but problems. It was always difficult to maintain the proper arc distance/speed/angle. I used to think that making a trough would make things easier but I wanted to be able to somehow rotate the pipe in the trough to a steady rotation rate so that I could just hold the torch still while rotation occurred by some other means than my free hand doing the rotation and killing me.So what was the right way to do it?
Reply:Learning to mig pipe/tube is probably the most difficult of the mig positions to learn and do well. You have to continuously keep changing the torch angle as you go. Small pipe/tube is harder than larger sizes because you have to change all that much faster.They do make pipe rollers and welding turntables to do production work on some things, but you are usually limited to small pieces or straight lengths, not whole assemblies.First key is to learn to be able to do all positions on  flat plate with mig in your sleep. If you can't make good overhead and vertical welds on flat material where you can keep the torch angle the same, forget even trying tube in simple positions, let alone complicated ones like 6G. After that it's nothing but lots and lots of practice until you want to scream... and then do some more..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan
Reply:I can definitely relate. Been going through the same thing with SMAW for the last few weeks. 6" Sch. 40 in different positions and its a totally different world. Very humbling indeed! So, what was suggested to me was to just start stacking stringers around the pipe. I started at one end with a small groove ground into the pipe for reference on the first stringer. If I keep the first one straight its a whole lot easier. If not... forget about it. I spent days running stringer after stringer and yeah, it gets pretty boring but guess what? My stringers got a lot better. So did my restarts, rod angle consistency and just about everything else.Give it a try with GMAW and maybe it will help. One thing is for sure, when you go back to flat stock it will seem like a breeze. E
Reply:I am not quite sure what a stringer is. I don't have the experience to understand the all the vocabulary.Anyway, it seems I was on the right track and it wasn't just me and any lack of coordination on my part. I have seen some incredible welds on pipe that looked like they were painted! Maybe the way an artist manipulates her paint brush can give me a hint.