Welding Tips and Tricks

hey, I've been TIG welding for a few years, worked in several sheet metal shops and lots of personal race car projects and various stuff... 1FG/2FG pretty nice, and decent with vertical (but not too much experience with overhead)... basically I can lay down a good bead on flat material, but when it comes to butt welding small tubes, or rather, just welding the circumference of a tube, I'm struggling trying to flex my wrist around the tube. I'm currently practicing on some spare material getting ready to weld some threaded tube ends on 1-1/4" CM tubes, some new 4-links for my race car. It should be pretty easy to weld, but I'm struggling trying to rotate my hand/wrist farther than a whole inch of weld travel (and this is only on my welding table), and even with that I'm having a hard time keeping my torch aimed the same as I weld. I can weld two tubes fitted in a Tee just fine, resting my hand on the tubes and following the notched end, or tubes onto a flat piece perfectly, but when it comes to just following the circumference of a tube by itself (like a butt weld, though my threaded inserts are a lot easier), that's when I'm cursing a lot.... struggling to lay an even width, straight bead. It's structurally a strong weld, but I want it to look good not like I'm drunk, but following the tube is kicking my ass... Any odd tricks you do to butt weld on small tubes other than buy or build a positioner (something I've always wanted... would make this super easy to do)? Thanks.

The "positioner" that helped me a few years back when I customized two sets of longtube headers was: me. Let me ask you:

• Where exactly are you in relation to these small tubes?
• Are you sitting on a stool/chair?
• How high off the ground are these tubes, and how tall are you?
• Is there anything that gets in the way of you getting really really close to the tubes so you can do a ½-circumference visual rotation around the tube, such as a table, other parts/materials, large belly, too short welding lead?
• Do you have a way to rest your hands/forearms, or are you forced to hold both your hands/arms completely free-air without any support?
• Do you have arthritis/carpel-tunnel or something similar that prevents you from using your fine motor control of your hand/fingers/wrists?
• Do you have a stiff neck for whatever reason and find it hard to turn/twist at times?

I think you can sorta see where I'm going with this. For me specifically, addressing some of those issues helped me out greatly, even though I was a super-green newb at the time. It really kicked my butt at first, but I kept focusing and trying out different things.

Don't be fooled by instagram and what not. Lots of tig on small tubes and parts are welded in small increments. If you see a stainless part with a small silver section every inch or so, that's where they stopped and moved to restart. The beauty of tig is that you can make restarts invisible, but the shielding gives them away.