Yep. Improvised. Here: http://everist.org/NobLog/20091009_pipe_rotator.htm
VERY cool!! I need to keep that in mind if I ever find the need to do that sort of thing - it looks very useful.
Yeah, it's amazing how much better MIG (and TIG) welding works, when you take the bozo out of the process.
Ain't that the truth! Many years ago when I worked for National Semiconductor, they had an orbital head welder for joining small diameter (half inch and under, IIRC) SS tubing for plumbing gas supply systems without using fittings. It was pretty amazing - there was a cutter to square and prep the tube ends, then they'd be butted together and clamped in the welder's head. Press a button (obviously with the machine set up as required for the size of tube being welded), and a few seconds later (I'm assuming after a brief argon purge) you'd hear 'Eeeeeeeeee' as the arc fired and a motor drove the electrode around the joint. In under a minute you had a beautifully fused joint. The whole thing was about the size of a medium suitcase, just add an argon bottle and tubing to be welded. I didn't weld at the time, and it wasn't my department so I never got to play with it, but still think it's a pretty cool piece of hardware more than 25 years later.
Yeah. Well, _sometimes_ some of the stupid number of entangled projects individually reach completion. The stand shouldn't take much longer. So long as I don't die from this damned flu first. 2nd bad one in a month. Or maybe, the first one come back with a bam, due to staying up all night at a party on Malabar cliffs on October 3rd. Getting a bit old for stuff like that. Possibly breathing the fumes from people chucking plastic on the fire didn't help. Including a large PVC banner. God that stank. Poor, poor old lungs.
Once again, I can relate. I'm slogging through what's turned into a multi-year home renovation, and am presently working on getting heat properly installed so I don't have to spend another winter freezing my butt off and stepping over a few pieces of finned tube baseboard radiator mickey-moused in and laying across the floor propped on pieces of 2x4. Everything seems to take ten times longer than it should, require multiple trips to the hardware store to get that one more thing you didn't think you'd need, and/or have something else that has to be finished before it can be done. (I can safely say that I much prefer electrical work to plumbing - the holes are smaller and gravity doesn't matter!)
Umm, yeah - breathing burned plastic fumes? Probably not gonna make your lungs happy. Nasty stuff! (As you doubtless already knew, and have now had reinforced by example after the party!) I'll stick to rosin flux smoke, thanks just the same... Here's hoping that whatever ails you passes soon and you can get back to YOUR fun in the shop.
-Pat