Hello tinner20, a lot of folks will simply use a larger cup and walk the cover on, similar to the way that you might do the root and fills. That's the short answer. There are really a great number of techniques that you might employ and lots of folks out there have come up with their own personal variations and preferences to deal with the issue. Best regards, aevald
You should be able to walk the cup for the cap and really it comes out pretty slick once you get the hang of it. IF you are rooting and hot passing carbon pipe (i assume this is what material you are using because you mention stick welding), when you tig carbon and because of the thicker wall (say, sched-40), you are not really walking the cup. You use maybe a #4 or #5 cup, and you swivel the cup inside the groove to lay down your root and then your hot pass.....no problem, eh? When you go to cap (with tig) the difference is you have to use the edge of the cup to grab on to (the weld) as you lay down the cap. The first 1/2" of metal you put down on the cap is the hardest because you have to walk the cup from the hot pass onto the cap so you really have to be watchful of what is going on here. Once you have run out a little bit of the cap, the rest becomes easier and will get better with time and practice. As mentioned too, a larger cup will help. A good exercise is to practice walking around a pipe with no power or wire. You'll have to put a certain amount of pressure to keep the torch on the pipe. The same is true when you have rod in hand and are laying down a bead. You should keep the rod over the joint with a bit of pressure and do not feed the rod at all. Of course you should have the joint nearly filled up with your hot pass or you won't have enough metal there so your cap will look too flat. The larger the pipe to, the harder it will be to cap. Generally if i am given the option, 4 inch carbon pipe is as large as i want to tig out all the way. try using a 1/4" stick out (tungsten) for starters.
Here's a link from a regular poster here. Look at his stuff lots of usefull tidbits.
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