I used to love the Super Missle (nickle) ARC welding rods for TiG welding. I would beat the flux off of them and use them for TiG. They made some pretty welds....strong too. When we would do a re-fit on some of our hydraulic presses, we would use up to 6" schedule 160 pipe. It has almost a 3/4" wall thickness. Talk about taking forever to do a weld joint. Two root passes with a Tig and then multiple cover passes with 7018 stick. Plenty of time all day long for internal contemplation and focus. My all-time favorite was welding two halves of a 48" hydraulic cylinder together (almost 13' circumference with a 2" thick wall)......
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Why I wasn't a welder