@mickri
That's an excellent and ambitious project!
Since you want/need to stay with the welding process you have then my advice is the smallest diameter quality wire you can find, and practice, practice, practice.
When forced to do something like this I usually find that once I get a little spot deposited, I let off the trigger and let it cool a bit. Then I can come back and add a little more. It really is a patch-work of overlapping tacks. The extra mass of metal heats slower and helps avoid blow-thru. It doesn't look pretty, but can get you out of a tight place. It can also be slow since you'll want to clean/brush off the flux-core slag between tacks.
If you need to continue with galvanized, you can simply soak the pipe ends in a jar of muriatic acid (hydrocloric acid).
I used it to strip the galvanized coating off the ends of some (chain-link) fence posts for a project, it worked faster than I expected and stripped both the inside and outside to the depth that was immersed.
You can find that at pool supply stores, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrochloric_acid
Keep it away from your good tools though, just the vapor will rust steel in the same room.
For practice how about picking up some exhaust couplers/adapters at your local auto-parts place.
They would be more representative of the actual work piece. Like these:
But those look galvanized too.........
Best of luck, and please keep posting your progress!
-brino