Welding round tube...Help please

[cityfarma]

I have been fortunate in getting some free steel tube. It was new and around 6 meters long. I got 1 length of 65mm square tube and two lengths of 50mm round tube. A good saving! Now all I need is help in how to weld the round tube in a "T" join.

Cityfarma

[Lloyd_E]

Colp out the vertical tube and weld to your horizontal one.

Lloyd

[Western]

You will have to cut a "saddle" into the cross piece. Basicaly, you can use the tubing as a scribe, mark the diameter onto the cross piece at one end, )it should look like a half moon at the end of the pipe(, mark the center, now turn the pipe over and do the same. After you have your marks, cut out the half moons. This should give you a "saddle" appearance and should be a fairly close match to the diameter of the pipe your welding to.

If you have enough pipe you can cut off about 1 inch and use that as a scribe piece, just lay it on the end of the pipe you want to cut with half of the scribe past the end of the pipe your gong to "saddle".

Then you can check the fit and remove any high spots/slag to get a tight fit. Weld.

Sounds harder than it is, play with it and it will make sense.
You could also "mash" the end like you see on farm gates and stock panels but saddled looks better.

[cityfarma]

Thanks, I will give it a try. Just looks like it is a lot of work to get a good fit.

Cityfarma

[AlanB]

Depending on your strength and asthetic needs you can also squish the end of a round tube and then weld it on flat to the side of another tube.

Not as strong, nor as pretty as fishmouthing, but, for many applications (such as farm gates) plenty strong for what it is.

[chumly2071]

look for a download on the net for a free program called "winmiter". It lets you input tube diameters and angles and then print out a template to trace and then cut by. there are also a couple others online similar to this.

if you do a search on the forums at shopfloortalk.com, there are a couple good threads about using a chop saw to miter tube.

[RobJ]

A cutting torch works well for cutting the cutouts but if the tubing is thin you can use a sazall or even a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade.

[Cap-n-Cray]

You need a new tool...

A tubing notcher. They can be as little as $40 to thousands. Basically a hole saw on a jig.

Cary

[RobertBrown]

Cut straight through both sides of the verticle piece with a metal hole saw that is just slightly smaller than the outsdie diameter of the tube. Finish and trim with a grinder. The hard part is welding it with a stich on oposite sides so it doesn't pull out of square when it cools.

[RonMar]

Second the hole saw, preferably in a drill press. Harbor freight also sells tube notchers that make this a little easier for between $40-$60. They are basically a hole saw arbor in a guided bearing assembly that is aligned with a pipe clamp.