Need some ideas for square tubing !

[fortyseven2n]

I have a chance to pick up some scrap pieces of 5" square x 3/16" wall square steel tubing in approx. 4' lengths and 2' lengths .

The machine shop I work for buys this material in 20' lengths and cuts it into pieces just over 48-3/4" long . That means you only get 4 per length and have about a 4' drop .

We have about 100 or so drops that are going to be sold for scrap but the boss says I can have "some" of them . These are the last of the 4' drops because I found a source who will make 22-1/2' bars so I only have about a 2' drop .

I brought a few home to make a drag to go behind my disk but I have not been able to come up with any other uses for the tubing .

Does anyone have any ideas ? I hate to see this stuff go to waste .

thanks a bunch !

Fortyseven2n

 

[rotr]

Frames for work benches, shelving, racks for storing more "drops", frame for various drags for your tractor. Floor holder for rakes, brooms, etc.

Modified short gin pole off the tractor. Braces for various projects. Split lenthwise for "U" channel. Quarter lengthwise for angle iron. Short lift forks.

That is if you have access to a welder.

Sorry, that's all that comes to mind at the moment.

Good luck and happy thinking.

Ron

 

[wroughtn_harv]

Scrap right now is about twenty dollars a ton. That's a penny a pound. Go ahead and buy the stuff from your boss. Give him the scrap rate. That way he'll see it as business and not a personal thing.

If you take the pieces and weld them together. I prefer to cut them at forty fives if it's gonna be needing strength. But you can but weld them together and then you have fence posts to sell or use.

Like Ron says, workbenches are another viable option.

It's sorta funny how scrap works. Many years ago I had a fence company with my father. We did miles of chainlink. One of the scrap products was the one and three eighths top rail. We could use pieces down to about two and a half feet in the gate shop. The smaller stuff went into the scrap bin for salvage.

One day a surveyor came in and wanted to know if I could make and sell him some pieces of one and three eighths fourteen inches long. He needed like a couple of hundred for property pins. After that my one and three eighths scrap was thirteen inches and shorter.