Metal work project...!

[brianhabby]

We often have problems with flytippers near where my workshop is located and they drive me mad as it's usually me who finishes up going to the tip with their rubbish. Why they can't take it to the local tip themselves I just don't know.

Anyway, the other week someone left an old bed frame behind one of the garages so I salvaged the angle iron before dispatching the waste. I've been asking on Freecycle for old bed frames/angle iron for ages without success so was quite pleased with this find.

This is what I got:

And this is what I made with it:

So now my jointer is on wheels and I can move it around without straining myself

Not sure about my welding skills, I suppose I could have bolted the whole thing together. It would have been a lot easier but I've got this mig welder and need to learn to use it sometime. Still I gave the thing a few clouts with a hammer to test the joints and none of them broke.

regards

Brian

 

[MickCheese]

Looks pretty good to me.

Saved yourself a good £30 or more and I bet you enjoyed making it.

 

[hog&bodge]

cool and tidy job brianhabby I love recycling
Like you have probs with tippers and just antisocial dumpers.

 

[brianhabby]

I did enjoy making it but found the welding part a bit frustrating until I sorted out the settings on the machine, then it wasn't so bad.

I just don't understand why people have to tip things in the way they do. The bed this angle iron came from must have been carried in a car so why not just go another mile or so to the local Council tip? It's beyond me

regards

Brian

 

[Geno]

I know what you mean,

I normally wait til I've built up enough to fill the trailer. Normally though I keep the metal cos it'll come in handy somewhere along the line.

Managed to get myself some shelving/racking uprights that someone tipped near my house (the dirty pippers!!) Used a couple for the uprights and couple more welded in together as cross members. Great job for a little more than nowt!

 

[RobertMP]

Having a decent mig welder handy is one of the things I miss from when I was working. The odd welding job at home I tackle with a very old buzz box stick welder and those welds are definitely not pretty

Nice bit of recycling there

You can get the wire feed rate about right on a mig by the sound of the welding. Too fast and it spits and pops, too slow and it hisses and the wire often burns back and sticks to the tip. somewhere in between is just right.

 

[Alan Smith]

Something to watch out for with bed irons. The steel used is a carbon or spring steel, you will get embrittlement on the edge of the heat affected zone after mig welding which could lead to cracking and failure. I'd keep an eye on your welds for cracking or if practical drill for a nut and bolt just for safety.

 

[brianhabby]

Some interesting comments there about the mig welder. I did struggle a bit when I started but I think I got the settings about right, or at least as good as I was going to get them with my limited experience.

One of the things I found was that I didn't have the welder set high enough at first as my welds seemed to be sitting on the surface of the metal. When I turned it up full I got a much better weld melting properly into the metal.

Alan,

I've heard others make negative comments about old bed angle so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by your comments. It just seemed like a good idea to recycle this material, especially as it was sort of thrown my way.

Would regular (purchased) metal be easier to weld then and presumably be a more secure joint?

regards

Brian

 

[RobertMP]

Weld on the surface is the result of the wire being a bit fast. Turning the wire speed down will get you a small 'normal' weld. Turning the power up will melt the wire faster so the higher feed rate then becomes about right for the weld size.

I've never tried 'bed angle' but I can tell you normal angle iron is dead easy to mig weld.

 

[CroppyBoy1798]

Good idea there brianhabby! I did something similar myself last week, but, using a bed frame that I had myself and wanted to put to use. I just cut a lenght of it, welded on a couple of castors (with my aldi arc welder! very handy bit of kit 8) ) and then fixed that to my tablesaw bench. So, now its just a matter of tilting the bench a little so the wheels contact the ground and then moving it with relative ease!

Its amazing the things you can do with a bit of angle iron. I used some of it too to make a frame for a runoff/router bench. Good and strong wen compared to timber of similar dimensions!

 

[archersam]

great idea, I have a bunch of 1.5 inch angle left over from an estate agents board job I did and had not thought of doing this with it. I actually bought the axminster system for my pillar drill and could have made this other than the fact I don't have a welder, BUT i do have a nice fabrication shop near me that do me favours.

this is on the cards for my p/t instead of an MDF box to sit it on. thanks for the idea.

 

[brianhabby]

If you haven't got a welder you could always just bolt it together. If the bed angle is prone to poor welds as indicated by Alan above then bolting might actually be the better way to go.

regards

Brian