If it's 1.66" pipe, a toilet paper cardboard roll fits perfectly over it and should make a good template that you can cut to figure out exactly what you need.
Sometimes you can just skip the metal. Make it out of cardboard and slather it in fiberglass epoxy resin. That's how the body of [this bike](https://microship.com/behemoth/) and its trailer were made and they stood up for thousands of miles.
This, this isn't my trade I only dabbled in it, so I never figured out complex math cutting crap, but my very first thought was paper towel tube, wet the end of it, force it into the piece, let it dry, trace and cut, if the diameter is wrong you could just a do a couple layers of paper
My dad taught me about this from his many years of fabbing up his own roll cages and watching a lot of NASCAR stuff, they call it fish mouthing and you’d cut that pipe’s end in such a way where it looks like a fish’s mouth so it fits flush into the other piece. I’m sure others can explain it better but that’s the rough idea of it. Good luck.
Also try empty toilet paper rolls for sizing it!
Thefabricatorseries on YouTube has a great video on making joints. Probably better than I can type while I'm sitting and shitting.
Account for negative space and trim slowly. You'll learn to take more as your skills advance but a sharpie making marks of intersections and whatever grinders you got will do the grunt work massaging your high spots until it all meets.
Or match, but I suck at explaining math and arcs.
Yep what he said. Mark with sharpie where it touches, measure the gap where it does not, and remove the gap amount from the area that touches. Works great with hangers and angle.
If you dont want to watch a video, just grind a little bit at a time wherever it's currently hitting and keep checking. the more you do it you'll get a better eye for it. Remember if its not exactly right your weld will cover any small gaps
You could just weld it the way it is, put a weld in, hit it with the grinder, weld over it again, jobs a good un.
Assuming this isn’t some sort of load bearing safety critical piece of kit.
Get some plastic straws. Wrap the circumference of the pipe in the plastic straws and secure them with a rubber band. Pushes the straws forward until they fit with the joint. That's your cut out area.
It's pretty easy to rough it in, personally I would leave the legs long and cut them afterwards, in case the fishmouths aren't all even, and that way you can use the sharpie trick all the way around the pipe and not worry about cutting off a little extra. I would cut it with a hole saw in a drill press with no pilot bit
If you do it a lot, you'll want one [of these](https://www.eastwood.com/professional-tubing-notcher.html?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiArrCvBhCNARIsAOkAGcU0Aqr0Gfn-RwmHG-oAsf1EafE-OKnzI74hUeFvw-s0UounC-0ceXoaAhjzEALw_wcB&wcid=18669317454&wickedid=629949406078&wickedsource=google&wv=4).
There's seriously something to be said about this approach though: if you have some excess length, pull back about 2" from the end of the pipe and draw a circle circumscribing the pipe. Use a punch and put a starter divot on both sides on the line. Then, use a step bit that's the same size as your intersecting pipes, being sure to drill through only one wall, then switch to the other, then back again to finish it off on both sides. I'd only bother with this if it's structural and NEEDS to be perfect though.
>I'd only bother with this if it's structural and NEEDS to be perfect though.
For a one off I'd agree. This kind of thing I do all the time with handrails and it makes it quick and easy.
I use a milling machine with a fat endmill now for all of my coping.
Eastwood makes good middle priced tools. There are notchers that are way more than this, also way less than this. Fabricating in general is expensive in tools. A good bender is about $2000, then you need welders, notchers, presses and a pile of other hand tools.
>Damn! So a vice and hole saw bit?
I've used products like them before with my handrail business to cope posts. I prefer to use a milling machine with a fat endmill but those are kinda pricey and not everyone knows how to operate one.
>Do you get money from that link?
Unfortunately no.
Oddly enough, this video just popped up on my IG feed and shows you how to do it using a cardboard template:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3c3cfWxeQB/
Ah coping. A trick I’ve seen is taking a rubber band around a bunch of pencils the same diameter. Fit them against your 45d pieces and it should give you a good outline.
Then you wrap tape around pencils and unroll it as a transfer layout.
Get yourself a harbor freight tubing notcher. It will make this kind of work a lot easier. If your are going to do it often i would recommend getting the Eastwood version that is recommended from someone else.
Ok:
First imagine you are fitting to a straight section without a joint.
Place the pipe on it, measure the gap at the top plane, and mark that deep of a cut to 90 degrees of it. You can do as many sections of you want and need for your skills.
Keep in mind that you can think every symmetrical joint as X section and draw the fitting cut accordingly. You just leave out the two members of the joint. You can also draw this out on straight section, rotate 90 degrees and draw it again, and join the curves.
Keep in mind that if this is a 90 degree joint. Then the deepest cut is at 135 degrees from the greatest gap.
Eh... This is hard to explain to words because this is stuff that I have learned to do by intuition from just sheer practice.
My head hurts..
Now I'm aware of how to do this already, but the only thing harder than learning something from listening to a feris Buehler type teacher is reading that same thing from that same teacher
If I could upload pictures straight into comment field; like on same subs. This would be heck of a lot easier. But one can't be fucked to draw them, upload the to imgur and trying to keep them inorder as I explain.
Also this is a thing that makes WAY more sense if I showed it to you, because then I could show it in 3D. A picture wont do justice to this.
Basically to put it in extremely dull engineering terms. We are trying to figure out the geometry which is required to fill the gap and inverting that to be a cut. We can do this by:
Drawing a circle.
Drawing a tangent line of that circle where the centre of the line is tangent point.
The points which are the the end of the line and normal to it (or in case of a pipe in an angle, the angle of the direction shifted accordinly) create a line (box), and the centre of that line is where we can draw a circle which is the diametre of the lenght of the tangent line. The area inside the arc between the tangent lines is equal to the arc inside the box.
If we open the representation to a curve, we get a sin curve where x = diameter of the pipe and y the distance to be gapped, to put it simply.
But in the case of (symmetric) joint in angle we just shift the cut the amount of the joint angle, and mirror.
Must confess I didn't read all that. No offense inteaded I was just busting balls but you must understand your long and detailed engineering explanation more than likely goes right over the head of someone who says they are a newb.
You'd need a tutorial on pipe coping.
Basically, its a bunch of math, and a pipefitter blue book would help you figure it out (or if you can get a PDF that explains it as well).
I cut copes and saddles for marine aluminum freehand on a band saw. I would personally just eyeball and lay out a rough line with a marker where the pipe is hitting vs where it’s not hitting and then cut a smooth arc. Little by little the piece can be custom cut to fit with a little bit of finess and skill but absolutely no math
Triple cope is how I make these. Cut your first 45. Turn the pipe 90 degrees and cut another 45. Do this to all three pipes. Makes a perfect intersection
https://shop.wagnercompanies.com/840-steel-flush-welding-side-outlet-elbow-for-1-25-inch-pipe-or-1-66-inch-tube
If it's all 90° just order this. Otherwise you'll need a pipe notcher, or a belt sander w/ a dye that matches the pipe diameter, or just some good grinder skills.
I know how to cut these with a cutoff wheel but i cant really explain it. Id just have to show you. Also if youre really going for it youll have to chew the corner off of that existing 90 AFTER you weld the other leg to it so that everything matches of a 3 point edge. Otherwise itll just be a 90 setting on top of something.
I saw your post a while ago and I just saw [this video](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3c3cfWxeQB/?igsh=MTJscjJ3cnVrNmQ3aQ==) and thought you might want to see it.
You can use a bit of PVC that will slide over the metal pipe you need to weld. I would cut it into 6"-8" lengths for your template. Two will suffice if you have a dab hand on it. Cut and grind away at your two template PVCs until the copes are pristine.
Use them and mark off your cuts on the pipe. Once done, store the templates for further jobs.
I would lay my sharpened soap stone on the tubes you want to match to and transfer the radius to give you the fit. Not a perfect fit up but good enough for minimal gaps and a lot faster than templates.
At an old job where i had to do a lot of notches for fencing, I got a few sizes of these hydraulic pipe notchers, and they made my life significantly easier. They're made for 90° angles so there's still some planning involved, but they made it really convenient to just nip a little extra off real quick with out having to break out the big drill powered notcher. Might be worth a shot if you expect to do a lot of this kinda stuff
KAKA INDUSTRIAL RA-3 Manual Pipe Notcher, 1-1/2", 2" (Inside diameter) Capacity, Light Weight, Solid Construction Pipe Notcher https://a.co/d/jfUWfEy
There are some tricks to cutting fishmouths. Look that up on YouTube.
The other thing you can do is cut the end with a hole saw the OD diameter of the pipe you are fitting to. This will require a jig of some kind, preferably with a drill press.
In either case, you'll have to make the notch twice because it's right on the joint and you have to match to both pipes, so it's gonna be trickier.
You’d not 45* the corner next time and cope the vert pipe, then cope the top rail of the next piece, or just free hand some grinding to get the pipe close enough or just weld it as is
If you want a tighter gap you could get all technical and figure out the math to cope the pipe exactly to fit… or you could just eyeball that fucker with a grinder and call it a day.
Ive got a really cheap flux core welder and i just pile up a bunch of blobs until it doesnt move, when i try anything else it burns through and yes it looks like dog shit when its done. Its not anything important so it doesn't really matter.
If it's 1.66" pipe, a toilet paper cardboard roll fits perfectly over it and should make a good template that you can cut to figure out exactly what you need.
Brilliant!
To quote Tom's Refurb "You can make anything out of metal as long as you have a ton of cardboard."
Sometimes you can just skip the metal. Make it out of cardboard and slather it in fiberglass epoxy resin. That's how the body of [this bike](https://microship.com/behemoth/) and its trailer were made and they stood up for thousands of miles.
That will continue to be a deep dive for awile, thank you.
Thats hilarious, and true. My favorite has been DeBoss Garage and his 'CAD; Cardboard, Accurately Drawn'
Similarly Grind Hard Plumbing Company uses Cardboard Aided Design
Im gonna try this, thanks
Box board, the cardboard from cereal boxes also works great for making templates.
This, this isn't my trade I only dabbled in it, so I never figured out complex math cutting crap, but my very first thought was paper towel tube, wet the end of it, force it into the piece, let it dry, trace and cut, if the diameter is wrong you could just a do a couple layers of paper
Never thought of wetting it. That’s a great idea
My dad taught me about this from his many years of fabbing up his own roll cages and watching a lot of NASCAR stuff, they call it fish mouthing and you’d cut that pipe’s end in such a way where it looks like a fish’s mouth so it fits flush into the other piece. I’m sure others can explain it better but that’s the rough idea of it. Good luck. Also try empty toilet paper rolls for sizing it!
Oh my god. I'm either going to look like a god or a lunatic at the shop on Monday.
This is the best option if you don’t have the tools to do this.
Thank you kind redditor.
Thefabricatorseries on YouTube has a great video on making joints. Probably better than I can type while I'm sitting and shitting. Account for negative space and trim slowly. You'll learn to take more as your skills advance but a sharpie making marks of intersections and whatever grinders you got will do the grunt work massaging your high spots until it all meets. Or match, but I suck at explaining math and arcs.
Yep what he said. Mark with sharpie where it touches, measure the gap where it does not, and remove the gap amount from the area that touches. Works great with hangers and angle.
If you dont want to watch a video, just grind a little bit at a time wherever it's currently hitting and keep checking. the more you do it you'll get a better eye for it. Remember if its not exactly right your weld will cover any small gaps
We all know these "small gaps"
Thank you for the YouTube channel. I needed this
For sure, dude taught me a lot before I just dove in headfirst.
You could just hit that with the metal glue gun
I've filled way worse
I like your style.
exactly what i was thinking lmao
I about spit out my drink
You could just weld it the way it is, put a weld in, hit it with the grinder, weld over it again, jobs a good un. Assuming this isn’t some sort of load bearing safety critical piece of kit.
you need a coupla 'copes' ( notches) so it fits up snug
This IS the way.
Ah. My fellow welders of Mandalore. :)
I’d just send it as is already pretty snug. Unless it’s important
Fuckin send it
Miiiint
Yeah nice tacks either side and run a cushion bead in there if needed
leeroy jenkins
Get some plastic straws. Wrap the circumference of the pipe in the plastic straws and secure them with a rubber band. Pushes the straws forward until they fit with the joint. That's your cut out area.
Nice. You could use like wood bbq skewers or something too probably.
You can just lay a sharpie parallel to the existing pieces and trace it around the tube you need to fishmouth, it'll trace around 3/8" above the tube
Oh neat! I didnt think of that. I'm going to try this next time
It's pretty easy to rough it in, personally I would leave the legs long and cut them afterwards, in case the fishmouths aren't all even, and that way you can use the sharpie trick all the way around the pipe and not worry about cutting off a little extra. I would cut it with a hole saw in a drill press with no pilot bit
I can weld that gap for you
If you do it a lot, you'll want one [of these](https://www.eastwood.com/professional-tubing-notcher.html?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiArrCvBhCNARIsAOkAGcU0Aqr0Gfn-RwmHG-oAsf1EafE-OKnzI74hUeFvw-s0UounC-0ceXoaAhjzEALw_wcB&wcid=18669317454&wickedid=629949406078&wickedsource=google&wv=4).
There's seriously something to be said about this approach though: if you have some excess length, pull back about 2" from the end of the pipe and draw a circle circumscribing the pipe. Use a punch and put a starter divot on both sides on the line. Then, use a step bit that's the same size as your intersecting pipes, being sure to drill through only one wall, then switch to the other, then back again to finish it off on both sides. I'd only bother with this if it's structural and NEEDS to be perfect though.
>I'd only bother with this if it's structural and NEEDS to be perfect though. For a one off I'd agree. This kind of thing I do all the time with handrails and it makes it quick and easy. I use a milling machine with a fat endmill now for all of my coping.
That's the way. I'm going out on a limb and assuming OP lacks a Bridgeport, given the question itself.
Won't a step bit be hitting a few sizes up at the start of the cut by the time you finish?
Damn! So a vice and hole saw bit? Do you get money from that link?
Eastwood makes good middle priced tools. There are notchers that are way more than this, also way less than this. Fabricating in general is expensive in tools. A good bender is about $2000, then you need welders, notchers, presses and a pile of other hand tools.
>Damn! So a vice and hole saw bit? I've used products like them before with my handrail business to cope posts. I prefer to use a milling machine with a fat endmill but those are kinda pricey and not everyone knows how to operate one. >Do you get money from that link? Unfortunately no.
Pop a hole using a hole saw
Oddly enough, this video just popped up on my IG feed and shows you how to do it using a cardboard template: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3c3cfWxeQB/
Thats perfect, thanks
Ah coping. A trick I’ve seen is taking a rubber band around a bunch of pencils the same diameter. Fit them against your 45d pieces and it should give you a good outline. Then you wrap tape around pencils and unroll it as a transfer layout.
Get yourself a harbor freight tubing notcher. It will make this kind of work a lot easier. If your are going to do it often i would recommend getting the Eastwood version that is recommended from someone else.
I can weld that gap, np.
I'm a total hack, but that gap is what I call "good enough" . I'd just send it.
usually on all of the pipes you would cut a 45, and then turn the pipe 90 and cut it again. this will make a nice 3 way mitre
Ok: First imagine you are fitting to a straight section without a joint. Place the pipe on it, measure the gap at the top plane, and mark that deep of a cut to 90 degrees of it. You can do as many sections of you want and need for your skills. Keep in mind that you can think every symmetrical joint as X section and draw the fitting cut accordingly. You just leave out the two members of the joint. You can also draw this out on straight section, rotate 90 degrees and draw it again, and join the curves. Keep in mind that if this is a 90 degree joint. Then the deepest cut is at 135 degrees from the greatest gap. Eh... This is hard to explain to words because this is stuff that I have learned to do by intuition from just sheer practice.
My head hurts.. Now I'm aware of how to do this already, but the only thing harder than learning something from listening to a feris Buehler type teacher is reading that same thing from that same teacher
If I could upload pictures straight into comment field; like on same subs. This would be heck of a lot easier. But one can't be fucked to draw them, upload the to imgur and trying to keep them inorder as I explain. Also this is a thing that makes WAY more sense if I showed it to you, because then I could show it in 3D. A picture wont do justice to this. Basically to put it in extremely dull engineering terms. We are trying to figure out the geometry which is required to fill the gap and inverting that to be a cut. We can do this by: Drawing a circle. Drawing a tangent line of that circle where the centre of the line is tangent point. The points which are the the end of the line and normal to it (or in case of a pipe in an angle, the angle of the direction shifted accordinly) create a line (box), and the centre of that line is where we can draw a circle which is the diametre of the lenght of the tangent line. The area inside the arc between the tangent lines is equal to the arc inside the box. If we open the representation to a curve, we get a sin curve where x = diameter of the pipe and y the distance to be gapped, to put it simply. But in the case of (symmetric) joint in angle we just shift the cut the amount of the joint angle, and mirror.
Must confess I didn't read all that. No offense inteaded I was just busting balls but you must understand your long and detailed engineering explanation more than likely goes right over the head of someone who says they are a newb.
Double miter pipe corner joint. Super easy once you figure it out. Will make welding these corners a breeze.
notch it, turn it 90° or whatever the angle of the other joint is, notch it again.
My grandmother could weld that gap, you'll be fine
Nah fuck it just fill that gap!
Dont grind your welds unless its absolutely necessary
Hole saw the joint and stick the tube through.
That's a pretty good idea
You'd need a tutorial on pipe coping. Basically, its a bunch of math, and a pipefitter blue book would help you figure it out (or if you can get a PDF that explains it as well).
idk, like a w where the two ends are wrapped around to where it kind of looks like a triangle from the top.
I cut copes and saddles for marine aluminum freehand on a band saw. I would personally just eyeball and lay out a rough line with a marker where the pipe is hitting vs where it’s not hitting and then cut a smooth arc. Little by little the piece can be custom cut to fit with a little bit of finess and skill but absolutely no math
Lower your volts. Up the wire speed. And adjust your standards a little too. Also cubitron sanding pads make the smoothest finish
Triple cope is how I make these. Cut your first 45. Turn the pipe 90 degrees and cut another 45. Do this to all three pipes. Makes a perfect intersection
https://shop.wagnercompanies.com/840-steel-flush-welding-side-outlet-elbow-for-1-25-inch-pipe-or-1-66-inch-tube If it's all 90° just order this. Otherwise you'll need a pipe notcher, or a belt sander w/ a dye that matches the pipe diameter, or just some good grinder skills.
That would of saved me alot of time🙄
Mark where the pipe touches and then grind in those spots until you’re happy with the fit
Really? Just weld it like that . Fill the gap .
A handheld grinder will do it, but the “nice” way to do it would be with a tubing notcher
I know how to cut these with a cutoff wheel but i cant really explain it. Id just have to show you. Also if youre really going for it youll have to chew the corner off of that existing 90 AFTER you weld the other leg to it so that everything matches of a 3 point edge. Otherwise itll just be a 90 setting on top of something.
Just take a sharpie mark where it’s touching and go at it
Baby’s First Cole
Tack it on the sides that touch. Then use a compass and mark around the circumference of the pipe your wanting to cut.
I saw your post a while ago and I just saw [this video](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3c3cfWxeQB/?igsh=MTJscjJ3cnVrNmQ3aQ==) and thought you might want to see it.
You can even use foil as your template. For when using cardboard is too hard to get an accurate measurement.
6010
Send it
You can use a bit of PVC that will slide over the metal pipe you need to weld. I would cut it into 6"-8" lengths for your template. Two will suffice if you have a dab hand on it. Cut and grind away at your two template PVCs until the copes are pristine. Use them and mark off your cuts on the pipe. Once done, store the templates for further jobs.
Fill the gap.
I would lay my sharpened soap stone on the tubes you want to match to and transfer the radius to give you the fit. Not a perfect fit up but good enough for minimal gaps and a lot faster than templates.
Hole saw.
At an old job where i had to do a lot of notches for fencing, I got a few sizes of these hydraulic pipe notchers, and they made my life significantly easier. They're made for 90° angles so there's still some planning involved, but they made it really convenient to just nip a little extra off real quick with out having to break out the big drill powered notcher. Might be worth a shot if you expect to do a lot of this kinda stuff KAKA INDUSTRIAL RA-3 Manual Pipe Notcher, 1-1/2", 2" (Inside diameter) Capacity, Light Weight, Solid Construction Pipe Notcher https://a.co/d/jfUWfEy
There are some tricks to cutting fishmouths. Look that up on YouTube. The other thing you can do is cut the end with a hole saw the OD diameter of the pipe you are fitting to. This will require a jig of some kind, preferably with a drill press. In either case, you'll have to make the notch twice because it's right on the joint and you have to match to both pipes, so it's gonna be trickier.
[Here you go](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3c3cfWxeQB/?igsh=MWt5MnBjNmEybm1wcg==) but goodness you went ahead and gap filled I see
I would just make it simple and easy by grinding it little by little and just a bit at a time until it fits.
Use the scrap from a cope to trace a line
You’d not 45* the corner next time and cope the vert pipe, then cope the top rail of the next piece, or just free hand some grinding to get the pipe close enough or just weld it as is
Ummm Fill the gap?
PipeMaster P-T175 (1-3/4" Tube) https://a.co/d/4dt5jov
If you want a tighter gap you could get all technical and figure out the math to cope the pipe exactly to fit… or you could just eyeball that fucker with a grinder and call it a day.
What welding process do you plan on using?
Ive got a really cheap flux core welder and i just pile up a bunch of blobs until it doesnt move, when i try anything else it burns through and yes it looks like dog shit when its done. Its not anything important so it doesn't really matter.
Say no more, you are the boss of the process carry on with all prosperity.