Welding Tips and Tricks

I'm new to the forum but a long time lurker. Picture me as the creep staring through the forum windows, haha. I know many of you are industry pros and hobbyists with infinitely more skill and experience than I. I have been searching high and low for information over any of the metabo beveling tools. These tools are awesome but info on them is fairly scare when it comes to general user reviews. I love the idea of not having to spend 1,500 for a saddle tool plus an additional 800 for the torch, but if that's my only option, so be it. I want to continue to practice on 6" sch 60 pipe at home. There just wasn't enough practice to become proficient within my welding school. I passed my 6G bend and visual, but I want to continue this path and am not sure of the most cost effective way of going about it. Any and all advice will be heeded. Anyways, thanks guys.

A friend of mine who is a pipe welder by trade fabbed up a clever tool. He took an Oxo torch wheel (two wheels spread with torch holder in the middle like you might use to cut a straight line) but reduced one wheel's diameter so the torch is angled 37* from centerline. He then wraps the pipe with a circular clamp, and in a pinch (on the site) can torch cut a nearly machine quality bevel on a pipe.

The trick is, the 2 wheels need to both land on the pipe and as you cut, one wheel will fall away with the cut end. Got to plan for that, or rig the torch outside the 2 wheels. Make sense? In his case, mostly he's cutting a pipe thats supported on both ends so the "fall away" doesn't occur and distort the cut angle.

You can learn to do the math and make your own templates to practice any angle or pipe combo posible. If you have already had some welding training and were able to pass cert tests then I would recommend getting into an aprenticeship.

Poland308 wrote:You can learn to do the math and make your own templates to practice any angle or pipe combo posible. If you have already had some welding training and were able to pass cert tests then I would recommend getting into an aprenticeship.

He's interested in tools to help create the bevels, not the math needed to calculate them.

The math and the skill to draw allow you to make your own wraparound templates that can then be adjusted for exact repeatability. Or you can do one out of paper for a onetime joint.