Welding Tips and Tricks

Hello all, Im a hobbyist welder havent been welding very long but am interested in making a cabinet for the garage to hold food items and some household items. I am hoping to use 1 1/2 x 1 1/2 x 1/8 square tubing for the frame. My question is this to heavy and can I get a thinner gauge square tubing that will hold up. Thanks for the help

Welcome!

Your material choice sounds just fine to me. While lighter gauges of sq. tube are readily available, whether they are practical depends on your welding method and skill level.

With a MIG machine, you could easily use 16 ga. tube with average skills, and still have a sturdy shelf. To stick- or TIG-weld thin materials requires more skill to avoid blowing holes in the joints.

Since 1/8" is a very common tubing, the price is right. You might not save much, if any, money with lighter tubing.

Steve

Thank you for the reply, that is exactly what I needed to know. I am using a MIG welder(lincoln 180C W/75 -25 gas with .035 wire) but am still very new at the welding part and that is why I figured this would be great practice. One other question I do have though is I priced out 1 1/2x 1 1/2x 1/8th square tubing and for 24 ft it was 54.00 from my local steel supplier in NY. Just wondering if thats a fair price, thanks again.

Your price isn't too bad. We pay about 38.00 for a 20 ft stick, but we buy it a hundred sticks at a time. Depending on how big of a cabinet you want to build, or how many splices you are willing to make, you may want to see if a local shop could sell you some scrap. I know a lot of handrails are 11ga square tube, and in our shop when we build handrails, anything smaller than 3-1/2-4 ft ends up sitting in a corner, unloved and abandoned. My buddies are bad about that as well, as the piece is too big to want to scrap, but usually too short to be readily usable on a job. Maybe shops in your area are better about being on top of using tag ends, but from my experience, those lengths of tube in that particular gauge are easy to come by as scrap.

thanks for the info, I have really no other steel supply dealer close to me so as long as I know that it is decent pricing I will use that supplier. I will look into the scrap yard or welding shop idea. Maybe I can find some in my area.Thanks again for all the input.