Comments on: Notch tubing without a notcher.

Notch tubing without a notcher.

Mitheral — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:19:34 -0800

Enter a few parameters and get a pdf that will give you a printable pattern that will allow you to notch tubing for welding or brazing to another pipe.

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:22:49 -0800

Yay! Wait. What?

By: DU

DU — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:36:40 -0800

Awesome. I'm never, ever, ever going to use this, but I still appreciate it. Whenever faced by some routine workman-like task that admits of over-thinking, I myself always break out the mathematics and generalize the entire thing. It's a sickness and I recognize a fellow sufferer.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:41:21 -0800

I daresay, this is the kind of post that every single MeFier will find useful. Would favorite a hundred times if I could.

By: zengargoyle

zengargoyle — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:41:25 -0800

lol, tears in my eyes.... Back in the 70's when I was like 9 or so, waiting for my dad to come home so I could play with his HP calculator... this was one of the first programs I typed in. A couple of diameters, an angle, and then a bunch of X,Y points. Wrap paper around tube, mark with heat stable marker, cut with blow torch. (dad was steel fabrication plant engineer). Maybe not best of web, but *thanks* anyway for the memories.

By: desjardins

desjardins — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:43:16 -0800

I don't understand this at all.

By: ruddhist

ruddhist — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:44:22 -0800

Finally!

By: HuronBob

HuronBob — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:47:49 -0800

I agree with the above... I will NEVER use this, but it was a joy to find, read, and think about how the web makes the world a better place... If just one mefit finds this helpful in daily life, you've done your job!

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:53:34 -0800

God bless the intarweb!

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:55:09 -0800

Some Explanation In case it's not entirely obvious, the point of this thing is to create a cutting pattern for a tube or a pipe to accurately fit it at an angle to another tube or pipe so that you can weld or braze it. This is a whole lot easier than eyeballing the cut and scribing it by hand, and if you do it right, both the grinding and welding are pretty easy. This process is also frequently called "tube notching" or "pipe notching". Apparently, this script/form/PHP widget has become popular with a number of hot-rod, off-road, and vehicle modding ~~freaks~~ engineers.

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:55:47 -0800

I suppose one could also use this for solid dowel stock?

By: jfrancis

jfrancis — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:56:18 -0800

If I understand this Duke University sculptor Frank Smullin used to do this in the late 70's

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:57:41 -0800

Coping pipe without a jig is all well and good, but you're still gonna need a reel or a hornpipe.

By: zengargoyle

zengargoyle — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:09:10 -0800

I don't understand this at all. You have a 10" diameter pipe, you want to attach a 6" pipe at a 30 degree angle. How do you cut the end of the smaller pipe so that it fits flush with the larger pipe? What is the shape of the hole in the 10" pipe that fits a 6" pipe at 30 degrees? Circular tubes don't follow the wood-working "just chop it off at 30 degrees" method. There's a complex cut that you have to do on the small side to make it fit flush so you can weld it together... and another complex shape that you have to cut out if you want an opening between the pipes... It's not circles and flat cuts, it's bizarre stuff.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:13:13 -0800

When I hear the phrase "coping saw" I sort of chuckle to myself. I know how it is, man. Life is hard and people are cold and uncaring. Sometimes it feels like you just can't cope — but then you bring out the Saw. Sadly, actual coping saws are these wimpy looking deals that I can't really imagine murdering anyone with.

By: shothotbot

shothotbot — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:15:30 -0800

Not as cool as the universal graph paper generator.

By: DU

DU — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:16:10 -0800

..actual coping saws are these wimpy looking deals that I can't really imagine murdering anyone with. If you'd ever had a blade break while sawing, you'd know coping saws can look after themselves. (which is to say, they cope)

By: smackfu

smackfu — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:33:25 -0800

The problem I find with printing your own graph paper is that home printers are iffy at printing light lines, and a real printing press works much better.

By: shothotbot

shothotbot — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:41:41 -0800

The problem I find with printing your own graph paper is that home printers are iffy at printing light lines, and a real printing press works much better. I know. But he bigger problem is that I think that if I had enough different types of moleskines/ varieties of graph paper / compartments in my backpack it would all be OK and I am beginning to suspect that this may not be the case.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:58:06 -0800

Is this the kind of thing that you would have to understand to get?

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:51:59 -0800

Metafilter: Laying down pipe as a coping mechanism

By: popechunk

popechunk — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:57:03 -0800

I will totally use this. Thanks.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:16:26 -0800

i hope to use this. I'd love to have a project that requires me to learn a couple new skills in which this comes in handy.

By: Naberius

Naberius — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:43:54 -0800

Cope pipe without a jig? For god's sake, man! You'll kill us all! This is madness!

By: dhartung

dhartung — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:12:05 -0800

Metalfilter.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:14:34 -0800

ZenMasterThis writes "I suppose one could also use this for solid dowel stock?" Anywhere you have two circular crossections meeting. With wood however you rarely see designs where two dowel stocks of the same diameter meet (because a surface bond glue joint will be weak) and therefor you can usually mortise one into the other which is a much simpler proccess. Even when welding you can hide a lot with a heavy bead, tube notching really comes into it's own when you need to make a neat braze or a high strength weld.

By: Tube

Tube — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:25:11 -0800

While visiting the New Mexico Museum of Space History, I took this photograph of the support struts on one of the rocket sled exhibits. This is the most impressive set of coped and welded tubes I've ever seen.

By: MrVisible

MrVisible — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:40:03 -0800

Does this mean I can join the internet to other internets now? At odd angles? Intriguing...

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:43:09 -0800

Amazing Tube. I wonder if the members that were sleeved was done so for strength or for easy of assembly.

By: stagewhisper

stagewhisper — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:39:47 -0800

Thanks! This is awesome!

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:52:38 -0800

Does this mean I can join the internet to other internets now? At odd angles? The internet is a series of tubes...

By: evilcolonel

evilcolonel — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 07:54:00 -0800

Much like the Aqua-car, the Segway, and the Microsoft Zune, I predict this will change the world, and life as we know it, forever.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:56:45 -0800

Well, that's neat, but it doesn't seem to support drevelling tikes to a counterbulm. And it obviously doesn't take into account the effect of subgrettal wear: always, I mean ALWAYS suttle the bottom of your gret with a malgon or a small petter before you attempt such a thing, or at least bi-monthly when in storage. Of course, if you don't have a decent gret you may be tempted to just wing it and use a flatdolm, but that's just asking for rampant ancerity. All in all, nice tool - but jeez, wake me when they include a decent method for clumble atteration. Amateurs.

By: !Jim

!Jim — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 17:57:20 -0800

Well, that's neat, but it doesn't seem to support drevelling tikes to a counterbulm. And it obviously doesn't take into account the effect of subgrettal wear: always, I mean ALWAYS suttle the bottom of your gret with a malgon or a small petter before you attempt such a thing, or at least bi-monthly when in storage. Of course, if you don't have a decent gret you may be tempted to just wing it and use a flatdolm, but that's just asking for rampant ancerity. All in all, nice tool - but jeez, wake me when they include a decent method for clumble atteration. Hahaha, are you kidding me? You're still suttling?! All you need is a simple teramator and Argon's wedge and you can skip all that. Some people complain that it puts a lot of wear on the gret, but the reality is that the petter is going to farble long before your gret fails. With metal quality and price where it is these days, tike drevelling is just not worth the benefit. Now, on the other hand, I can appreciate a well clumbled errate. I haven't seen anyone who can pull off that kind of argor since Stevie Johns did it on that super-strector back in '81. I hear he's long gone too, with the cancer.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:21:14 -0800

It's wise to know when to not continue a joke.

By: dg

dg — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:13:35 -0800

This is way cool. I may use it once or twice in my lifetime, but it will save me enough time and grief even then that I will be eternally grateful.