[How to] End cap secrets for fabricators

hello everyone cole boone here with another video this time we're going to go over capping steel tubing many people cap their steel tubes to keep the critters out it looks finished and many times they use the easy way out this would be a plastic plug and the cap this part goes into the tube you hammer it in the only thing you see is this cap section this is made out of plastic it gives your project a more mass-produced cheaper feel to it there's a better way that is capping it with steel welding and grinding so that it makes the tube in look like it's solid so in this case i have a two by two tube with a two by two cap that's quarter inch thick and typically that's welded all the way around the edge four times four times on the flap and then four times on the rounded corner then you come back and you grind it off and then polish it so that it looks like a finished piece of solid 2x2 stock there is a better way capping a square tube is a misnomer in this case we're going to put a plate inside the tube and weld it up we're going to be able to do that with one set up one weld position and then we'll come back and we'll grind that and polish it while in the same setup position so by plugging the tube instead of capping it you're getting about four times the quality look in about 1 4 the actual fabrication time i think all metal fabricators need to know this trick if they don't already very few do i rarely see anyone plugging a tube they almost always cap it on the outside and then they weld and grind it so let's get started uh [Applause] so [Music] yes we're back to the welding platen once again with the two pieces that we cut again two by two square tubing and then we have two caps one is a two by two with the quarter inch thick that'll go on the outside of one of the tubes and then we have this one using a magnet as you can see this magnet has been used for this many times that's how we'll set that up so in this case we will weld around the outside edges all the way around until the beads meet where they started and then we'll get out the grinder and we'll rough out that bead until it is flush all the way around and then we'll polish it up now i have a lot of experience doing this so i can make this look pretty good but most fabricators are going to end up grinding this too much and it's going to change the shape of the tube you don't have that problem here because you're welding and grinding from one position only and even if you have to weld deeper than normal or even grind deeper than normal you're still going to have one flat surface here and all of this outer periphery here is going to be completely untouched by weld and grind operations so this one will look far better to pass off as a solid piece of square stock rather than this one which will have obvious grind marks on the outside it's always best to keep these pieces clamped down instead of just laying on top of the platen they tend to rock back and forth and arc randomly creating divots and pits in your platen and in the work piece that just adds more time to having to set this thing up every side for welding and of course grinding you have to do the same thing because you have to be able to hold it in place or to be moving everywhere oh why do that [Music] ah so so we're going to go and roll the plug in now we center the cap it's just a way where you have a gap all the way around and you can weld in that gap and have some control over how much bead is exposed it needs to be ground off so you just get the hang of it you want to put enough bead where you don't leave any valleys to where you got to come back and re-weld it for cosmetic reasons but at the same time you don't want everything laying on top so you have a huge grinding job to do it's best to cut the plug in such a way where you've got a sixteenth or even a three thirty seconds gap all the way around it to fill in your weld so it's a lot quicker to knock out all four of those wells in one fell swoop rather than starting and stopping and having to clamp the other piece down it's rotating as you go now i'm going to go ahead and grind this and polish it [Music] [Music] so [Applause] the corners are slightly tapered most beginners they look even worse than that here we haven't touched the corners at all where the tubing retains its original shape as you may have noticed by setting this in device once and doing everything from one angle without having to flip it four times each for grinding and then four times for welding you save a lot of time and if you need to go down a little deeper to take out all the cold welding ruts in other words sometimes if it's not too big of a rut instead of filling it back in and then welding it like using weld as a bondo you can just take it down a little bit more again doing it all from one side is absolutely beautiful the end capping method requires much more advanced welding and grinding technique usually for more experienced fabricators the the plug technique is much more user friendly and for the advanced fabricator you can get in and out really quick with excellent results thank you for watching

Channel: Cole Boone Customs

Views: 3,853

Keywords: Welding, Fabrication, Grinding, Polishing, DIY, Shop How-to, Machine Shop

Id: hvk1-jM6BBk

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022