Axle Material

What's wrong with cold-rolled of the correct size?

Paul,

Where or what type of store carries it? Shipping is costly, as you know.

A dumb question, I realize. A steel supply house.

I've used a pair of grade 8 bolts (heads cut off) welded into each end of an angle iron. Then bolt on selected wheels. Weld or bolt into place.

If you don't need a lot of it, Home Cheepo stores will have a section where you can buy steel rods in fractional inch diameter sizes in three foot lengths, and maybe 6 foot ones too. Might prove to be cheaper than paying a minimum order charge at a metal supply house.

Jeff

Actually True value hardware carries an assortment of steel and aluminum bar stock. Abit pricey compared to a steel supplier, but True Value is 6 miles away and the steel supplier is 30 miles for me.

Last time I bought material I bought 4 pieces 1/4" thick by 1 1/2" aluminum

6' long.

For some larger items to be wheeled, you can't beat the entire rear axle with tires and wheels from a small front wheel drive car. Available at any junk yard.

Karl

Look around your "home improvement" store, sometimes you can find foundation "J" bolts or similar things for a 1/10 th the cost of round steel bar.

terry

Like bBob I weld bolts usually soft into pipe, angle or what ever. Even used sched 40 Pvc once.(welding was a B**ch. You don't know cheap til you been to my shop. Tom

For wheels that have integral bearings, almost any round stock will work well. Some stuff that's usually available for cheap would be items such as wheel lug wrenches/tire irons, used engine head bolts, etc. Most hardware sections of retail stores have some steel products, and the farm supply places generally always do. Three feet of CRS round will make several axles if pipe is utilized to extend the width.

Axle stubs welded into sections of iron pipe will make length requirements easy. Drill a couple of holes near the ends of the pipe, and plug weld the stubs into place.

For wheeled bases, a broken or worn out cheap floor jack (the imported

2 ton about $30 when new, for example), can make a decent wheeled base. Remove the lifting parts, then use pipe to extend the side plate separators and rear axle to the desired width. Lots of these cheap jacks are thrown away regularly. The mobility isn't the greatest, but for some uses where a machine doesn't need to be moved far, they're good.

WB .............

know> I am always needing to put tires on some items that I use such as large

Paul, Jeff, Richard, bBob, Don, Karl,Terry, RoyJ, Tom, Wild Bill:

Man, you guys have some great ideas. I see that you have your scrounging talents fine honed. I take pride in my being cheap and scrounging but I see that I am just a piker.

I'm not sure that I understood the one using the pipe and drilling it out near the end and plug welding it. I am guessing that the axle stub has to be bent 90 degrees toward the end of the pipe and along its axis.

Thanks all.

The way I've made axles with the pipe/rod combination is to drill the pipe thru the diameter at a couple of places near the end, then insert the rod into the pipe. Where the rod passes the holes in the pipe, welding into the rod and the pipe wall simultaneously (plug weld). This assumes that the axle stub rod diameter and the pipe ID are the same size.

I feel that plug welding along the pipe wall may yield a stronger axle, by not having the weld at the exit point, where the rod meets the pipe (conjecture on my part).

WB

Oic, WB. Now, I got it.

Thanks

NO, NO, a LOT simpler than that. You stuff the axle shaft into the end of the pipe, and you cross drill the pipe, about 1/4" diameter, and "plug weld" through the hole to hold the stub in. You can usually get away with flowing an inch or two of brazing rod in the hole - works easier for a novice than trying to get the weld to penetrate the stub without eliminating the pipe.

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Finding metal.

Look in your yellow pages under "steel" or "metal" sales. Don't forget to look for "scrap metal" too.

In my general area, there are two large outfits that sell steel and other metals but they require a minimum purchase that has always been more than I have needed.

There are also a couple of machine shops that retail steel. When I need new steel, that's where I go.

We also have a scrap yard that sells used steel. This is a great source if you can find what you need.

Steel can sometimes be found in yard sales. Last summer I bought about 40 ft of brand new steel welded up into a 'deck railing' fence. It was unpainted too. A few summers back I picked up over 60 ft of deck railing (painted that time).

I personally have avoided the metal bins at Home Despot and its ilk because that steel is SO expensive.

David Todtman

Okay, David.

Right after I posted the original, I realized that it was a stupid question - senior moment, I suppose.

Well, judged by the bounty of ideas, your so-called senior moment was a pretty good thing.