5052 ID Tube (No Politics)

I need a short piece of 1" ID tube for the drain on an aluminum boat I recently repaired. I've started realizing that may not be so easy to find. I figured for a scrap piece Ebay would be my friend, but no such luck. Then I checked Speedy Metals and Discount Steel on-line. Still no luck. There is plenty of 6061 options available, but no 5052. I'm about at that point where I am thinking I may have to make a piece of tube.

It doesn't need to be accurate to tenths, but it does need to be pretty close to 1" when finished. The rubber expansion plug can make up for quite a lot of variation though.

Where I am running into issues is how to actually go about making a tube that small, that I can weld. I can weld down to .08 pretty fair with my Miller 212, but that's not really easy to form. Also, the only .080 I have are the scraps I removed from the boat before cutting in my patches and welding them. The original drain tube was crushed when the boat was damaged. I've got plenty of .1 and .125 scraps laying around.

Any suggestions?

Reply to
Bob La Londe
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If it is just a water drain through the transom why not a piece of

6061 T1 or just annealed 6061? If it is what I am thinking of there is little or no strength required.
Reply to
John B.

This is a really simple project for anybody with a pressbrake. All you need is to bring some scraps of the 0.100" 5052 and have them press some "U"s out of it. Cut those down to just the bend and weld them together to make your tube. Really easy. You could do it yourself, if you can find a press and some 1" bar to use for the inner die. The outer die could just be air, by pressing the bar into a gap between

2 other bars.
Reply to
Ernie Leimkuhler

If it was me I'd just hammer form the .1 scrap around a 1 inch bar and weld the seam. 5052 is soft enough and is easily annealed anyway. I hammer formed a bunch of ribs for a boat repair out of 5052 that was .08 thick. I maple forms and used both a dead blow hammer directly against the aluminum and a steel hammer driving a maple stick against the aluminum. Make sure the seam is welded 100% through where the rubber plug goes. Eric

Reply to
etpm

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