Does anyone know of a fabricator willing to do a small job requiring bending and welding of stailess tubing for a small stainless item. Would love if they are local to the northeast or someone willing to ship. Have tried googling and sending my design specs but so far most say they can't do it or the job is too small.
Thanks
Sue,
I have used two. I emailed you.
Tom is highly qualified - he and I built my back porch out of my stern rail on a Saturday afternoon in his driveway. Well actually mostly he did. I mostly held his beer, ran for the pizza, and stood in amazement as he cut up my rail, bent some tubing, and put it together without needing to use a tape measure. I did do the bull work of polishing the tubing and welds after I reinstalled it.
Mike - I have used once on exhaust riser work. Did ok work and was rea$$onable.
Larry - never used, was only referred to him by another boater.
Ken
PS
Sue, these days I double or triple the time any welder tells me a small job is take. none can get enough help and are overwhelmed with work because we've trained the last couple generations that it's not sexy to pursue a career in any of the trades. Except Wall Street trades of course.
k
Sue,
Is there a business near you that does awnings for store fronts. They should have the means of bending and welding ss tubing.
Interesting idea on the awnings. I'll look for someone like that too.
Sue : Most plumbing shops that work in Big buildings can bend tubing in the 3/4" and 1" diameter.
Just get on the phone and ask around.
A thought
Hi,
I did my solar panel support my self.
Bought SS tubing.
Rented an electrician tube bender.
It bend pretty easily.
Patrice, were you using 316 stainless tubing? 1 inch diameter? My husband really wants to do this himself but the bending is the challenge.
Was the electrician tube bender a hand bender with the long arm, an electric bender, or hydraulic bender?
My guess is HD has tube benders to rent.
Quote from: Sue Clancy on September 27, 2017, 06:17:40 AM
Patrice, were you using 316 stainless tubing? 1 inch diameter? My husband really wants to do this himself but the bending is the challenge.
Hi,
Yes it was 316ss.
It was a manual bender with a long handle.
But it does take some effort 💪
Sue
Check YouTube for vids of diy stainless tubing bends.
Tom M bent mine w a manual bender and had a jig he made to use in his shop to get the right radii. Many years ago, can't recall the particulars. CRS.
K
I just wanted to follow up on this post. Since we had cutting, bending and welding of stainless tubing and some precision on the measurements we were hesitant to do this ourselves given the cost of the material. So after looking at all the options people proposed I had a VERY tough time getting any quotes to do this. And some of those we got were in the $1000 or more range.
I finally found a company that advertised in Good Old Boat magazine - Stainless Outfitters in Ontario Canada https://stainlessoutfitters.com/ (https://stainlessoutfitters.com/)
They gave me a very good quote of $232.95 including the shipping and customs and included some extra parts and did a beautiful job of it and were very pleasant to work with. I would highly recommend them.
So, what did we build you ask? As many of you know we sold our 1987 Catalina 34 and bough a 2008 Hunter 36 - Try not to groan too hard on that. The previous owner of our Hunter had designed a really great helm seat and some friends with a slightly older Hunter 36 wanted to replicate it. I think this design can work for some of the Catalina 34 boats especially those with a walk through transom with some modifications on the measurements so I wanted to share some photos here. I don't have good photos of it actually installed so I will get those this weekend and post here.
All: I note on their website that they do lifelines and fittings.
ken
Here are the photos of our helm seat. As you can see it uses 2 Bimini stand off pieces to secure it to the stern rail and then the 2 legs in the front. 1/2" starboard provides the seat with an added 2 inch cushion. We can lean a little against the pool noodle on the lifeline gate. This removes easily to access the swim platform. It stores for us if we are at anchor for a few days under the dodger on the cabin too turned upside down.
Very nice! I'd need something a bit dimensionally different for my C30, but my GF would really appreciate something like this. I think you could go into business with this design.
Thanks for sharing, Craig
Craig,
The problem is every boat is a little different and so hard to make a consistent design. We tried ours on 3 different boats and each one needed changes to some dimension. Not sure there would be a enough commonality to make it work on a larger scale.
Great helm seat solution Sue. That would work on our boat nicely. How do you hold the cushion on the seat, and is it a custom or a standard size?
Jack
Everything in this is custom. Our seat cushion is 24x12 but the one we are making for our friends is 24x15 because their stern rail is set back further.
The cushion has 2 snaps at the front corners and some Velcro along the back edge to hold it in place.
We had the curved frame made by the stainless company and had them send us the straight legs too. Then ordered the Starboard from a guy on eBay as well as the rest of the parts from Amazon or EBay.
Total cost will be about $360 including making the cushion myself.
Sue,
Nice -- of course I had a sneak preview. How are the stand-offs attached? Do they hold tight onto the rail?
When I made my back porch, I held the HDPE seats onto their rail bases with:
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/igsphotos/comping/M-704-MX400248.jpg)
Genova brand CPVC pipe hangers. They come for 1/2 and 3/4" pipe size--which OD is just under 1" tubing and have a countersink on the ID to use a flat-head fastener. I adjust the amount of grab by taking down some of the nibs around the ID, and adjusting that worked well to also affix a hand-held GPS bracket to the pedestal guard - but that I wanted to be easily removable. They hold strongly enough to use to attach cup holders and the like onto rails.
k
We are using Bimini Curtain spacers - they make them for 7/8 or 1" tubing. They hold on quite well for this purpose. The force is downward and they grab from the top down so no issue with movement and they are easy to drill into to attach to the starboard with the flat edge. And they are easy to remove with just a lift up of the seat.
I suppose if we were attaching something with more force on it the ones you have shown might be better.