Over the past two weeks I have been slowly building a pile of metal in the corner: a six foot iron pipe, four 5 foot sections of 1/4in angle iron, four 5 foot sections of 1/2in flat iron, ACME threaded rod, iron pipe fittings, etc.

Yesterday I pulled out the pipe cutter and threader and chopped my six foot length of pipe into pieces. It took me about two hours to make six pipes and 10 threads, but I only paid something like $9 for the whole deal. Buying the pipes individually would have cost me close to $50.

When buying the pieces for my frame, I couldn't find the black iron pipe fittings, so I bought galvanized. Later I realized that the black iron pipe fittings are, cleverly enough, hidden just below the black iron pipe pre-cut six foot section that I bought. I compared prices and most of them were only a penny difference: not worth my time. Besides that, I think it looks pretty spiffy now with shiny joints.

Pictures after the jump.

The pipe clamp setup, with the threading arm on a piece of pipe:

The final assembly of the frame:

Get the head of the machine to be parallel to the legs? Check!: