[LSU]

2nd attempt at this thread. First one disapeared as I hit submit.:flame:

I've done several searches and was unable to find a sticky that included all of the info that I hope this Thread might one day contain. Any help with this would be wonderfull as my strengths do not yet include the art of a well designed thread.

For all of us who are constantly building things in our head and on paper until we can afford to build it for real it would be a great resourse to know the wieght, available demensions, strengths, cost etc of basic building materials. I'm not really talking about common Home Depot stuff as much as Metal, and specialty products. After the Lone Star Jambo I've got ton's of camping solutions that I'd like to explore. Ryan's home built trailer is a great example.

I've got a nice new utility trailer that I'd like to build some modular camping solutions for, but I'd really like to evaluate the weight before I get to far into the build.

So to begin this thread can someone please provide some basic metal info.

For example

3/4", 1", 1 1/2", 2" steel square tubing of X thickness weighs ??? lbs per foot, is available in ?? ft joints, and usually cost aprox ??? $ per ???

1/4 steel plate come in 4x8 sheets, weighs ??? lbs per square ft, usualy costs $, and can be sourced from ?????


etc etc

If anyone has a good link to a site with this info that's just as good. I just think it would be a usefull thread for all the DIY'rs out there to use. I'm sure I'll get more info than I ever asked for, but thanks in advance. If I've missed another thread containing all of this please point me to it.

As my first contribution I found a sign store that will sell the corgated plastic used to make for sales signs. In my area you can get 4x8 sheets in various colors for around $10 per sheet. I used it to wrap a deer stand, OK 8x8x6 deer condo. I used it vs metal or wood to wrap a 2x4 stud construction. It was lighter, cheaper, and more weather resistant than anything else I could find. This material might be the answer for your project.

 

[NCFJ]

What you are asking for varies from region to region. The price of steel has gone up 33% in the past two months alone. The bulk of the Coke used to produce steel comes from Australia, thaaaats right, where all the flooding has been.

Best you can do is call a local steel suppy house for pricing. Any big on line steel supply will have the weights for shipping purposes.

 

[they call me the cruiser]

What you are asking for varies from region to region. The price of steel has gone up 33% in the past two months alone. The bulk of the Coke used to produce steel comes from Australia, thaaaats right, where all the flooding has been.

Best you can do is call a local steel suppy house for pricing. Any big on line steel supply will have the weights for shipping purposes.

Do you think that the price for ferrous scrap metal will go up or remain unchanged because of this? (I've got a lot of it hanging around and have been waiting for the price to go back up).

 

[LSU]

What you are asking for varies from region to region. The price of steel has gone up 33% in the past two months alone. The bulk of the Coke used to produce steel comes from Australia, thaaaats right, where all the flooding has been.

Best you can do is call a local steel suppy house for pricing. Any big on line steel supply will have the weights for shipping purposes.

This is what really gets frustraiting. I was trying to start a thread that could be a resourse to the guy wondering about what it might cost to build X out of Y and how much it might weigh. Im not asking anyone to guarentee a price. Is google it, or get a phone book the best you have to contribute? I'm really not trying to be a richard, but if you have time to reply, post a link, or attach a spreadsheet with a comparison of steel vs aluminum weights and current prices. I've already requested pricing from a local metal supply, but have yet to recieve it. Many of us may not be as informed as you on the increasing costs of metals. So thank you for that information. My frustration with your contribution will probably end the usefullness of this thread, and turn into a flame session, so thank you again.

If anyone else wants to pm me with any building material info, ill try to put it together outside of an active thread and post it after material prices become set in stone.

 

[NCFJ]

Do you think that the price for ferrous scrap metal will go up or remain unchanged because of this? (I've got a lot of it hanging around and have been waiting for the price to go back up).

Scrap around here has gone from $8.50 per hundred to $12.50 since mid summer.

 

[LSU]

:wave:

You are missing the point of the thread. I'm just trying to compile raw material information even if price is not static.

 

[NCFJ]

:wave: have fun

 

[Gunny]

The best and easiest route is going to be taking the time to drive to your local metal supply company and do some window shopping.

 

[LSU]

The best and easiest route is going to be taking the time to drive to your local metal supply company and do some window shopping.

Ok, not falling for that bait. I give up. I'll do the research and just keep it to myself. I was just betting that some of you mod happy fella's would have already done this and as usual be happy to share your wealth of knowledge vs your ability to state the obvious. I was also hoping to get some new ideas's of different materials that I might not be familiar with but that might spark some great new invention or mod.

Maybe I'll try this again.

Has anyone bought any square tubing lately? What size was it? How much do you think it weighs per foot? Best guess what do you think it retails for today?

Has anyone bought any plate, pipe or expanded metal lately? Do you have any specs? etc etc etc

Does anyone know how where I can purchase some Unobtainium. Wow this is not that complicated of a request.

Maybe I'll try it like this. I'm thinking about building an adventure type trailer. What thickness of plate would you use? Any idea how much said plate weighs?

 

[Gunny]

Ok, not falling for that bait. I give up. I'll do the research and just keep it to myself. I was just betting that some of you mod happy fella's would have already done this and as usual be happy to share your wealth of knowledge vs your ability to state the obvious. I was also hoping to get some new ideas's of different materials that I might not be familiar with but that might spark some great new invention or mod.

Maybe I'll try this again.

Has anyone bought any square tubing lately? What size was it? How much do you think it weighs per foot? Best guess what do you think it retails for today?

Has anyone bought any plate, pipe or expanded metal lately? Do you have any specs? etc etc etc

Does anyone know how where I can purchase some Unobtainium. Wow this is not that complicated of a request.

Maybe I'll try it like this. I'm thinking about building an adventure type trailer. What thickness of plate would you use? Any idea how much said plate weighs?

Falling for what?

Quite honestly, you have no idea exactly what your wanting to use in the first place. Wayyyy to many variables to get the information your looking for in one or two posts. It may take weeks of people reading this thread to cover all the variables your throwing out there.

You also managed to alienate one of the few members that could have given you a TON of information. Had you been a little more codial in your reply to him and asked for his suggestion he would have more than happy to help you. He could have helped you narrow down what stock you would actually need for you project and then you could have went from there.

If your lucky enough to get someone like BellyDoc or Sean K. to reply I suggest you take a different tone the next time.

My suggestion of actually driving to your local supply source was merely to save you time, take the suggestion or don't, it's no sweat off my back. You can sit here and monitor a thread that could take weeks or longer to produce the info you want or grab a pen and a notepad and get it done in a matter of a couple of hours (depending on the drive time).

Whatever route you end up taking, good luck.

Just my .02, which sometimes is worth less.

:cheers:

 

[LSU]

Gunny,

To your point exactly I was trying to build up a collaborative list of different material information for anyone who might be thinking about a project. My intention was not to alienate anyone but pole the community for any information that might be gleaned and combined into a useful list for anyone who might be thinking about a project and wanted some a starting point. This site has been great and free of most of the flaming that goes on on lesser sights. I rarely make a snide or sarcastic comment about another member or thier post. I just wanted to keep the thread on course. I hoped and expected this thread to develop over months. As I stated earlier i have already contacted my local supplier and will share that info for those interested. Again I usually just search existing threads and find great info. It's just a shame that I can't request some help and instead must be chastised and talked down to. Until today I've shown great respect for those senior members who provide so much info. In the first paragraph of my original post I stated the intent and hope for this thread. It's amazing how many interesting threads are started and then die on the vine before they ever become ripe due to thread jacking and others who feel the need to hear themselves vs actually reading the OP and replying or Not replying appropriately.

I'm done with this thread and I apologize if I offended someone. Just frustrated that my attempt to put together a useful bit of Info went south so fast.

 

[LSU]

Well this will be my first try at posting a PDF attachment. But I did find some good information about the weight of different tubing. It does not list small tubing though. If anyone has comes accross similar information for square tubing smaller than 2" please feel free to add.

Here is a link to a really usefull list of this sort of information.

Saginaw Pipe available product charts, pipe, tubing, beams,channels, strip, angles

I also found this one. It has a little bit of Aluminum infomation for comparison

http://www.whittingtonsteel.com/Ref-Guide-PDFs/8-Tubing.pdf

Again sorry I got so pissy guess I should have just looked harder. I hope someone else finds this information usefull.

Chris

 

[BellyDoc]

Most people who build things for offroad use don't start with a weight per foot of material because there isn't really a lot of "engineering" involved in the design phase. Things are typically designed based on principles of use and principles of construction.

The cost of steel is highly variable. There isn't an MSRP value to look for because a huge fraction of the cost is involved with shipping. Depending on where you are relative to the supplier, the price could be free of added cost or heavy with it. Additionally, some suppliers will give price breaks at different order sizes while others don't. Some will have minimum orders while others will sell you exactly what you need and no more.

Steel sections are either purchased as new material by the foot (or square foot) or else as scrap, in which case it's sold by the pound. Typically, if you have to ask for something to be cut at the yard, you'll get new steel and they'll add a charge for the cut(s). If you can buy new steel and transport it in 20' sections, you'll save that money. Some vendors will deliver for a fee, others for an order larger than a specific amount, and some will do it even for small orders, if they happen to be out and about anyhow.

For garage shop fabrication, the scrap pile is your friend. Many important pieces can be obtained by surfing through the junk yard and retrieving odd bits of scrap that are perfectly good sections of formed steel, and are sold by dropping the whole pile on the scale. Also, if there's some flexibilty in your problem solving technique, you can start with an idea, show up at the junk yard, and walk away with a novel collection of scrap that solves your problem in a way you hadn't originally considered.

Some scrap comes from the ends of pieces that were perfectly good, new steel that was the remainder after another piece was cut to length for a previous customer. Other pieces are the remainder after large process fabricators go through big production runs and end up with mountains of left overs that they have no interest in storing. They get sold back to vendors as scrap, and then sold to us.

I personally get steel from any one of 6 vendors, depending on a number of factors. One is strictly a junkyard, but they have huge amounts of material in smaller bits. Often it's got some rust, but hot rolled steel has mill scale anyhow and it looks great when you knock that stuff off. I'd get plate there, angle irons, U-channel, but probably not tubing because that stuff rusts worse, and pits. Another vendor is a junkyard AND a supplier of new structural tubing in many sizes. I go there for small orders because they have a scrap heap of clean material under a roof. If I can't find what I need in scrap, I'll buy it new (rare). I have a great relationship with a relatively close supplier but their prices aren't the lowest, but they're low enough to offset the gas cost of driving to a farther yard if the order size is moderate. I've got 3 places to call for high end products like DOM and alloy steel, and I typically check all 3 before ordering because the best price could be any of them on a given day.

If your goal is to enter into the world of home fabricating, I'm 100% behind you. However, I'd suggest to approach it completely differently.

Start by coming up with a project you might want to tackle and then ask goal-specific questions relative to that. Acquire experiential knowledge and skill from that project and move on to another. As you come upon opportunities to obtain tools, make them count. Tool up with the idea that your tools are going to accomodate your growth as a fabricator. Buy equipment that uses the skills you already have and supports the acquisition of new skills later.

There are lots of skilled fabricators on this forum and if you ask good questions, you'll get a lot of great responses.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to help you with this one very much because the question is not very well posed. There may be some tables out there with a large variety of structural steel sections cataloged in a by-the-foot weight list, but I don't use them and a Google search turned up many tables each of which was partially informative and mostly not useful for my type (and presumably your type) of project. Quite frankly, I don't typically go Google-searching for people who can do this for themselves unless I'm trying to make a point and I'm hunting for factual backup of my claims.

The cost issue... that's like asking for gas prices on the net... meaningless to you at your locale... enough said.

I do want to address your curious responses though. There was a lot of psychological baggage in there, with tones of suspicion and derisiveness in the way that you dealt with those answers you got to your original question. I read this whole thread. In my estimation, your responses to the answers you got really escalated the animosity because I believe you presupposed it to be there, when in fact, it was more that your questions frustrated well meaning people by their over-broad nature. You acted like people were "baiting" you when they flatly weren't. It was very frustrating for me to read and I had to suspend my natural tendency to respond to THAT as a primary issue and attempt to address your actual question.

I bring this up because you can really have one of two types of relationship with the people you meet on the internet.

On the one hand, you can expect the best, and get some fraction of that.

On the other, you can expect the worst, in which case you'll get it in full measure.

The choice is yours.

As things are, if you have specific questions I can help with, I'll do my best to answer, as straight and completely as I can given my level of knowledge and experience (a moderate amount).

However, if it's frustrating, I really won't spend any time on it.

 

[LSU]

Maybe just a bad day at work. Who know's, I pm'd the parties who I may have targeted, and offered an appology to those who I may have offended. I was asking broad questions because I wanted to build a broad base of knowledge. Anyway i'm back to my usual assume the best self. I'll allow a little more abuse and correction in good nature.

One of the projects that I currently have in mind will ride on a utility trailer. It will be removalble and sit on blocks or jack stands when not in use. It may end up with an enclosure that could secure my ATV while on the road, and provide a shelter when at camp. I might also like to use the top to support a tent or additional storage. Most importantly it will provide a frame to support all of the storage and slides similar to a Adventure Trailer. Tha trailer and the FJ have specific load limits, This is one reason I was concerned about the weight of materials. Like anyone I'd like to build it as strong as possible without making it overly heavy or costly. The costly side, and the equipment that I don't have takes aluminum out of the equation. Most of my previous projects have been over built and exceedingly heavy based on the scrap material I had on hand. On this particular project I was thinking about figuring out the weight of all of the camping gear, atv, etc and seeing how much that left me to work with. Then trying to design and build the strongest, best solution, inside the weight limitations. Thanks for the information about your sources, I've begun searching for local sources. I live in Baton Rouge. When I lived closer to the coast I had access to lots of oil field fab shops. I worked at several in high school and college. I was able to learn all on all sorts of cool equipment and had access to all sorts of "practice scrap" I'll try to contact some of those sources the next time I'm down there. For now though I'll stick with my spread sheets, scrap paper, calculaters and rulers and try to keep my frustrations in check. Thanks again the info.

 

[BellyDoc]

It sounds like you're talking about some sort of toy hauler camper trailer with a roof top tent that comes in under 3000 pounds so that you still have 2000 pounds of payload capacity before you hit the 5000 pound towing limit.

I don't think you're going to pull that off with basic home fab skills. It's going to have to be a well engineered aluminum chassis trailer on a single 5000 pound trailer axle. You might look at skinning the thing with a material like DiBond which is an aluminum composite sheet.

This thing would need to be truly "engineered". You'd have to start with design goals such as a load rating for the roof. I'd say be ready to take 4 200 pound adults with a 2-fold safety factor = 1600 pounds. Next the question becomes how to get the deck up there for the tent ready to support that weight and itself weighing the least amount possible.

This would be a decent project to do in Solid Works.

If Burt Rutan could build a pedal powered aircraft, you can probably get this built too. The question becomes whether or not it's worth it to you and whether or not it can withstand being towed on trails.

 

[DOfj]

Way to much overthinking to this build!
Just build the damn thing to fit your needs and it turns out to be to heavy then sell it but I highly doubt it will be over 5k loaded.
You can always start with a used trailer that you can pick up cheap from a rental company. They sell used stuff fairly cheap.
Good luck

 

[LSU]

Cool now were getting somewhere.

Will be using an existing 5' x 10 utility trailer. Single axle 3500 lb

Will not be a trail trailer just a camping trailer

Box and trailer will be separate prices in order to maintain use of utility trailer

Nix the roof top tent. Maybe just a light duty roof rack.

Box will be left at hunting camp to store atv out of the weather

Box will serve as sleeping quarter for two adults

Exterior of box will be storage and slides etc for camping

Awnings on each side

Box could overhang fenders to increase width to accommodate larger mattress.

Existing trailer has pipe sides at about 1 ft height from deck.

Trailer weighs aprox 900 lbs.

Would need to either attach jacks or jack points wider than trailer so that it can be easily loaded unloaded from the trailer. Back under lower down etc.

 

[BellyDoc]

Converting space back and forth between human occupancy and motorized vehicle storage is a little ghetto, because you always feel/smell like you're in a garage. However, if you're set on that, you can just buy one. The art of engineering is all about NOT reinventing the wheel.

I've seen all kinds of options for this, especially if you're just talking about hauling an ATV and not a full sized rock crawler.

GearWagon 125 Camper, Sport Utility & Toy Hauler Trailer - Let's Go Aero - GearWagon™ 125 Cargo & Camper Trailer