Building a jig for gusseting a pipe nipple before its welded in place

by Blake Williamson
(Dunbar, WV)

The description is kinda confusing but what I ended up doing at work on a regular basis was installing 6" x 12" nipples into the back of tanks that were then fitted with valves and flanges.

The nipples are twelve inches and threaded on both ends with two inches of thread, i wanted the nipple welded into the tank just past the threads.

I would cut out the hole in the tank, prep the area set in the nipple, tack it, double check it for level and square then fully weld it. When i finished that i would put in three 4 inch gussets (4" x 4" then 45'ed). This was pretty time consuming so the jig here solves several problems.

Take a piece of plate (i used 1/4") and cut out a hole for the nipple to fit through, measure how far down you want the nipple (or pipe) to fit through the hole, cut out four pieces of angle or round stock that length minus the plate thickness and welding them on the bottom of the plate.

Now you can drop the nipple through, set your gussets in place and mark it on your plate for future reference and weld them to the nipple.

This saves from doing an overhead and also saves time on trying to get everything level on the tank because if you do a good job welding on your gussets the nipple will set perfectly against the tank wall.

This was also good for my situation as i could have half of the work done before i ever went into the field to install the port on the tank. Hope this can help someone, im sure there have to be other situations out there besides what i do that this could come in handy.


Blake Williamson

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thanks for the good post Blake,

Jody