Welding Project - Fabricating a 3 legged Shop Stool using Stronghand Tools

This weekly video is about a welding project, a welding table and modular fixturing, along with a few mig welding tips.

Its a quick welding project on fabricating a shop stool with adjustable height seat.

Reason? it certainly is not to save money. Fabricating a shop stool does not save much money if you value your time at all... and you can buy a shop stool for pretty cheap these days.

So why? well I dont have a shop stool that I am happy with.
and ...
I got an email recently asking about ideas for welding projects. Projects where you wind up with something useful when your done.

That got me surfing the net, and then I wound on on bar stools, and then shop stools.

Ah hah! Shop Stools. now that is something useful.

So then I started looking around the shop for leftover materials.

the stuff I used looks something like this:

3/16" x 3/4" x 6" flat bar 6 ea
1" threaded rod 18" long
3-one inch nuts
3 pieces of 1/2" pipe cut to 19-1/2"

I intend to use a piece of sheet metal with a lip welded all the way around for the seat....along with some foam for a cushion.

We will see about that. If I get a better idea, I might shift gears.

Also in a week or so, I plan on making a stool out of an old bike frame.
think about it. there are tons of scrap bikes out there. All with adjustable height seats.

I think most of them can be cut up and repurposed into shop stools. I will definitely look for one with a big seat because I am not sure sitting on a tiny bike seat will help my welding one bit.

Mig welding settings used.

for the gaps, I used 17 volts and about 225 ipm with .030" diameter er70s6

For the legs I used 18 volts and 250 ipm.


Stronghand Tools

My BuildPro table makes short work of simple welding projects like this. But most folks reading this dont have a precision welding table like mine.

I drew a circle and used the centerpoint on the table to locate the legs and riser piece.

you could do the same thing on any welding table . It just takes longer.

Here is how I would do it on a standard home built welding table

I would make a center punch mark and use that to scribe a circle using either soapstone or scribe.
Then I would tack weld a one inch nut dead center over the center punch.
the I would screw one of the nuts about 6 inches from one end and then screw that end of the 18" long threaded rod into the nut that is tacked on the table and I would use a rubber mallet to tap it around until the threaded rod was square with the table top.

If it wont stay square, I would align both nuts and tack weld s piece of angle iron so that I could clamp and hold the threaded rod plumb.
from there it should go together just like in the video.

See more welding projects