I don't have any pics but I'm basically building a frame turn my 12' drag harrow for my garden into a 3 point.

So to start, I have a drill stem pipe 12' 3" long. Then I basically cut 1/4" steel that encompasses the pipe in three locations as a typical three point piece of equipment would have. Because those three pieces of steel are welded nearly complete my around the pipe, on both sides, that's 8 locations within 30" situated in the middle of this length of pipe. What that does, as steel tends to do, is create a slight bow in it. It's maybe .5-1" by the time you get to the extents.

For my purposes, this poses no issue at all and it's strong as f-. Howeve, for my own information, how would one limit this? I can always heat the pipe up and drive it between two trees and pull it straight but it would be easier to prevent a "banana" if possible. I did not consider making a hotspot with my torch on the opposite side of my weld but that is suppose to work.

How do manufcaturing facilities like John deer weld up 35' long frames and have them true?

We braced our weldments and let them cool under heat blankets, straightened in a press, or applied heat to the opposite side and rapid cooled. There were several other ways we kept things straight, but was dependent on what we were welding.

If I rosebud the opposite side now, do you think the bend will come out? Looking back, perhaps a full weld around the circumference would have offset its own warp? This is a great place to try stuff out.

What would be a means of removing the bow after the fact?

Yeah, square tube is the way to go but I have 100 pieces of pipe laying around that are free. So far my project has just cost me welding rods. It's helping me make better welds too. I HATE working with pipe but it's a means of perfecting my saddles I guess.

TX_COWDOC said:

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Interrupted welds and alternating sides. Always enjoyed watching the welders at my grandfather's fabrication company do their craft. They could also purposefully camber various shapes when needed using a rosebud torch.

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I occasionally do trim out work for cooling towers through a family friend. I'm always there during the welding process with union welders. Before I started welding, I was always impressed with their work. It was amazing. When I started teaching myself to weld, I was even more impressed with their work.

My first welds were globulous porous messes. Now they look like a stack of dimes. Granted it's various sized stacks of dimes and various foreign currencies, but it at least resembles a weld that looks ok once you paint it. Lol.

Those union welders produced works of art.

I've done what jagsdad is talking about. Tack it on one side to prevent it drawing up on the other, make a short bead, then another on the opposite side. Usually keeps things square.

Tack or short beads for your root pass on opposite sides. Once you get 3-4 of them somewhat symmetrical around the pipe, you can start your root.

If you are welding slow, you'll still need to jump from one side to another because you are pumping a lot of heat into a small area. If you can lay a bead pretty fast, you should be able to walk it around with minimal to zero distortion.

Learning to fit pipe back in the day, that was one of the hardest things to gauge on where to tell the welder to tack up because they were all a bit different in how they burned rods.

schmellba99 said:

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Tack or short beads for your root pass on opposite sides. Once you get 3-4 of them somewhat symmetrical around the pipe, you can start your root.

If you are welding slow, you'll still need to jump from one side to another because you are pumping a lot of heat into a small area. If you can lay a bead pretty fast, you should be able to walk it around with minimal to zero distortion.

Learning to fit pipe back in the day, that was one of the hardest things to gauge on where to tell the welder to tack up because they were all a bit different in how they burned rods.

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That's a good idea but part of the challenge. The weld bead does not go all the way around. There is no opposite side to weld short of just laying a dummy bead down for grins. I guess I could do that. I can tack weld it no problem just didn't know how to address this technical detail. Fortunately, on this build there are items attached underneath which will create and opposite weld and offset the warp in the other direction. It won't be in the same spots so it's essentially going to create a "S" in the pipe instead of a "U".

I'll lint the temp by shorter welds and go to opposite ends to allow each to cool

Jason_InfinityRoofer said:

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schmellba99 said:

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Tack or short beads for your root pass on opposite sides. Once you get 3-4 of them somewhat symmetrical around the pipe, you can start your root.

If you are welding slow, you'll still need to jump from one side to another because you are pumping a lot of heat into a small area. If you can lay a bead pretty fast, you should be able to walk it around with minimal to zero distortion.

Learning to fit pipe back in the day, that was one of the hardest things to gauge on where to tell the welder to tack up because they were all a bit different in how they burned rods.

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That's a good idea but part of the challenge. The weld bead does not go all the way around. There is no opposite side to weld short of just laying a dummy bead down for grins. I guess I could do that. I can tack weld it no problem just didn't know how to address this technical detail. Fortunately, on this build there are items attached underneath which will create and opposite weld and offset the warp in the other direction. It won't be in the same spots so it's essentially going to create a "S" in the pipe instead of a "U".

I'll lint the temp by shorter welds and go to opposite ends to allow each to cool

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Ahh, I didn't understand that.

In that case, yeah, you will need to be careful with putting heat on, which means shorter stiches in your welds and let things cool between.

You can also tack a gusset on the back side to help with heat warping - a piece of flat bar, say 3/8" x 2" on end extending about 6" beyond the weld area in each direction will help. Just tack it in a few places and remove after the fact. Hell, i'd probably just go ahead and stich it pretty good on both sides and leave it, assuming it doesn't interfere with using the implement (which if I understand right and picture things right in my head, it won't).

Oh damn....that's a good idea. I didn't think of that. I was trying to figure out how to weld another piece of pipe to this without it being a pain in the neck.

This is all great info. I'm learning a lot. I find I learned a hell of a lot more welding projects than I ever did when 'sticking metal together' which is what I started out doing.

It's way better doing projects, running into issues real time, and then learning how to fix them or do better next time.

Since I still don't have pictures, I am making a variation of this:


https://www.bigiron.com/Lots/JohnDeereSpringToothHarrow-17

I have bracing in different places because my harrow was never designed to be a three point, but the base implement is still mostly the same. The one in this link is a 16' I think, and and mind is only a 12'.

My issue arose from the three point system you see in this. I did something similar, but it's welded and not pipe clamped. So, you can see where all the heat was applied. I can already see where I could have done better in my design, but, as you see, it won't make any difference whatsoever in the functionality of the implement. I just want to understand because one day, my welding warpage might matter and Its a good 'best practice' type of learning.

Welp, I got it finished. It works. It's a little "bouncy" because I didn't want to brace from the top and used small pipe where I could. Each harrow section can be lifted by hand. It's maybe 75-100 lbs each piece. The angle bracing helped a lot and kept it pretty compact. Anyway, it works like a champ and now when I short cut a turn in my garden I can just lift the whole thing up and not be faced with the thought "do you really need that tomato plant?"

Definitely the biggest project I've done. It cost nothing but rods. I HATE working with round pipe but that's what I had so I was forced to cut saddles which I'm not great at but got a lot better at. These force improvement of skill.

Several things I've learned the hard way and corrected with the project….

1.) It suck's working with light gauge material. The MIG is your friend when joining 14ga to drill stem.

2.) Go the extra mile for square cuts and use magnetic squares to make sure everything is as square as possible. Makes things easier when you need to design on the fly or add something. It's a lot easier to cut 45 for braces when you know your two ends are 90 from each other. Modifying a 45 degree cut to a 43 degree cut sucks and wastes a lot of time.

3.) spend time fitting pieces. Tight fits make clean welds. That 1/8" gap is going to look like ****, waste a lot of rod to fill, and grind…because you are going to do both to lay a clean pretty bead down so you don't look like a chump.

4.). Practice all welding on the underside and leave the top for last. Crappy looking welds can be forgiven underneath but not on top.

5.) do what you can to prevent warping even if it doesn't matter. Some day it will matter.

6.) stop complaining that your local welder charges $100+ per hour.






I'll run it like it is. If it looks like the welds or the pipe is going to fail, then I'll run a brace from the top link to the corners or middles for extra support. I just designed on the fly after looking at some other Deere setups and had to make that work with what I had on hand. We'll see. I put my 190 lb tail on it and bounced and it didn't bend or break so…the design is officially peer reviewed, and completely through the QC and Safety processes. Hahaha.

Nice work! Can I borrow that??