My recycled office chair stand via Conduit EMT

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Well, i thought the best way to learn welding would be to weld! So I remembered how cheap conduit from Lowes was. I bought quite a few feet and went to work... I learned a few things... The coating SUCKS... It blows yellow dusty crap all over the garage when welded and not grounded off. The welds look like crap, it really does get in the weld and contaminate it. The fact that I can do it now (even though it still could be better) I feel i got alot more experience on a harder to weld type of metal. it really is piss poor quality So, on to the reason of my chair... I had a office chair upstairs that was the pneumatic (well not pneumatic but, where it has a lever and it will go up and down) adjustable. The cylinder was failing and everytime you sat in it it would go STRAIGHT down, like a roller coaster. After it stopped becoming funny when i dumped soda all over myself courtesy of my chair I had had it. Besides, it was way to short to sit at my desk or welding table. So changes had to be made! I didnt have a chance to take pics before i actually built it. I did build my chair stand before hand and it was too tall... Great!! So I had to cut it and then re-do it. I took some pics of my redo... Here's the pic after I cut it, I took the peices I had cut and cut them in half. It was 1" EMT conduit. So i had about 1/2" a side. I put one half into the vice and made 'ears' i guess you could call it and welded it inside the base tubes sticking up. This way the chair portion would just slide on top of it and make sure it's even and level before final welding. They fit right over the top of that 'ear', and then I take the other side, and with a hammer attach it to the existing conduit. Here's a picture of the chair all set up...Well I wanted to post more pics but I have only 5, so I'll show you some of my welds.What the EMT looks like after being welded (CRAP, CRAP i tell you...)And here's one cleaned up... I'm going to see if i can post some more in a second post in the same thread.
Reply:Here's some of my welds w/out it being cleaned up w/ the wire brush...This stuff sure looks ugly, and gets everywhere! Dont breath it...
Reply:Heres some pics of what it did to my helmet (The Galvanized floating around)My poor helmet, I kept having to wipe off my face shield.
Reply:OK, On to the galvanized cleaned up w/ a drill and wire brush attachment!Last edited by Jasondt2001; 01-31-2008 at 08:07 PM.Reason: Messed up on pics
Reply:The last pic of the wheel on the thread above this one is so the chair doesnt flip over backwards... It was a bit out of balance...
Reply:heres some pics of the chair...And here it is under my table, in my welding area of my garage.
Reply:Well i just wanted to show others about the emt conduit thing. I have seen alot of posters ask questions about it.Thanks for looking, take care guys!(And yes, that's my table I made out of scrap metal.)
Reply:I hope you wore a respirator.
Reply:I had the garage door open and it was windy. I was just putting that out there so that people knew not to breath it in because of the zinc/galvanized.
Reply:Good starter project. Yes i agree i hope you had some type of respirator or good ventalition. Be really carefull when welding on galvanized steel. Make sure you grind off the coating before you weld it.Shane
Reply:Next time grind the galv off before you weld.   Your welds will look MUCH better and you won't have to breathe that crap.Nice chair though.  Make sure it doesn't catch on fire.  DavidReal world weldin.  When I grow up I want to be a tig weldor.
Reply:Hey, thanks alot for the tip Shane and David, I'll be sure to try that! This stuff really is hard to work with. I was reading it's pot metal and not meant to be welded so maybe that's part of my problem also... It might also be because I'm a newbie Thanks alot for the tips though guys. You also made me think about my chair being flammable... oops... Thanks again David!
Reply:Interesting project. I'd suggest you get some mild steel grind it clean and practice some beads on that. The thinner stuff can be tricky avoiding burn through. I agree with the rest, you don't want to be breathing the smoke, especially from galvanized. Try to position your view so your not in the smoke...watch from the side. Oh yeah, if you do attempt another chair try to get the verticle pipes to fit together and butt weld the joint.If you don't want to stand behind our Troops, feel free to stand in front of them.
Reply:Hi SWells, I was going to try to butt joint them together, but, the feet by mistake of me weren't lined up that well. So when i started cutting them to resize it they went everywhere and even w/clamps I couldnt get it to stay  So I used the "ears".