I want to try to extend my Weider home gym so I can do some exercises a little easier. It involves designing an extension to my Weider home gym and will need some welding and fitting. I was unsure what metal can be used, so I took a trip to Metal Supermarket in Scarborough.
The store is not really a traditional retail store. There are 3 guys at a desk out front on computers and talking on the phone to customers. I suppose most customers know what they want and just call their order in, but not I. There was one guy at the back using a huge metal saw to do custom cuts.
You can walk to the back and see their racks of metal in all materials, shapes and sizes. I wanted mild steel in small lengths, so there was a rack for that. Most of the mild steel square tubing was a minimum of 12″, which was good for me. There are no posted prices, so I didn’t know what to expect for total cost. It turns out that mild steel is really quite inexpensive. They let me browse as long as I wanted, because I really did not know what I wanted. All metal oxidizes or has mill scale on it, so my hands turned black pretty quickly. The “retail area” is just an open warehouse room with a huge garage door exposed to the outside. Pretty bare bones, but good enough. After all, this is just raw metal on display.
I picked up some 1.5″ square pieces of mild steel, a hunk of 1.25″ square mild steel, and some round bar, which I will use to hammer on. Overall the cost was $25 or so after tax. This is for something that will last near forever and never wear out. I’ll need to disassemble a part of my home gym and weld up the base, which the attachment will fit into.
The guys taught me about hot rolled (cheaper) and cold rolled steel, and all the varieties and thicknesses of metal. This is not something I have gotten into, but is important to the welding process.
Overall an interesting experience, and a little dirty. Next time I’ll bring a rag to clean my hands. I’ll have a better idea of what I want when I return.
| Hot rolled round bar 0.625 |
13″ @ 0.17308 |
2.25 |
| steel square tube A500/A513 (Welded) 1.5×1.5x 0.065 |
34″ @ 0.31188 |
10.76 |
| steel square tube A500/A513 (Welded) 1.5×1.5x 0.065 |
12″ @ 0.28167 |
3.38 |
| steel square tube A500/A513 (Welded) 1.25×1.25x 0.065 |
22″ @ 0.22818 |
5.02 |
2024 Aug 30 round iron bar
| steel round tube A500/A513 (Welded) 1.00×0.065 0.625 |
67″ @ 0.28358 |
19.005 |
