Welding Tips and Tricks

Thanks in advance for your help.

I would like to build a table to do oxy-fuel cutting on in my home hobby shop. My question is if I can build it with a chute to a catch pan like a downdraft table. Would I need to use a heavy gauge material for the chute or am I going to be burning it up to often to be worth building? I am trying to avoid destroying the driveway/yard.
Also I want to put in a lot of practice but don’t want to only cut large pieces of scrap into a pile of small pieces of scrap. I was thinking of cutting triangles and bolt tabs so the cuts might be useful(someday). Is there any other ideas that would make good practice cuts?

Your table idea should be fine. Light gauge metal shoot out the bottom will work fine. Practice straight cuts, not just a straight line of travel but not tipping the torch leaving a beveled edge. Then practice cutting beveled edges. Also pierce cuts, this would be a common skill needed for cutting bolt holes or openings for access. And most important for repair work washing out or back cutting out a weld, IE a lap joint. You should be able to cut out the weld on a lap joint without really cutting either piece of metal.

Poland308 wrote:Then practice cutting beveled edges.

This ^^^^^^

I always felt I could cut a bevel with a torch, but every time it came down to it I never had the confidence do so when I needed it.

For me it was certainly something when I practiced it, it gave me the confidence that I can feel comfortable when I need to do it, now I won't hesitate.

An oxy-acetylene setup is so useful for fabrication, good to practice various things on it, cutting off a straight edge, beveling, being able to cut circles, even being able to weld using it. Good tool to have, IMO.

Thank you!

Simple circle cutter guides are easy to make and work a lot better than you'd think. This is the first one 1 ever made, ill probably make a 2.0 version one of these days but this still works great. Very handy to have.

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Your best bet is to make something like below, we use a very similar design at school and the chute is made out of thin gauge sheet metal and holds up just fine. Remember the thing with Oxy-Fuel cutting is you're actually burning the metal and it must be at a certain temperature to do, unless you're traveling WAY too slow and hot you'll unlikely to even cut sheet metal a couple inches underneath the piece your're cutting.

That's a nice clean design. Is that yours?

THAT is one nice table. Is the chute thin sheet metal or something more like 10-12 gauge steel?

Not my design, just a picture I pulled from the net that's near identical to the cut tables and school and I believe Jody made one as well. The walls on the school ones are roughly 14-16 gauge I believe, you would want it at least thick enough that anything that falls through won't dent the hell out of it.