Does anyone sell tapered round or tapered oval steel tubing? Long shot, I know, but thought I would ask.
Thanks guys! I'll check these places out. I briefly looked at chassisshop. Looks like they have a lot of useful things. Didn't see tapered, but haven't gone all the way through it yet. I'll keep looking.
depending on diameter and wall thickness bicycle frame building suppliers have some good stuff. nice chro-moly. nova cycle supply, henry james are a couple right off the top of my head. also dillsberg metals or aircraft supply in pa. i think. good luck, corn boy
Not sure if this will work for what you are doing but try Pro-werks, they are a division of The Chassis Shop. I seem to remember them having tubing they refer to as streamline. I cant find it on the website, but I can look in the catalog when I get back home (at work now) You can see the tubing here, where they are advertising for the weld in ends: http://www.pro-werks.com/detail.php?name=RIGHT+HAND+STREAMLINE+TUBE+ADAPTER
You guys have definitely mentioned some new names I've never checked out! I will search these out. Thanks a ton for your help! I'll let you know if I come up with something. Cheers! Scooter
Aircraftspruce.com (877-477-7823) has streamline tubing, but not tapered tubing. Aircraft Spruce has an excellent and FREE catalog.. I've gott'em back twenty years or so and it's amazing how the price of 4130 tube has not increased that much over the years. I don't consider the streamline tubing to be substantial enough to anything structural on a rod other than bracing or some simple brackets.... not sufficient wall thickness for radius rods,4 bars, drag links or tie rods. I'm using it for a step to get in and out of my project and a couple of little braces. They have a racers catalog which might be better for us guys as we won't be buying avionics stacks, strobes or headsets. For the left coast HAMBer's they have a store in Corona, CA.and there's one in Georgia for guys out that way. Get the catalog.
Ok I got a chance to look at the catalog and Pro-Werks offers many different sizes and lengths of streamline tubing ranging in price from about 8-35 bucks(dependent on size) I however still cant locate it on their site. If you need part numbers to look into, PM me the size or dimensions you are looking for and I will try and help you out. Good luck!
Are you talking "tapered" in the sense of an early Ford radius rod? My guess is that it don't exist. Tubing is made in a continuous process wherein flat strip is fed into and gradually formed by a series of rollers until the edges meet up and they are welded. (This is for the most common structural tube-there is of course D.O.M. where you start with a round bar.) The nature of the process precludes making it tapered (lengthwise). The cross section can be about anything: round, square, oval, rectangular, triangular, airfoil, etc. The Ford radius rods were press formed in a die starting with a trapezoidal blank. It was first formed into a channel (at the big end) which transitioned to a Half round (at the small end). In a succession of hits the shape was finally closed up into a tapered tube which was then held in a fixture and mechanically welded. Absent a market for such a product, it is highly unlikely that anyone would tool up (expensively) to produce such an item. (But then there ARE Brookville Ford bodies.) quote=scootermcrad]Does anyone sell tapered round or tapered oval steel tubing? Long shot, I know, but thought I would ask.[/quote]
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