Breaking welds on square tube parallel welded together

[branimal]

I got a bunch of free metal (12 ga 1 1/4" square tube) from someone getting rid of a TV set storage box. 8'x6'x4'. It was a pain in the a** cutting it up with a 4 1/2" grinder, but hopefully it will be put to use with future welding projects.



The base of the storage box has 3 square tubes parallel welded together. I tried cutting the welds and breaking it loose with a 3/4" cold chisel and a framing hammer. No luck.


How would you guys go about breaking these welds?

 

[Jackfre]

Thin wheel angle grinder is quickest. I would give my M12 Milwaukee sawzall a run at it too. Tough to do, time consuming and a lot of waste, so you will have to decide if it is worth it.

 

[nadogail]

Can you make use of the double tubing as a "design element"?

 

[Dumber than lumber]

a TV set storage box you say?
That is not something of which I had previously heard.

 

[wrenchguy]

Not worth the effort.

 

[branimal]

a TV set storage box you say?
That is not something of which I had previously heard.

It’s was used to store chandeliers that were used on set for the production of a tv show. Yeah my description wasn’t really clear.

In my opinion the box was way overbuilt.

 

[branimal]

Not worth the effort.

Yeah I’m going to find a metal scraper to haul them from the curb.

But I did get many usable pieces of square tube.

 

[The Cobbler]

a thin cut off wheel would make short work of that .
also could you cut the tube at the welds to get shorter pcs? often they're handy

 

[Jeffh40]

When I saw the title of the thread, my first thought was to tell you to look up an Arc-Air since it does a great job of blowing out welds.

Now that I read the rest of the post, I recommend just giving them to the local scrap guy if all you have is a cold chisel. If you have a grinder though, it wouldn't be that big of a deal to cut them out.

 

[BukitCase]

Depends on several things; they're just skip welds, a decent .045" cutoff wheel wouldn't be too bad - especially if you've priced new steel lately... Or (like I did) you could use that to justify a Hypertherm plaz; the scarfing tip for that works a LOT more "surgical" than arc-air (BTDT) and you can still HEAR afterwards ... Steve

 

[quickfarms]

I would just put them under the welding table until I needed the steel for a project or end up with too much and do a scrap run