Tube or Bar stock?

YotaOnRocks

YotaOnRocks

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 17, 2007
Location
Madison
Is 2-1/2 .500 wall dom round tube stronger than 2-1/2 inch round bar.If so will it be enough to matter. The round bar is hot rolled A-36 steel. Im looking to use the material for my links. The round bar is alot cheaper than tubing so if it would work that would be awsome. Let me know. thanks in advance.
Matt
 
is it enough to bother anything.
 
Yes, its has more to do with surface area and work hardening the tube and forming a structual shape, plus alot of other fancy mechanical properties. Here's a way to prove it to yourself. Get a piece of smaller solid stock that you can bend into a horseshoe, now do the same with an equivalent pipe or tube. Be sure to hold and apply pressure from the same points so you don't change the leaverage points. Try to do both in a way that isn't just kinking the metal.
 
If the 2.5" tube were also a 36 (hrew), it would be weaker. Too many people confuse given strength by weight per foot for strength by size. All things equal, the solid stock will be stronger, but not twice as strong...or even near twice as strong, even though it weighs twice as much. BUT say your bar stock weighs 17lbs per foot, and you use a tube that also weighs 7lbs per foot with only a .25" wall thickness...the tube will be much stronger due to the large increase in diameter.

Considering the dom you're looking at weighs 7lb a ft less than the round stock, I'd say the marginal increase in strength isn't worth it.
 
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