Building prototype 24ft free-standing corral panels



Last night I finished welding together one of two prototype 24 foot long free-standing corral panels, which I have discussed in a previous blog post.


The steel tube as it was when I picked it up with the trailer.  All of the pieces of tube came in 24 foot lengths, which minimized the amount of cutting I had to do.

Because the panel is so long I had to develop an approach to welding that maximized efficiency and minimized the amount of heavy lifting on my part.  In the current method I developed I start out by welding the end pieces to the top and bottom rails.  Only the accessible portions of each weld joint are welded.  

Then the heavier gauge support legs are attached to the top and bottom rails.  At this point the structure is still relatively light-weight, but strong enough to be stood upright without risk of bending the half-welded joints.

The panel is then flipped over, weld joints started prior to flipping are completed, and the remaining rails are added.  In this photo I've finished adding the rails and have attached one of the two short "ankles" to a support leg.  The ankles are made of a heavier piece of steel into which the longer "feet" will be inserted when the panel is upright.

With both ankes attached the panel is then raised to the upright position, the feet inserted, and it's done. 
The next step will be to subject to panel to a series of stress tests to determine if the I will need to make any modifications to the design.  I don't have any particular tests worked out yet, but they will most likely involve the tractor's front-end loader and a lot of abuse.

When I've determined the prototype to be up to snuff, I'll then finish assembling the second panel and see how well two panels hold up when locked together.

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