A butt weld should be 2" to 2", butted up against each other with a bevel to fill. If you're wanting to slide the pipe into the fitting and then weld a fillet at the joint, that's called a socket weld. You'd use a 2" socket fitting for that.



Or am I misunderstanding something?

It is not out of the realm of possibility. I have 3 here from various sources and they are anywhere from 'not gonna go' to 'if I had a fingernail file I think it would fit'. Unfortunately, the latter still won't go and if it did, it wouldn't move after a rain.

Thank you all, ya'll are all tracking on what I'm trying to do now. Marauder is right, if I had lots of local suppliers I could walk around with a foot long piece of 2" pipe and try them all out. Since I have exhausted the local sources with no luck I guess I will turn to the mill. As was pointed out, the 2" pipe to the 2.5" 90* is an awkward fit and the solution is 7018. I didn't like that fit on my buddy's, and I don't like the pinched look of the bevels kissing, so before I even realized that it wouldn't work I milled off the bevel on this tee. The plan was to machine a narrow collar and make that all smooth.



My work holding on that was a little sketchy and will need rethinking before I try invasive surgery. Right now, I think that's where I'm headed.

Milling a fitting!?!?!? What kind of nonsense is that? Errbody knows you only use a grinder.

Well, that went much smoother than I anticipated. I was really worried that the intermittent cut at the branch was going to be a bigger deal than it ended up being. I held from the inside with no problem, probably could have done it from outside just as easy.



Thanks to everyone for your help and suggestions, here and offline. I am no longer in the market for this tee and have a couple extras for the next project. One added benefit to sharing on TA: once you hit post there is a sense of obligation to see it through for the group. Now I'm farther along because I wanted to resolve this thread today - I just didn't think it would have been so easy or I wouldn't have started the thread.



Like a glove!

Post a pic after you lay your fillet welds and I'll do a visual inspection to let you know if it's good to go. But first I'll need to see your WPS/PQR and welder cert.

This. However - I'm certainly no pipeliner and the one thing not mentioned in this video is that on the end of the Hoosier pole is an umbrella holder you can swing out in a small radius around that side of the truck. That is what I would primarily use it for; to throw up some shade somewhere around the truck once every few years. Lol. It's just a silly project, but one I wanted to do right.

I have functionally finished this project and I sincerely appreciate the help earlier working out the clearances on butt weld pipe fittings, so I want to report out my results. This whole 'project' is really a sub-project of a sub-project that is so far from what I set out to do that it's comical. It involves an epic level of Dude Math and, honestly, it should be documented as a study of the male's ability to justify so much project creep that it's hard to remember what the original objective was. However, there is no way you're going to stay hooked up and read through it all, so suffice to say it involves: FB Marketplace finds, welder overhauls, and in the case of my enabling buddy: whole ass truck purchases.

First, to get us to this thread we have to start 8 years ago in that thread where I said:

Quote:

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In time I want to find a sponsor and before CPjr graduates I'd like to do away with the current awning and build a new one that spans both sets of pits.

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Too late. CPjr graduated from high school. CPJr graduated from Texas A&M. CPjr has moved on and has a job somewhere else but I finally found that sponsor: Me.

The dream of completing that project is why by buddy called me back in March and said that he'd found some pipe trusses we could buy on the cheap for use at the fairground and why I rolled up a few minutes later at the speed of light with a gooseneck and cash. What followed was a series of shenanigans that were supposed to end with us replacing this dilapidated shed at the fairgrounds, but instead culminated with my buddy parked in my driveway drinking a beer in the shade of his *new to him* welding truck's hoosier pole & umbrella and goading me because, well, I had no hoosier pole. The next thing I knew I was buying pipe fittings online and asking the OB why this sh*t didn't all fit and y'all kindly came to the rescue here and offline. More importantly, the fate of the fairgrounds project hung in the balance; no hoosier pole = no new building project. See how that works?

Once I started the fit up it almost came to grinding halt because I seriously thought about sidelining the whole deal and building myself a rollout wheel to weld these 3 pieces together. But enough was enough. Even I had found my limit; dream less - weld more.



When it comes to sketchy work holding, I am the King. I will say, if you like fabbing stuff up the Flange Wizard is the best magnetic level you can buy. It will fly across the shop to latch onto whatever you're working on it's like the MRI machine of magnetic levels. Whoever says "a lathe is the only tool that can build itself" never jacked with welding truck beds.



When I got done and trial fit it on the truck I couldn't believe how level and square it was. It was level with the bed, level with the hood line of the welder, level with itself, and square with the world. That made me so happy I even splurged on primer before I painted it.





Now I can sit in the shade of my own pipeliner's cloud and opine about how I'm soon going to start my project at the fairgrounds, as long as I don't see any more bright and shiny distractions between here and there...







There are still some details to work like a storage tube for the umbrella and pipe stand racks, but those are just details now. I'll report back when we make progress on my philanthropic county fairgrounds building project that almost didn't happen because the inside dimension of import 2.5" butt weld fittings are sometimes too tight to let 2" schedule 40 pipe pass through them. "For want of a nail" and all that stuff...