DIY Metal Cube Shelves | No welding

hey guys I'll team for mr. Bullen and in today's video I'll show you how I made these floating metal cube shelves without any kind of welding just a simple gas torch so without wasting time let me show how I built them and let's get into the video let's go [Music] now for the meat supplies the metal itself this is quarter-inch steel you can find this stuff at any local hardware store Home Depot I wanted to get a little bit more in bulk like this longer pieces so I went to a local steel shop this only costs me these are 4 5 foot long pieces this costs me a little bit over $8 so very approachable and I will show you how I'm doing this now the first thing we'll need to do is figure out how to cut this now if you're at home and you don't know what to cut this with this they're relatively small or thinner material but you can totally accomplish this with a couple things number one you can clamp this down it and use a reciprocating saw with a metal cutting blade very traditional method number two if you have a circular saw now to reciprocate saw you can get yourself a blade that cuts both metal and wood and totally accomplish the same mission now another way to do it is in an angle grinder now for some weird reason don't own an angle grinder with all the metal stuff that I have whatever but I'll show you what I do have what I do have is a a chop saw this is a metal cutting chop saw it just has a diamond blade on it you put the metal in there [Laughter] cuts it all up so that's I'm going to do I give you guys options to do it for yourself do any of those options and I'm gonna do this real quick [Music] we're gonna take our metal that we've already pre-cut and what we're gonna do is we're gonna joint it just like that now how we're gonna do that what we're gonna have to get some stuff these are what are called brazing rod and the way this is gonna work we're gonna have to keep this metal to a certain temperature that way this rod which this particular one is a copper bill and then if when it gets hot enough we're just simply going to tap it and this is gonna melt kind of like solder does now the big problem we're gonna come across is in order to actually make this braze work we have to get things hot enough these brazing rods have to be at a temperature of 1600 degrees in order to melt in order to actually apply it on this quarter-inch steel that we're using now how we're gonna get it that hot let me show you now in order to actually get the temperatures hot enough we need some hot gas torches this is a propane gas you've used this kind of guys probably camping with you to start a fire or something like that it works well but it doesn't get as hot now this right here this is a map fro gas this stuff gets real hot real quick and it's gonna get the job done the water over myself we're going to go get some protective stuff some gloves some goggles maybe a little bit of air to vent out just in case you get smoky where you are and then we're gonna start heating up this metal let's go huh I get a little carried away sometimes I forget to explain exactly what I have going on here so I have a couple of rocks here that I got in my backyard put a little piece of wood here just so the moisture from the rocks ISM get on this metal table and the big idea is we're gonna need two pieces of rods going one here one there that was a little scrap piece I was experimenting about one here and one there we're gonna need clamping pressure just to hold it in place nothing serious and then we're gonna need something to be like a 90 degree angle that way we know this stuff's square and then we're gonna torch it right there once it gets hot enough nice bright red then we're gonna start working this way and allowing a capillary fill to take place now in order for the capillary field to take place we're gonna need flux I don't know what the science is about there's a lot more smarter people out there well all I know is if you don't have flux it won't go anywhere so if this is a piece like that you start wiping it on the metal start heating it up till it gets red and then you start applying the copper rod and then through capillary fill it starts sucking this copper into that joint actually really fun the machete [Music] now it's cooling down and we got our copper inside of it we're not gonna touch it we're gonna let it cool down for a few minutes it took about a minute to get it to that heat level with that torch I think the only reason it took so long is because the heat wasn't as direct as it would be with a brazing designated torch but this works perfectly we can get this done in no time so once it cools down a little bit we're gonna rotate it and get RIT ready for the next joint whoa look at that [Music] so I can't besides enough the torch is not burning or melting this it is been by the meadow heating up so hot that melts the copper and those of the capillary fill it drags it in so don't try to sit here turn burn this thing it's not going to do inside soldering similar but not like it's all temperature related and when it's full when the joints cool a full metal will be sucked in anymore so uh you'll kind of know when it's done I'm gonna let this cool off and then I'm gonna start cleaning up all these joints so they're nice and smooth and then we'll get ready for the painting so I'm about to go start grinding this things off and I was think to myself you know what we need to put this to the test we've never made something like this how do we know that's a little one there another hard way uh if this is still a strong structure we'll see how would it hold up let's do the old drop test yours crossed look at this as you can see nothing broke so so far so good now the trick when we grind is not to take too much off because the brazing itself the copper is what's holding it together so I'm just gonna clean up any rough spots and keep the majority of this stuff there so yeah [Music] you know it's funny I actually didn't have to grind much of the what I wasn't happy with the copper how was bulk you in that I really had to grind off the edges of the steel that I cut so I'm pretty actually happy because the Cavalier feel put pulls it in and sucks it in and the top is kind of like a droplet of water it would be so pretty pretty happy so what we're gonna do is we got to degrease this shoot some paint primer on it and then we'll start building the little shell for it and then uh yeah really good but we gotta need to degrease this mostly because this is metal soon as you're gonna put some paint on it you're not gonna have a good adhesion sometimes it even crinkles up a little bit the paint so just do the right way you can use rubbing alcohol if you have it around the house if not I like to use acetone I think it works a lot better just use a rag and clean it all up you'll be surprised how dirty the rag gets and then once that's all nice and clean I'm going to use like a painted primer specifically meant for metal this is a satin white and the trick is gonna be to go light on the coats or also you're gonna start getting a run so if your first one or two coats should be your lightest and then after that hop on them [Music] when I see a magic trick watch this now let's see if we can get em painted even quicker hey saving time I'm gonna let all this stuff dry and then let's get start working on the actual wood I've come go in the shell I need a head piece of oak similar alright [Music] alright so the boards are ready and I figured what I would do is to get the fit of the shelf the wood itself as as perfect as possible it's laid on the bottom because it is gonna go on the bottom shelf or lay this on top and then take a pencil and not a sharpie because a Sharpie would catch the light and that'll get a dirty and then trace around it exactly where we would need it to be cut then we take this off take these lines and we can have two men one method is the most easily accessible for you guys is use a circular saw or a jig saw to create that cut now the only important thing for you guys to know is you will need something like this or maybe a drill bit and the reason why is we need to create a cut around these posts because the piece of what's gonna sit here overlapping here and here will go and flush well there are going to be these corners you're getting the one you can either a use a drill and just to create a cut there and there or we could just use a jig saw to go around or then sand it down whatever you guys want to do options we have lots of options [Music] so to get these that just nice and smooth I'm using a piece of sandpaper wrapped it around a pencil just to get a better radius on it and let's see how this thing fits look at that oh man this is gonna look so nice so I'm gonna remove this I'm gonna do the same to the rest of the shelves and then we're gonna for the finish would use something water-based mostly because oil they stuff tends to amber or you know create a tinted amber kind of look and yellow to what a little bit I don't want to do we want with a white oak specifically so we want to keep it Ella match around as much as we can man good day alright so for the stains now that I got everything cut I'm gonna be using a wipe-on poly I've used this before my previous shell videos if you guys haven't seen it go check it out stuff works really well you could have to brush it on wipe it on whatever you want to do just put enough on that it's still wet that way it hardens and then you can put an extra a second or third coat if you want I'll probably go with like maybe two coats it'll be planning up it's kind of just put decor on it and once that's ready we're gonna be ready to do install so we're in the home finishing line here we go also you know when you say something you go I don't know that means fun finishing line that's not a thing homestretch I think that's climbing homestretch [Music] all right so I'm about to get ready to start hanging these things up right behind me a few things I picked up that it's going to help me do this nylon clamps uses a quarter inch in diameter loops there's exact same thickness as the actual middle that were using so they would just hug just like that on the top of the rail and then we're gonna screw it into the wall or drywall I got anchors for it and they're gonna hang out so they're gonna be two per shelf staggered I'm gonna go I'm gonna get our arena see if she'd help me I'll be right back [Music] hey thanks so much for watching this video guys I am so happy how this project turned out we ran into a few problems but we got through we figured it out and that's what I want you guys take away from this is just not be afraid to try to do things that are a little scary courage and sweat you gotta embrace it once you've failed there's nothing else to be afraid up I'll put down description below all my social medias / guys to connect with me if you'd like check out my merch I'll put them down below it'll support the channel look me up on patreon and everything like that I'll put the links to all the tools that I use down description below tune out this week we'll see you guys on the next one see ya bye we got a whole there's just a single what's the work she can happen flood your house solving problems that's we're in the business for solving problems shut up alright we're just teaching people how to get started and that is it [Music]