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As with ALL of the other pipe projects I have completed, there were several trips to the store to buy and try different fittings and pipe lengths. This project was no different, however, it was a bit unique since I changed the design of the legs after they were built. This is because I wanted shelves under the desk and the first design did not work well. Another thing to consider is if you don't build each leg with the exact same parts, you have the challenge of determining which parts will give you legs of the same exact length (or at least very close).
You can see from the photo below that the leg on the left is different than the leg on the right, which has an extra Tee to connect to another set of legs. Please see the Sofa Bar Table or Coffee Table for tips on how to clean the pipes and fittings.
It is important that these sections are the same length. I used a 10" nipple on the left leg so I figured I either need two 4" nipples, 4-1/2" nipples, or a combination. It ends up that two 4" nipples got me very close, but I had to play with how tight I screwed each leg together in order to get them close. This resulted in the leg with the 10" piece not being entirely tight. You can see from the third picture that they are pretty close.
At this point, you are probably wondering how you can assemble a set of legs in the picture above. It is impossible to make a square out of pipe since the last piece can't screw in at both ends at the same time. There is a trick that worked very well.
Assemble both legs and make sure the Tees on both are lined up. This is where the cross members will be installed and they have to be lined up otherwise the pipe will not screw into the Tee. Screw in the cross members on one leg only. Screw them in as tight as possible so they can still be loosened by hand. I used some paste wax as a lubricant.
Here is the trick; line up the cross member with the other Tee and push it into the opening so it can be screwed in. You now unscrew the cross member from the left leg as you screw it into the right leg. This means the pipe is never fully tightened into each of the legs. I was concerned about this after I assembled the legs because they were very loose. This ends up not being a problem at all once all the legs are secured to the top and each other. I made sure the pipe was engaged into each of the legs the same amount.
I assembled the rest of the legs and was now ready to install them on the desk top.
After you work with black pipe a few times you realize the pieces do not assemble perfectly. The pipes don't always screw into fittings straight. Flanges are not always flat. Since I was adding shelves between the 2 sets of legs and the shelves need to be the same size, I needed to make sure the cross members were the same distance apart for the upper and lower shelf, which they were not. I needed to play around with rotating the flanges and adding some card board shims under the flanges to make the legs as straight as possible.
I was now able to detemine how big the shelves should be.