Round pen

My honey do list had been put on hold for a while. There was only one item on it- build me a round pen. That's a pretty big to-do item! So this last week, Ted got down to it and built me 12 panels from scratch, using 2 inch steel pipe.  He spent one day planning and building the jig, so that he could just lay the pipe out and weld and get each panel perfect every time.

That is the sample panel on the left. I opted for 3 bar panels, 10 ft. long.
Then he got into production....

He has a wire feed welder which makes the job go faster.

Our friend Dave came over to help and that made things go smoother. He pinched the pipe ends and ground the burrs off the cut steel.

Once all the panels had been welded on one side, Ted laid them over on the sawhorses and did the back welds.

For the bases he welded two pieces of pipe to a flat plate which has drainage holes drilled in.

The piece of steel with the two pipes spot welded on is the jig for building the bases.
Ted had to leave Sunday morning for 2 weeks work on Vancouver Island, so he didn't get the top connectors built. But that isn't going to stop me from using the pen! I tied the panels together with enough orange twine to make them look like they were all wrapped up for Christmas- and I will be using it today. *Insert big grin*

The panels are 5 ft. high. I put Beamer in the pen this morning to eat down some of the grass. I want to get a load of sand in there once the ground is all broke up from use.

I have the Best. Husband. Ever. He even took 3 days out of his own Very Important Project to do this for me.