DIY Network

Copper Pipe Trellis Craft a terrific trellis. From "B. Original" episode DBOR-125

Sharpen your soldering skills on this cool copper piece.

Copper is a great medium for anyone who wants to B. Original—indoors or out. Once you get the basics, you can use this beautiful metal to make almost anything.

Michele Beschen's garden trellis is an excellent choice for your first outdoor copper project. There are no strict guidelines, and you control the design. As long as you like the way it looks, the piece is a total success.

Scroll down for Michele Beschen's easy how-to.

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Copper Garden Trellis

"red stripe" copper pipe
pipe cutter
elbow and T fittings
other angle fittings
propane torch
solder

Note: For this project, Michele Beschen used red stripe copper pipe. It has a thinner wall than standard copper pipe and also has red lettering. It's less expensive than standard pipe and easy to work with.

	Figure A
	Figure B
	Figure C

• Determine your design. Michele Beschen says copper pipe is like Tinker Toys for grownups—you fit everything together until you get something you like. Sketch out your design ideas on paper, then start cutting and fitting.

• Cut your pipe sections to size with a standard pipe cutter, and dry fit your design before you start soldering. You don't want to change your mind after you've started soldering metals together.

• Michele Beschen's design mainly used 90-degree elbow joints and T connectors. However, you can expand your creative horizons and play around with 45-degree elbows for some interesting new looks.

• Work on a level, fireproof surface such as cementboard or metal (figure A).

• When you're happy with your design, start cleaning pipes, applying flux and soldering your joints. See "About Soldering" below for detailed soldering tips.

  Safety Alert: Always wear eye protection and gloves when soldering, and follow all fire safety precautions.

• If you want to save a little effort, use fittings that already have the solder inside (figure B). If you don't want to solder, you can glue your fittings in place and wire on your decorative accents.

• Once your connections are soldered, you're ready to fill in your center panels. Michele Beschen likes to bend 3/8" copper tubing into various shapes and solder it directly to the pipe framework (figure C). You also can decorate the center panels with hardware cloth or wire mesh.

• Connect the panels by wiring them together with copper wire, then soldering the wire in place. The overall structure works like a big room divider—outdoors.

About Soldering

• To solder copper pipe, first clean the pipe with a wire pipe-cleaning brush.

• Fit the pieces together, brush them with liquid flux and heat them with the torch.

• When the pipes are hot, touch the solder to the joint while maintaining the heat. The heat and flux will pull the solder into the joint.