Initial assembly

Meghan was looking for something at least six feet tall, with eight inches into the ground, so at least 6'-8" tall. Since those bars come in 10' lengths, I was able to make this taller - about 7', including the pagoda top. That top is welded to the 3/8" square support bars, but the rings are just twist-tied in place. I welded the top to the supports while flat on my table. The first two bars were welded to opposite corners of the top, using guidelines on the table to make sure they were square to the top base. Getting the other bars welded was challenging.

I rotated the assembly 90°, which meant sliding one of the bars under the table. I made some wooden supports/fixtures to hold up the bar that was suspended over the table and keep it centered. Those fixtures were also used to position the new bars while welding to the top. This, surprisingly enough, worked out pretty much the way it worked out in my head. I call that a win.

The new partial assembly was strong and stable enough to stand upright without the rings. That was a bonus!. It meant I could just tie the rings into the vertical structure to position them. I like to use aircraft safety wire to tie things together. This is 18 gauge (I think) stainless steel, flexible, wire. It was originally used to wrap around screws behind nuts to keep them from vibrating loose. It's now used to tie things together, like trellis rings to support bars.

Tying the rings tightly to the bars provided plenty of additional support while allowing me to tap the rings to adjust spacing. I also needed to make sure the structure was at a perfect right angle (or close enough) to the floor. The technical term is "plumb".  I used a makeshift "plum bob", which was just a weight tied to a clothesline cord. I didn't care where the bob pointed - I was using the thick, white cord to visually align the structure itself plumb to the floor. Thankfully the support bars were parallel, but they weren't the same lengths. I'm not sure how that happened, because cutting to length is pretty simple. There must have been some subtle differences in the positions on the top. Anyway, I needed to do some shimming to get the structure vertical.

And then it was a simple matter to get the first ring level with the floor and tweak the others so the spacing was the same all the way up. The fixtures used there were just boards cut to the correct spacing and clamped to the support bars. Then the rings were welded on and the support bars were cut to the right lengths. Next was finishing up the welding and weld cleaning. Now to the paint "shop".