What you see below is what's left of my old flag pole. I've had this for about five years now and every year I have to fix or repair it because of wind damage. BTW, my flag only lasts one year before it has to be replaced because it gets shredded by the wind. This old flag pole is made out of thin aluminum tubing and I've reinforced it a few times over the years. But after I found the flag laying on the ground during a windy day recently.

This two piece pole screws together but after years of abuse from buffeting in the wind, the male threads are gone from one piece. That figures because both threads were made out of plastic. And I've had to make one half of the base because it broke in two pieces some time ago. Well enough is enough so it's time to make a new one.
 

Big Aluminum Tubing

The material for my new one is still going go be aluminum, but it will be much stronger. The old one was one inch in diameter with a .020" wall thickness. However, my new one is 1 3/4" diameter with a 1/4" wall thickness. Yes... I know it's overkill, but that's how it goes when things break, you make the next one like a tank.

This one will have a two piece pole just like my old one, but I'm not going to thread them together, I'll be using screws instead.
 

Now that's what I'm talk'n about....check out the wall thickness of this tube. And I'm pretty sure the wind won't bend this one. What I'm going to do is put bearings at both end of the upper piece. The area that I machined below is where the bearings will go, which I did on both ends. The reason for the bearings is so the flag pole will rotate with the wind. This helps keep the flag from wrapping around the pole.
 

Steel Tubing

The piece below will be placed through the upper pole, pivot on the bearings and is made out of steel. I thought about using aluminum for this piece but steel is much stronger. This piece has a one inch outside diameter with a wall thickness of 1/8". Again, I've over engineered things but I don't think it will break when I'm done either.
 

Machining

I'm turning both ends of the steel tubing so it will pass through the bearings. BTW, I'm using metric bearings because the inside diameter of the aluminum tubing is 1 1/4". So by using a metric bearing that is slightly larger than the inside of the tube and slightly smaller than the steel tube, I'm in business.
 

The way I plan to hold the two poles together is with this aluminum sleeve I made along with some screws. This piece fits inside the larger tubing and is 1 1/4" outside diameter (O.D.) X .985" inside diameter (I.D.). This odd size for the I.D. is so the steel tubing (that I machined) will side through this piece.