Steel Awaits my Mighty Touch

I need a new railing for the back steps. There are only a couple of steps. The old railing is steel, and whoever made it sunk the upright parts in the concrete. He apparently shoved them into round holes and then filled the holes, but he didn’t fill them enough to make them level with the surrounding concrete, so they hold a little water. Naturally, the steel rusted away.

I’m fairly sure it’s impossible to extract the old steel and do it this way again. I think the best thing is to ream the holes out until I can put some patching stuff in there and sand it off level. Then I can attach the new railing with bolts through flanges, like an intelligent person.

Help me out here. I’m considering buying some sturdy steel pipe, cutting it to size, and welding it together. Then I’ll weld flanges to the bottoms of the upright bits and bolt them to the step with lag shields, or I’ll sink the bolts into epoxy, which would probably be better.

Think this will work? Galvanized fence posts weld up nice once you get the zinc off, but I’m thinking I could find something heavier. It wouldn’t be any harder to work on, because I am Tool Man and have no fear of thick steel.

I refuse to pay for regular steel at Home Depot. Twenty bucks for a frigging six-foot square tube? Insane. I can get better stuff out of people’s trash for nothing.