wow thank you for all the great suggestions. this is where I'm at
The things I'm having problems with now are:
I can't delete the small protrusion of pipe inside the large elbow. I've selected the two items and intersected them but no luck. I've tried every way I can think of to do this so I'd love some suggestions : )
I can't see an inner wall on the small pipe even though the dimensions are there. I went through these steps to make it.
-I drew a guide line on the axis I wanted.
-Drew a line long enough to have the pipe penetrate the large elbow.
-Drew two circles on the plane perpendicular to the line
-highlighted the line and extruded the inner circle
-intersected the inner wall and the large elbow then deleted the section of the large elbow that blocked the hole where the two intersected
-selected the 5mm shape in-between the two circles and extruded it.
then the inner wall dissapears.. plus i can't delete the lower section that protrudes into the elbow no matter how I intersect the peices...