peterd51
happy to be here!
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Hi,
horrible weather today, hammering down with rain most of the time, so I decided to get stuck in and make a metal folder using a combination of drawings/plans from here and other places. I've been gathering bits of angle for a few days but the hinges were giving me some problems as I couldn't find anything suitable, the big hinges on Welderpauls folder looked best but what could I use?.
Then I found a piece of caravan jockey wheel that I'd cut up some time ago and discovered that it's one solid piece of metal inside a 'tube', and by cutting two pieces 2cm wide, I'd got the hinges...
So I cut the six pieces of angle to 23", the length of the shortest piece, scraped off the rust and applied Kurust...
Then I started joining the smaller angles inside the larger ones to form box sections...
The two main parts were done as a 'box', but I decided to make the top plate with the upright of the angle at the back, and the smaller angle would then form a triangular cross section so I could get more than 90 degrees bend on the plate. It's sort of a 'L' with a '^' welded on the bottom leg. The top plate in at the font of the bench in the next photo.
The screw down pins for the top plate are a couple of 10 x 75mm bolts with a bit of rod welded to the top. The spacers are washers with a 5 cm piece of tube in between. This shows the almost finished folder, with another piece of angle at each end to hold it all together, to give stability and clamping plates. I used the plasma to cut out the semi-circles for the hinge tube.
The handle is just three bits of tube welded up and attached...got this in the wrong 'plane' initially, I had it pointing straight out instead of down! But a bit of cutting and grinding got it sorted.
I tried a piece of dexion first, 1mm thick, no problem. Next I tried a bit of 3mm and it managed that too. The maximum angle is only 95 degrees at the moment so I may have to do a bit more grinding on the front of the top plate if I need to go any further.
Now I've done that I can get on with making a new roof-rack for the Mondeo as I'll need to fold some 3mm shapes to use as clamps. More on that later.
Regards
Peter
horrible weather today, hammering down with rain most of the time, so I decided to get stuck in and make a metal folder using a combination of drawings/plans from here and other places. I've been gathering bits of angle for a few days but the hinges were giving me some problems as I couldn't find anything suitable, the big hinges on Welderpauls folder looked best but what could I use?.
Then I found a piece of caravan jockey wheel that I'd cut up some time ago and discovered that it's one solid piece of metal inside a 'tube', and by cutting two pieces 2cm wide, I'd got the hinges...
So I cut the six pieces of angle to 23", the length of the shortest piece, scraped off the rust and applied Kurust...
Then I started joining the smaller angles inside the larger ones to form box sections...
The two main parts were done as a 'box', but I decided to make the top plate with the upright of the angle at the back, and the smaller angle would then form a triangular cross section so I could get more than 90 degrees bend on the plate. It's sort of a 'L' with a '^' welded on the bottom leg. The top plate in at the font of the bench in the next photo.
The screw down pins for the top plate are a couple of 10 x 75mm bolts with a bit of rod welded to the top. The spacers are washers with a 5 cm piece of tube in between. This shows the almost finished folder, with another piece of angle at each end to hold it all together, to give stability and clamping plates. I used the plasma to cut out the semi-circles for the hinge tube.
The handle is just three bits of tube welded up and attached...got this in the wrong 'plane' initially, I had it pointing straight out instead of down! But a bit of cutting and grinding got it sorted.
I tried a piece of dexion first, 1mm thick, no problem. Next I tried a bit of 3mm and it managed that too. The maximum angle is only 95 degrees at the moment so I may have to do a bit more grinding on the front of the top plate if I need to go any further.
Now I've done that I can get on with making a new roof-rack for the Mondeo as I'll need to fold some 3mm shapes to use as clamps. More on that later.
Regards
Peter
. Thanks for posting it.
.
I kept on having to extend the handles just to get the leverage and was tearing 6mm angle iron from the strain in my attempt when I solved that the frame started to tear which required more beefing up and nauseum..
