Stuff you have made today

[Windy Miller]

A 50x10 flat bar with x4 rawl bolts into the wall.

Hmm. Nice job. I’m paranoid about rawl bolts splitting the bricks near a corner. I always use resin unless they’re a good 3 or 4 bricks in from the edge.

I’m sure my neurosis is totally unfounded, but I’m a belt, braces, and fitted trousers kind of guy!

 

[Brad93]

Hmm. Nice job. I’m paranoid about rawl bolts splitting the bricks near a corner. I always use resin unless they’re a good 3 or 4 bricks in from the edge.

I’m sure my neurosis is totally unfounded, but I’m a belt, braces, and fitted trousers kind of guy!

I prefer resin myself but it’s mucky stuff and does take time to set. I may well use resin on the other walls as I do hate rawlbolts. Through bolts are a bit better but I don’t like cutting off the bolts, even if you use domed nuts it still looks odd.

 

[Tupers]

Did some fancy welds, added pegs for rules and flung some 5 wheel silver around. That’s one complete air tool rack.

 

[Fraserb]

I prefer resin myself but it’s mucky stuff and does take time to set. I may well use resin on the other walls as I do hate rawlbolts. Through bolts are a bit better but I don’t like cutting off the bolts, even if you use domed nuts it still looks odd.

Thunder bolts are the answer, I genuinely use 100's a year.

 

[Brad93]

Thunder bolts are the answer, I genuinely use 100's a year.

Never heard of them will have to have a look

I have heard of them, concrete bolts.

 

[Fraserb]

Never heard of them will have to have a look

I have heard of them, concrete bolts.

I've bolted some temporary gate posts down with them and it's amazing the load they can take, easier and quicker than rawl bolts.

 

[Barking Mat]

That chemical resin is amazing.

I had some left over which needed using up, and glued two off cuts of concrete fence post together, I've tried sledge hammering it to no avail, as a destructive testing experiment.

Don't forget to blow out the holes with a compressor first.

No compressor to hand? Child's drink straw, close your eyes...

 

[cianh91]

+1 for thunder bolts or concrete bolts fast effective and great strenght.
we had to fit brackets to really old walls on the bossmans pub and where a lot of lads struggled to get a fitting to hold id no problems atal

 

[Windy Miller]

Ok so thunder/concrete bolts seem to be quite popular. I think I bought some for a job once but never used them.

Do you need to be very fussy about the hole size? Suppose I wobble a bit and the 12mm hole ends up being 13.5mm - would that seriously compromise the strength of the fixing?

 

[Brad93]

That chemical resin is amazing.

I had some left over which needed using up, and glued two off cuts of concrete fence post together, I've tried sledge hammering it to no avail, as a destructive testing experiment.

Don't forget to blow out the holes with a compressor first.

No compressor to hand? Child's drink straw, close your eyes...

I’ve got the Fischer kit with the cleaning rods, blowgun and nice heavy duty applicator gun.

The Fischer gear comes in different price levels. The top end stuff, £15-20 a tube is even stronger.

 

[Dcal]

Ok so thunder/concrete bolts seem to be quite popular. I think I bought some for a job once but never used them.

Do you need to be very fussy about the hole size? Suppose I wobble a bit and the 12mm hole ends up being 13.5mm - would that seriously compromise the strength of the fixing?

I don't like thunder bolts.
I have used them and they are OK for concrete. Ive even used them in safety critical applications.

They are very dependent on what they are being screwed into but the main thing I don't like about them is they have a very course thread and the torque required to get good clamping force is quite large and very possibly more than the substrate can take (certainly if it's light weight block) Think of the mechanical advantage you get when tightening a nut on a bit 12mm stud bar compared to a Thunder Bolt.

Chemical anchor is a far better solution as they are brilliant at spreading the load from the fixing into the substrate and you have lots of choice as to what you use for a fixing.
Also there are loads of options between quickest setting and strongest bond.
There is no point in using a pure epoxy like Hilti RE500 (at £40 odd a tube) if you are wanting to fix a picture into a block wall.

Only downsides (and where the Thunder bolts do excel) is you can't remove them with out making a mess (although coring them out works) and the cost of the mixing nozzles for small one off jobs.

 

[zx9]

Chemical anchor is a far better solution as they are brilliant at spreading the load from the fixing into the substrate and you have lots of choice as to what you use for a fixing.
Also there are loads of options between quickest setting and strongest bond.
There is no point in using a pure epoxy like Hilti RE500 (at £40 odd a tube) if you are wanting to fix a picture into a block wall.

Must be over fifteen years ago and I expect things have moved on but we used to use fischer (?) chemical anchors, the resin was in a glass tube. You drilled the hole, blew out the remaining dust, inserted a glass vial then hammered in a stainless steel stud which broke the glass vial, come back in a hour or so and fix to the stud we used them to fix 64" plasma screens to block work in the days when a plasma screen weighed about a kilo per diagonal inch.
They were great, very little mess, no mixing and no unused resin to go off before the next job.

 

[Munkul]

Slightly better than thunder bolts IMO are Reisser screws

REI52CF CONCRETE FRAME SCREWS

Love these things, very positive and strong fitting.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Must be over fifteen years ago and I expect things have moved on but we used to use fischer (?) chemical anchors, the resin was in a glass tube. You drilled the hole, blew out the remaining dust, inserted a glass vial then hammered in a stainless steel stud which broke the glass vial, come back in a hour or so and fix to the stud we used them to fix 64" plasma screens to block work in the days when a plasma screen weighed about a kilo per diagonal inch.
They were great, very little mess, no mixing and no unused resin to go off before the next job.

I know the ones you mean.

Very good.

The ones we use, from out CCTV supplier are a stud, in a glass tube. You drill the hole, blow out. @barking mat We uses a 6mm plastic tube. Insert the stud and vile. Tap down, go for a coffee, in an hour good to go.
The issue I find is the 16mm bit eats our company batteries on the drills.

 

[jimbo84]

Needed a bit more shelf space in the garage, had some 40x5mm flat and some scaff boards going spare. A rough sand and varnish of the boards and resinned studs into the wall apart from the bottom two as the resin ran out so just some screws in the bottom fixings.

 

[Al Strachan]

SWMBO's been nagging me for weeks to paint an old garden table. Again, no before pics, but imagine a cheap looking powder coatet white and big flaking rust spots. She wanted it cream or white again.

Set about the thing on Sunday with the blowtorch, wire brush and scotch pad. The thing looked pretty good with a mix of rust, bluing from the torch, shiny bits etc. Had an old tin of 1k lacquer in the shed that would have ended up in the skip in a couple of years, so threw that on instead.

Maybe not to everyones taste, but 10 points earned with SWMBO!

 

[cianh91]

id have that in the house its a really nice design (think it wouldnt look anywhere near as good in white or cream)

 

[Lewis_RX8]

View attachment 231184

Lovley "Patina" , Think that's what that word means anyway.

Found that on one of my old hammer a bit of lacquer of oil for tools really brings it up.

 

[RichardM]

but 10 points earned with SWMBO!

She's the one who matters looks good to me too

 

[Munkul]

last night I "made" my press brake fold stuff evenly!
I've been at it a few times and probably made things worse rather than better, so last night brother and I set to, and took all the tooling off, and all the tool holders.

1. checked table flatness with weights and 0.8mm welding wire. Has a 10 thou or so bow upwards in the middle - that's fine, it's a centre ram press, to be expected.
2. check parallelism with the top face - within a few thou. Spot on!
3. clean up wedge tool holders with wire brush, rags and WD40.
4. Refit end holders, clock them to 1 thou.
5. refit each holder left to right, clocking each one off the reference one on the right to a few thou each, accounting for the bow upwards in the middle.
6. refit top punch tool in centre, and bottom die tool to suit. Centre using the press with very low force - maybe 1 ton or so.
7. check flatness. Die tools are on their last legs, needed packing quite a bit at one end. check a few more times doing test folds.
8. finally do a little job for a customer - 4 sides folded up into a shallow tray. RIGHT FIRST TIME

I went home with a grin on my face - because up til now, everything was a struggle!