Making bolts - continued

[Andy Dingley]

In steel - sod-all difference.

Wrought iron, whole different story.

[Andy Dingley]

I can show you a Victorian roof restoration that collapsed because some pillock of an architect's tea-boy specified high-tensile bolts, instead of Whitworth into cast iron, as the good Joseph intended. Seems you can have one or the other, but not both - and if it's cast iron, you're better off with a thread that can actually be tapped into the iron, no matter how strong the bolts themselves are.

[Mark]

well you can certainly get grade R BSW bolts, i still have a few dozen boxes of them in my workshop.

-

[Thomas Prufer]

I'd probably box, label, document and keep the old bolts, too. Just in case...

Thomas Prufer

[Jules Richardson]

Duct tape and baling wire and job's a good'un... ;-)

[The Other Mike]

The lack of radius under the head should make any engineer with a reputation to maintain reject them if they are carrying 'significant load'

But are they really carrying significant load? I thought earlier you said they were bolting through ancient softwood, in fact holding on 'softwood' were the words.

Message-ID:

"But much stronger than the 109 year-old softwood that the bolts are holding on."

But it could be a big bit of softwood but then again it's 1/2" diameter material which can carry more than a few tonnes. So it's a really, really big bit of softwood then? Or there are other external loads in which case its not really holding on 109 year old softwood.

Has the softwood been tested?

Undoubtedly some of the original bolts are a bit bent but probably a bit of heat from a welding torch and a few minutes with a vice and a soft faced hammer would fix it.

Overall It sounds like a lot of time and effort to make lots of new bolts that are probably inferior to the original when a few hours of unattended rust removal and half an hour minor graft with a thread file or die nut would have brought the originals back to near new. Maybe you could have sacrificed one bolt to proof testing at local university. You'd then might find the factor of safety was way in excess of that required for modern public transport vehicles.

[Matty F]

Actually 18 pieces of softwood.

[Matty F]

Yes I was using a proper die. Yes it has a lead in. Yes I was using it the right way around. The original die was damaged, which explains why it was hard to use, so I got another die of identical type which cut well. Yes the job is now finished.

[Tim Lamb]

So what comes next?

regards

[Matty F]

The bolts will be treated aganst rust. My part is finished except for cutting the bolts to length when the new timberwork is done. The existing timber was added wrongly many years ago and is being replaced to match the original.