Hi,
I'm about to put the finishing touches to my wardrobe. I just need to decide whether to buy a 19mm or 25mm rail to hang the clothes from. Is the 25mm one thicker and stronger or is it just a cosmetic choice?
TIA
What about oval? Seems it should be stronger in the direction that matters:
I would definitely second that. Ikea use oval rails in their wardrobes and they seem never to bow, over a 1m run. If sizes are compatible, their rails might be a good solution, as you can get them separately, with brackets, in 1m and 0.5m sizes. I guess they can be cut down but they do have a notch that engages with the bracket which might be tricky to introduce to a cut down one.
Thanks for all the replies. I hadn't considered oval before; I will look into that.
It will be 6' wide.
I saw some circular tube in Wickes and the wall thickness looked about the same for 19mm and 25mm so I did wonder whether they would be as strong as each other but then I remembered how much harder it is to bend 22mm pipe compared to 15mm, so there must be more to it that wall thickness.
Stiffness is proportional to wall thicknees and to the square of the diameter, so diameter is more important than length...er, what were we talking about?
Thanks for the explanation. I was thinking cross sectional area was going to be involved, so I was thinking along (almost) the right lines.
Sort of: stiffness is proportional to the I value which for a thin tube (according to Roark's Formulae) = pi R^3t, so for a given wall thickness proportional to R^3 (or D^3)
That will need at least one if not two or three supports along it's length. Clothes are surprisingly heavy.
Thanks, I had planned to do that. I was going to put a shelf above the rail and screw the centre supports into that and end supports into the wall. Do you think a sheet of contiboard would be strong enough to hold the central supports?
I may reduce the span, if I decide to partition it and put some shelves on one side.
Probably not. I suspect it would sag in the middle. You could stiffen it by creating a front edge from another piece of contiboard. I put a piece of 3x2 across the wardrobe as a shelf support and hung the rail of that. Then a three inch lip on the shelf to hide it.
It will have either end attached to the wall to take some of the weight. I was going to put something along the front of the contiboard to stiffen it, though I hadn't planned anything as large as 3x2. Sorry to mix my units, I was going to use 18x44mm but perhaps this would be no use?
My original question was more whether the screws might be pulled out of chipboard or contiboard by the weight but I suppose chipboard comes in many densities. For some reason, I always think of a coarse chipboard and I am sure they aren't as bad as that in real life.
I'll leave others to respond. The structural elements of mine were all built from timber. It is quite likely that it was over-engineered but the last one had been in place for 20 years and had fallen apart. I want mine to last that long but still be going. Only time will tell.
Sorry, I misread your post. I see that you used the 3x2 to support the rail along the middle of the shelf. On my first read, I thought you had it along the front edge of the shelf. My 18x44 was going to stiffen he front of the shelf, not hold the rail down the middle. Possibly I might use your idea of something to support that too.
Although to be fair the front of the shelf is not far in front of the
3x2 because the shelf is only a little over half the depth of the wardrobe.This was the best compromise I could find to allow access to the shelf where the wardrobe doors do not go all the way to the ceiling.
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