Garage spring broken

[Richard J Kinch]

It's just a coil of ASTM A229 steel wire. The market price per pound is about that of steel rebar. What does 5 or 10 pounds of that cost at a retailer? About 1/10 of what you're paying.

[CR]

Doha! I should have thought of that. Just go out and buy10 lbs of A229 oil tempered wire and bring it home. Then I just cinch a pipe down in my vise and wind my own torsion springs around it and install them on my garage door. Think of the savings. Maybe I should just get rebar because it is a lot easier to bend and would be less trouble. ......Wait a minute, what about a bungee cord, yea that's the ticket.

CR

[Richard J Kinch]

It may be news to you, but products fabricated "simply" (cut, bent, twisted, etc) from standard steel shapes and alloys tend to cost a small proportion over the steel itself, in a good market. If Home Depot sold torsion springs like they sold rebar (they won't), they would sell for about the same $/lb.

So the DIY problem reduces to finding ready retail sources that approach this market efficiency. Otherwise you pay $55 to a snickering dealer who bought it for $5.

[CR]

Richard says: "It may be news to you, but products fabricated "simply" (cut, bent, twisted, etc) from standard steel shapes and alloys tend to cost a small proportion over the steel itself, in a good market."

Richard, It may be news to you, but springs are not simply fabricated. They cost is not in proportion to the materials price but the machinery to wind the coils, the labor to run the machinery, the cost of heat treating the finished coils, the overhead for the building to house the machinery and store the product. Throw in shipping costs, then the markup to the distributors and then the markup to me because I'm too stupid to buy a length of bulk wire and do the above myself. It's not an easy thing to make a small spring from say, .010 wire. Let alone trying to make a torsion spring from .250 or bigger wire, can you say "don't try this at home". The next time you run into those $5 springs, pickme up a couple and I'll give you $10 plus shipping.

CR

[Richard J Kinch]

Torsion springs are wholesaled by weight, and the price tracks the steel market, just like structural steel. I agree, I'm not gonna smelt ore and forge I-beams in my workshop, any more than torsion springs. But anybody paying $55 for a few pounds of curled-up ASTM A229 wire is paying convenience-store prices. I'll continue to get mine drop-shipped from the mill.