Ideas wanted for a cheap lightweight inner skin for a garage door

Difficult - unless you have access to unobtanium ;-) You're asking for sthg with a bit of hardness/rigidity, to protect the Celotex from casual knocks, which suggests "dense"; add "dense" to "hard" ahd we run into "better not make it a very thin layer or it'll be too brittle"; and then we take "dense" and "not too thin" and run smack into "needs to weigh (substantially) less than oil-tempered hardboard per unit area". Oh, and you want cheap and decent-looking too. Well, I can see why you're reduced to posting here, at least ;-)

It's the weight requirement which seems to me hardest to meet. Sheets of corrugated cardboard, with a couplacoats o' varnish to stiffen - but will look rather cack-handed, and not be all that brilliant on the fire-hazard front, either ;-( How light is the thinnest-available acrylic sheeting? Any chance of using your hardboard only on likelier-to-be-knocked bits (say up to a foot or so from the bottom, a strip around the sides, and behind the handle)?

Hmm, the desk here has some slides (of the overhead-projector variety) littering it - fancy PVAing a fascinating talk on Internet security all over the inside of your garage? ;-)

Hoping some other member of the Brains Trust here has got theirs working today, cos mine's fresh out - Stefek

get some thin sheets of aluminium, not cheap I know, but the only thing that will fulfill your criteria.

mrcheerful

Make enquiries about damaged 8x4 sheets, sometimes they can be had from merchants or fabricators etc. at reasonable cost.

You can get very lightweight foamed plastic sheet - not sure what its called or where you get it but it is quite quite hard - like tough polystyrene.

"Mike Harrison" wrote | You can get very lightweight foamed plastic sheet - not sure | what its called or where you get it but it is quite quite hard | - like tough polystyrene.

Foamex is one name or generic term. There is also Correx which is plastic corrugated cardboard IYSWIM. Sign-makers will have it in small quantities. Correx is used for cheap signs and estate agents boards.

Owain

Thanks Mike and Owain, that sounds like the answer - I can't find any prices on the web so I'll do some phoning around.

Not very strong though, something that is needed on something like an up and over door I would have thought.

You could try brown paper (cheap) or strong cloth like calico (less cheap) glued on with pva and toughened up with paint, varnish, anything. Very tough with resin. I guess there is a glassfibre cloth which would be better still.

cheers

Jacob

Dave wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@uni-berlin.de:

you could try Metal Supermarkets - there's one in Southampton if you are in hursley or check out the thin (24swg ? ) aluminium used for gas fire closure plates