I'm looking for some clamps to hold things on to some square steel box section. I need two sizes, 60x60mm and 60x20mm. I can't find any UK supplier with anything like this.
There are a number of AliExpress suppliers, e.g. :-
Are any of these suitable
Yes, possibly, I only discovered the names 'square u bolts' and/or 'c bolts' after asking the question. They're horribly expensive for some reason though.
I don't bother trying to source such stuff any more; I make up my own. I'm guessing you have someone in your area who does welding? Get 'em to make them up for you.
That's me! :-) Yes, I am thinking that a D-I-Y welding job may be the way to go.
Why weld? If it's steel strip bend it in the vice. If it's threaded bar bend it in the vice.
Bill
It does not need welding.
First, check your junk collection for suitable metal stock. Some of my metal source is "mending bars", but the bottom one is a steel strip.
[Picture]You can bend that strip and make a bracket. Here is my bracket.
[Picture]Tools: Record 4" bench vice, hammer, T-square, Sharpie Pen
The Sparpie Pen marks are "aspirational". They're not even dead center. You eyeball the sparpie line, and decide whether the bracket needs to be lifted "above" where you will be foiding, or below. Because bending with a hammer is imprecise. The strength of the blow determines how fast you bend it. You can also overbend. And if the bend is forming not where you wanted (with respect to the Sparpie line), you have to shift the work up or down in the vice jaws, so the next blows will put the 90 degree corner where it belongs. That's why you make the hammer blows to slowly form the work. You're adjusting where the fold will end up, as you work.
If it's not folding where you wanted to fold, you have to adjust both the position of the work in the vice, and also, the strength of hammer blows. Sometimes, a mushy bend, comes from not hitting the work hard enough and close enough to the vice jaws.
Two of the bends, are harder to do that the others. You put only "Half" of the work in the vice jaws, give it a couple of whacks, move the work to the other side of the vice and bend the other half of the work. Alternating back and forth, until you have your corner, and adjusting the "up" versus "down" to get the corner to form where you intended.
So there, I just saved post from Aliexpress.
Paul
does the brackets have to be that sturdy?
I've fashioned similar, but much thinner, fixings from perforated builders band
I'd already made a 'prototype' using builder's band and decided it probably wasn't *quite* robust enough.
After ruminating on it in bed this morning for a while I think I'm going for lengths of channel or angle fixed at several points along the box sections with brackets welded to the angle/channel.
I don't think mine would hold up a car :-)
The screws coming out of the wall, might be the weakest link for the bracket. Depending on what your wall is like. First you have to find something solid to anchor to. "The wall is part of your design"
Paul
There's no wall involved! It's a gazebo with 4 60mm square box section verticals and 60x20mm horizontal supports for the roof. It's solidly fixed to the ground because I welded brackets for the verticals onto metal stakes which I drive into the ground. Thus it won't blow away but it needs stronger stays than those supplied for the corners to stop it swaying (= parallelogram shape).
They use knee braces here.
With camping gear, setting guy wires and pegs, holds structures upright. Which is not really practical for this kind of structure. Guy wires are like a knee brace to earth.
This will test your civil engineering skills. Whatever you decide to do.
Paul
:-)
The existing braces are ~ 30cm strips of metal across the corners from the verticals to the roof supports. They have survived a year or so but the mounting points (nutserts) are deforming as are the struts themselves. A couple have pulled away from the nutserts completely.
The problem is that the 'design' means that the struts pull directly on the nutserts, what it needs is some sortr of strap wrapped round the box sections so that the nutserts just provide location. I am most of the way there now, I have some brackets fro Toolstation which sit around the verticals quite nicely and can be prevented from slipping along using the nutserts. I have bodged something similar on one roof support and have used a turnbuckle as the strut. It works pretty well but I need a neater soltion for the horizontals.
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