fasten wood to steel

[colinh1301]

Hi there,

I have a shed which needs the doors re covering. The doors are made of 50mm box section and are covered in corrugated steel. I want to replace the corrugated steel with T&G wood. What is the best way to fasten the wood to the steel.

I was considering either fastening the planks directly onto the steel frame - self tappers?

or

fastening some wooden beams onto the steel frame - weld on some threaded steel bar and bolt the beams on ??

I've come across rivinuts, would these be of any use

Cheers
Colin

 

[Paul.]

Hi
I suppose it depends how secure you want your doors to be, if you use self tappers or tap the box section the fixings are accessible from the outside and can be unscrewed easily, you could use security screws such as screwfix 19677-89, or why not use plain headed coach bolts and drill through the box section with nylock nuts on the inside, loads of different ways really

 

[rtbcomp]

I would go for coach bolts and Nylocs too. Those silly square nuts usually associated with coach bolts are a waste of time. Stainless coach bolts would be nice.

 

[colinh1301]

Thanks for that,

I dont really want to take the doors down (they are large). How easy would it be to drill that many holes in the box section with the doors in place?

cheers
colin

 

[rtbcomp]

Thanks for that,

I dont really want to take the doors down (they are large). How easy would it be to drill that many holes in the box section with the doors in place?

cheers
colin

Dead easy - hold the drill horizontally instead of vertically.

 

[colinh1301]

Thanks for the insight, and there was me thinking the floor mounted drill press would be a bit akward to handle

 

[Paul.]

You only need M6 coach bolts, buy a pack of decent drills and It ll be easy, a cutting oil such as Rocol RTD will help, every engineer should have some in their toolbox

 

[Hitch]

You could weld a piece of flat or even angle, inside the box top and bottom, and perhaps one across the middle, then youd only need to drill one thickness of material, and the back of the coach bolts wouldnt be stuck out

If you want speed, you could use tek screws or csk self drillers, but not high security.

 

[Drains]

Use self drillers/tappers, then stick a blob of weld on the heads so they're unscrewable.

 

[Paul.]

Use pozi self tappers and drill the head out, like I said loads of different ways really

 

[Hitch]

I think the coach bolts would look the best.

 

[Paul.]

I think the coach bolts would look the best.

Yea, thats how I'd do it, makes it easy repairable in the future

 

[colinh1301]

Coach bolts it is then.

Thanks for all the advice.

Cheers
Colin

 

[wyn]

hello colin,

you may want to look out for the wood and steel expanding and contracting at different rates and causing door jamming problems. Ihave encountered this quite a bit.

 

[colinh1301]

thanks for the tip. Its an old barn so I dont think the clearances will be tight enough for it to be a problem

 

[gavuk]

if its a lot of t&g ,i would consider mounting batten/wood to the box and using wood screws to attach t&g to batten ,drill out heads as already mentioned ......

 

[colinh1301]

what about these?

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/15279...-Sheet-to-Steel-Purlin-5-5-x-38mm-Pack-of-100

Cheers
Colin

 

[wyn]

what about these?

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/15279...-Sheet-to-Steel-Purlin-5-5-x-38mm-Pack-of-100

Cheers
Colin

They would work ok but won't look as nice as coach bolts (but much less work).

If you use them look out for the wood running back up the screw thread when the screw comes up against the steel.