Homemade Greenhouse Bolts and Rings Fixings/Supports

I've been meaning to make this thread for a while but haven't had the time.

Anyway. I noticed early last year you could buy bolts with rings through them from Two Wests and Elliot for roughly £7 for ten plus p&p.

http://www.twowests.co.uk/product/bolts-nuts-and-rings-pack-of-10

I thought this would be ideal for supporting my tomato vines and so I showed this to the other half and said he could make those. This is what he came up with.





It only cost him roughly 5p to construct each bolt (although it may be even less than that, will have to check) Each bolt used is an M6 bolt, which I've found to be much stronger than the ones that come with my greenhouse which seemed to snap off at the first sign of stress. However the bolt's head is thicker than the channel in the roofing spars will allow so they had to be filed down.



After making one I asked him to make another 5 after a bumper tomato crop and then some for my aunt as well, who is also into growing tomatoes. In the end he had enough and decided to make a jig for each bolt.

I thought I would share this on the forum, just in case there are any other metal workers who may wish to have a stab at this.





The jig is then clamped onto the drill bench and then drilled through the hole at the top of the jig



After the hole for the ring has been drilled, the jig is then put into the chuck of the lathe to have the top of the bolt ground off by a few millimeters.





All that remains is to then cut the bolts length down and then file off the sides by hand so the bolt's head now becomes rectangular in shape. A washer and bolt are then put onto the thread and then the ring is attached.

This bolt has also been used to replace my bolts on the roofing spars. This allowed me to thread wire through the hole where the ring would go and then hang up my blinds in the greenhouse. This is a bit crude but had run out of rings at the time. I know most people use blinds that cover the whole of the greenhouse but I felt earlier last year in the spring that the weather was all over the place and needed some blinds that I would be able to take down when it was a dull day and put up again when it was blazing hot.

 

I am not a mechanical engineer but I love that jig if I had one of these plus a vertical dril years ago life would have been much easier.

My way;

Take a gutter bolt which has a relatively flat / thin head so is easily cropped / filed down to fit in the slot on the greenhouse frame as opposed to the type bolt shown in the picture.

Then I bent a piece of malleable wire in to a figure of eight and laced the bolt through one eye and the remaining eye was used for tying up.

Sometimes I bent the wire loops at right angles for horizontal fixings, I.e. I laced horizontal wires through them to support canes / strings / wires to support vines e.g. Tomatoes, Cucumbers and Beans.

Alternatively On my wooden greenhouse I would use a screw as opposed a bolt to fix the double looped wire to the frame.

So there are another couple of methods for your OH to consider.

But tell him I do like his idea very much.

As he is an engineer and I am not I see it as horses for courses and that one must make the best of what is available.

Edit; in later years I used per- holed angle brackets which were much easier to use than bent wire!

 

Great little tooled up production line post Jane . I love well presented how-to's like this

 

Good stuff JJ

In case helpful to anyone:

Nowadays the cropped bolts tend to have the head filed off on both sides so they slot into the channel, and then "lock" when they turn.

In olden times they used to have triangular heads instead. If you get a bolt with a square head, rather than hexagonal, filing one point down to make a triangular head is probably easier / less work than filing both sides.

As I remember it you had to stick the point [opposite the filed side] in first, followed by the rest of the bolt head.

 

When these pictures were taken I was going to offer them to the forum members at a reduced cost, but my OH seems too busy to do it right now. I will probably bump this thread when he is.

 

If you don't have a machine shop handy you can simply purchase a bolt like this and fit the nut into the slot and tighten the bolt.

 

To support my tomatoes now I only use the bolts shown above to anchor the upright supports and prevent them from sliding. A few pieces of framing and some sturdy dowels and twine support my tomatoes nicely. I leave them in place all year, however, it is a simple process to remove them if necessary.