Turn steel bars for metal fence yourself
A metal fence looks a lot nicer when the steel bars are twisted in certain places. Turning the bars is not that difficult. Anyone with a little knowledge of metalworking can do this work themselves.
If you know a little about metalworking, you are certainly able to build a metal fence yourself. Welding simple tubes or rods into the frame, however, looks a bit boring. Twisted steel rods bring about a clear visual enhancement. You can easily turn the bars yourself. All you have to do is make a so-called tap wrench beforehand.
Build a tap wrench to turn the bars
To turn steel bars for a metal fence, you need a tap wrench, which you cannot get in every hardware store. So you have to make one yourself.
- To do this, you need flat steel that is 40 mm wide and 10 mm thick. The length should be 20 cm.
- Drill a hole with a diameter of 10 mm exactly in the middle of the flat steel. You clamp the flat steel in a vice and file a square with a triangular file from the hole. The square hole should have an edge length of 10.5 mm.
- Drill a 12mm hole 50mm from each end of the flat bar. Use an angle grinder to cut from the end of the flat steel to the hole so that a slot 12 mm wide is created.
- Weld a 12 mm round steel bar with a length of 200 mm each into both slots. These serve as handles.
The M18x1.5 thread is a metric fine thread. Since it is not the standard thread ...
Turn the steel bars for the metal fence
- For your metal fence, the steel bars should not all be rotated in the same position. It looks much more appealing if you offset the rotations. It is entirely up to your personal taste whether you prefer an even pattern or not.
- Mark the positions at which the rotations should begin with a scriber. You clamp the steel rod in a vice so that the marked position corresponds exactly with the upper edge of the clamping jaws of the vice.
- Then put a 20 cm long 1/2-inch pipe over the steel rod. This only serves as a spacer.
- Put the tap wrench you made earlier on it. The square hole fits exactly over the rod. If not, you'll need to file it a little bigger.
- Now turn the tap wrench two turns clockwise. Then remove the tap wrench and the pipe again. You are sure to be amazed at how professional your work looks.
When turning steel bars for your metal fence, keep in mind that this will make the bars a little shorter. It is therefore important to cut them to the required size only after they have been completely processed.
