{"id":693,"date":"2009-04-29T20:51:19","date_gmt":"2009-04-30T03:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/04\/the-wedding-treehouse-bracket-fabrication\/"},"modified":"2018-11-21T10:17:39","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T18:17:39","slug":"the-wedding-treehouse-bracket-fabrication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/the-wedding-treehouse-bracket-fabrication\/","title":{"rendered":"The Circular Treehouse – Bracket Fabrication"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I bought some 4\u201d wide by 1\/4\u201d thick steel from SIMS metal in San Jose with the intent on using it to make brackets. Now, 4\u201d would be perfect if I used 4x4s for the knee braces, which I would ideally want to use. However, I have 2x8s for free, so I\u2019m going to use those. To create a bracket that holds them, I need 2\u201d wide pieces of steel. At first, I figured I\u2019d just cut the 4\u201d pieces down to size, but I quickly discovered how hard that was to do with a sawzall or jigsaw (with metal cutting blades, of course).<\/p>\n

So, I went back to SIMs and bought some 2\u201d wide 1\/4\u201d stock mild steel \u2014 this is perfect for the 1.5\u201d wide \u201c2x8s\u201d, since the two 1\/4\u201d sides takes up the extra 1\/2\u201d.<\/p>\n

I took some pictures with my good camera and the iPhone. I\u2019ll use the latter since I have them handy on my computer already. I used the mill to create 1.5\u201d spaces out of some square tubing I had; I used them to ensure the spacing was correct when I welded the brackets together. I drilled the holes *after* welding, which was a mistake, since the top was really chattery when I drilled it. I drilled it after to ensure the holes lined up, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Instead of doing that, I now realize I could have just drilled the two sides together at the same time *before* I welded them. Oh well!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0233.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It is really tricky welding 1\/4\u201d steel with an oxy-acetylene torch. I used my dad\u2019s old #2 or #3 tip and old torch, which leaked slightly at first and caught on fire near the handle. A quick tightening with the wrench prevented subsequent fires, and I used gloves from then on since it was super-hot welding with lots of heat in order to melt the thick steel. I got some good welds on the outside, but the inside welds are ugly and hard to hit. It makes me wish I had a wire feed MIG welder for quick and dirty stuff like this. I vastly underestimated the time it would take to weld the brackets ,and it took me several evenings of work, and almost an entire Saturday to finish most of them.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a shot of the lower knee braces. I intended to have the hole for the 3\/4\u201d bolt to be at the bottom of the brace (more on that later). You can also see the small 1.5\u201d square tubing spacer that I used when welding and drilling:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0245.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For fun, I used the mill to square off the 45 degree angles. It would have been faster to just do it with a file, but the mill makes cleaner and more precise cuts.<\/p>\n

For drilling, I used my drill press and a bunch of the T2 tapered drill bits I got with my lathe:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0246.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I really need to learn how to sharpen drill bits. I tend to just destroy the tips. I did use cutting fluid while drilling, and drilled out the sizes a few times when working up to 3\/4\u201d inches. The brackets will hang off the tree with a single 3\/4\u201d lag bolt (more details on that later \u2014 I had trouble finding the right ones). The wooden 2×8 knee brace will attach to the bracket with two 5\/8\u201d bolts. It\u2019ll be solid (or, so I hope).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bought some 4\u201d wide by 1\/4\u201d thick steel from SIMS metal in San Jose with the intent on using it to make brackets. Now, 4\u201d would be perfect if I used 4x4s for the… [read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[156,101],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-treehouses","tag-circular-treehouse","tag-treehouse"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/img-0233.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5777,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions\/5777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}