DIY levelling beams

PeteC

I have tried a few different options in the past year but having found how cheap is it to get metal sections cut from mild steel and Ali, I decided to knock a couple of beams up. 

Both are “ precision hand ground” as the suppliers like to say ….   

I have a nice piece of granite worktop which is very very flat, so with some lapping with 80 and 320 grit papers and tested with a veritable straight edge and feeler gauges they are totally true. 

https://imgur.com/gallery/2NmeRpf 

I sourced the metal from metals4u - easy to find online and decent prices.  

What are other people using here? 

randella

Nice work!

I have a cheap 600mm level from Wickes that is absolutely true down one side. We have the same straight edge, and I've used it to check.

Dumb luck I guess, the level can't even have cost a tenner.

PeteC

@randella    Good find, they're not always that good in DIY stores.  - I forgot to add in the original post that the metal for both of the two beams was only £11. 

randella

PeteC said:

@randella    Good find, they're not always that good in DIY stores.  - I forgot to add in the original post that the metal for both of the two beams was only £11. 

Brilliant, always nice to find a low-cost solution. It gives you a wider surface too, that's the downside with mine. It could do with having twice the surface area.

To be honest, I bought the level to use as a level. It was only a few years later when I needed to sort a guitar out that I checked it for true.

The luck with the level was balanced out by the framing (non-square) square I was using one afternoon to turn a nice bit of wood into a large parallelogram. 

So I've had one tool meant to be true that wasn't, and one designed for something else entirely that's very accurate!