Wire Rope Thimble Stainless DIY

Product Description

High quality thimbles for on-site assembling of residential stainless steel wire balustrades. Comprises corrosion resistant smooth polished body and manufactured from 304 grade stainless steel instead of 316 to give the required added strength necessary to form a tensioned connection, use with 3.2mm 7 x 7 wire rope only.

Features include:

• Manufactured from high quality marine grade AISI 304 batch traceable and tested stainless steel components.
• Suitable for coastal, marine and long service life applications.
• Designed for simple cost effective installations using either timber or steel posts.
• No special skills required for installation.
• Require for forming loops with DIY 7 x 7 wire rope to attach tensioners and also to attach to post fittings
• To be used with hand swager

What do I need to make my own DIY balustrade?

To make your own lengths of balustrade on site you will need:

• 7 x 7 wire rope
• 1 thimble and a ferrule for each end of the wire to make the loops (2 thimbles and 2 ferrules per run)
• 1 rigging/turnbuckle screw from the DIY range to tighten the wire (only need 1 per run as the other end will be directly fixed to your post)
• You will also need wire cutters and a swaging tool to compress the ferrule and complete the swage. 
• Then you just need to decide how you want to fix it to your posts and order your fittings, all post fittings styles can be purchased from our post fitting section.

How many do I need?

Regulations for wire balustrades mostly relate to wire tension, typically the underside of a handrail will be 960mm or slightly above and so to achieve the required tension the space between wires should be around 80mm, therefore most balustrade sections consist of 11 runs. To maintain the required regulatory tension the distance between end or intermediate posts should typically be no more than 1.5 metres with a maximum run length of 7 metres if using only 1 rigging or turnbuckle screw to tighten.

For long lengths your total metre-age may be split into 2 runs - we'd reccomend trying to keep runs under 7m in length where possible as tightening up runs over 7m becomes difficult.