Made a set when I bought this cover used but never liked how they worked. Another project led to another project, which led to me remaking these brackets. They work better now, even if they took about 3 days longer to make than they probably should have.
Old brackets sagged.
New brackets don’t sag.
So the old ones were on your learning journey. Knucklebumps.
Just curious, [i kinda know the answer, but plz bear with me…] Now that you have the form and process, you can decide if you want to make “prettier” ones to finish and market. Maybe just tumble them and phosphatize them, followed by an epoxy seal. Cheaper than SS which may not be easy to find in THAT channel.
And less hazardous waste than plating or galvanizing them.
Oh wait, we have hot powder coat in house. Still have to phosphatize for that.
It doesnt bother me if you dont convert your journey into moneymaking product cuz i sure amnt stepping up to be the marketer. And lots of hobbycraft things like this arent going to make you fat chunk of change without a huge chunk in marketing. IME…
Its just my niche in industry to help innovate and then convert to larger scale manufacturability. I did this for biomedical and aerospace. And partnered with automotive teams, who were often the most interesting [upscaling manufacturability wise].
Most of all, Im glad you had a failure decorated journey that took you to better tie downs. And didnt mind sharing the imperfections and lessons learned. Its a big chunk of successfully making. Daily bite size innovations.
Respect. And some envy.
[… now i wish i had a pickup again…]
The first one is always a prototype!
Okay I have a little bit of time to provide a bit more of a response.
I have designed and marketed products in the past. In this case I don’t think there is enough of a market for this product. I have learned over the years that there’s more to making money on a project than just making and selling. The little things add up and often time is left unaccounted for. Granted, that’s not as critical to my books as it is for a large corporation, but when I look at what I charge for job work, I often find that my margins are well short of what I thought they were. Time to run to the store to get a fastener. Design time. Time lying in bed thinking about the best way to fixture something. It’s easy to forget that stuff.
