12' Racks available - would there be any benefit from doing it in one piece?
 

I was cruzing the interent and came across 12' section of racks for 80 Dollars. Not bad but I dont have a clue what the freight would be or if it would be worth it. I know you can do it with 2 seperate pieces but would there be any benefit from doing it in one piece? I will have to call to figure out what freight would be but I cant imagine that it will be that cheap.

I was reading that they can ship UPS up to 100" but they charge 90 dollars for that piece. They have a hefty cutting fee.

Russell, I would base my response on the number of problems folk who have had with joints in shorter racks. Sounds very quiet out there.....

Agreed. Splicing the racks was a trivial problem.

What's the chances of them being bent during freight? Pretty high I would have thought

Russell,

It isn't worth the extra shipping to buy the racks in one piece. There is no advantage if you got the shipping for free because you don't notice the connection. You should not have any problem putting together the two pieces.

Jed,
Whomever you get from..McMaster, SSS, etc, the racks come in a nice UPS/FEDEX friendly tube. Chances of getting bent are slim. I would fear that the 12' length would actually have a high chance of damage because the freight company's don't have a clue on how to handle objects that aren't shrink wrapped to a 42x44 pallet. :)

Sean

If the racks are bundled together tightly, it will take some serious effort to bend them, but loosely packed then that is another story.

Thanks guys, I had a feeling that it wouldnt be worth it (280.00usd for shipping) I just wanted to make sure I wasnt passing up something that might make life a little easier.

Russell,

We are building cheap.... that doesn't mean it is going to be easy. Easy is preground rails.....:D

Nils, tell us again how long it took you to drill all those holes and screw the rails together :D

Gerald,

You must some elephant in you. It was worth all the trouble. I bet it was easier then grounding them..... it has to be less dirt.

Nils I dont think the grinding is going to be bad. I tried a small piece at work the other day and it went pretty quickly. I am pretty sure you could do it in a day maybe 2.

Cheap? Money is just disappearing quickly and still have more to purchase.

Sean

The point you raise is the very thing I was aluding to ;) We ordered our racks out of Hong Kong in 1m lengths, the way I recieved mine (not how they were originally packed (group order) was such that they would physically need to try VERY hard to damage them in transit, the long slender nature of 12' piece of rack would most definitely increase the chances of it being damaged.

Russel,
USD 280 just for the shipping? I bet you can get away at half of that if you send them done professionally at your local friendly workshop.
Gerald is right, (again) to pre-ground rails will save some serious time.
Cutting is the easy part, grinding the edge will take a lot more time. Its not difficult once you get the hang of it, just laborious, (& dirty...) it took me just under 2 weeks to complete the whole 10meter of rails... (& more then a 50 liter bucket of dust....)

I'll put my money on the pre-ground rail if I have the money waiting to get disappear ;)