Thread: Big shed door

They were called overshot rollers. They allowed the door edge to slide beyond the track length. The over shot was usually enough to bring the door edge in line or beyond the jamb when opened to give full width of the opening.

Originally Posted by rustynail

They were called overshot rollers. They allowed the door edge to slide beyond the track length. The over shot was usually enough to bring the door edge in line or beyond the jamb when opened to give full width of the opening.

Thanks rustynail.
So the wheels hit a stop at the end of the track and the door can keep going a bit ?
Has me wondering why wouldn't they make the track longer . I suppose there must be situations where it cant be ?

Rob

edit spelling

Originally Posted by auscab

Thanks rustynail.
So the wheels hit a stop at the end of the track and the door can keep going a bit ?
Has me wondering why wouldn't they make the track longer . I suppose their must be situations where it cant be ?

Rob

everything stops when the wheel (or the door) hits a stop
The pic you show above is a good example where the offset helps. The track can't extend past the 90* wall so the door can get further away from the opening... if you ignore the floor stop, it seems its' still got some travel in it before it would get to the limit on the rail.

Oh Yep . Now I see it .
Hell, I was staring at that thing yesterday and it wasn’t making sense !

I can see that the track can’t go beyond the 90o wall but what about the upright frame the wheel fits into? The wheel hits a stop but if the door keeps moving so does the upper wheel frame on the door. Seems to me if you have to allow for the door and the frame to keep moving into a space wouldn’t be just as easy to extend the track?

not sure I quite understand your point. I wonder if you're talking about the axle / wheel assembly moving horizontally in the slot that it has? I had assumed, perhaps incorrectly but it's hard to tell, that the axle is fixed in position along that slot, otherwise you'd see signs of wearing of the paint. It also makes more sense to me that this would be fixed. If not then it'd be too free to move. I also can't be sure but again suspect that the slot may not be exactly horizontal to the rail, allowing for an amount of adjustment to do small tweaks to the height of the door. Isn't this exactly the same as an interior sliding door for a bathroom (AKA pocket door if you're a yank)?

I cant see from the front view whether the axle is fixed. I was assuming the axle slid in/rotated along the slot based on Rustnail’s description.

The axle doesn't slide in the groove, it is fixed to the wheel and as the wheel rolls the axle rolls along the groove.

No, something in me says that can't be true. The visible part of the axle/wheel doesn't appear to have anything to locate it and stop it from falling out from between the rails, so again my assumption was that the off-side of the axle was fixed so that this couldn't happen... @auscab, time to go back and get more pics?

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No, something in me says that can't be true. The visible part of the axle/wheel doesn't appear to have anything to locate it and stop it from falling out from between the rails, so again my assumption was that the off-side of the axle was fixed so that this couldn't happen... @auscab, time to go back and get more pics?

As the wheel turns and runs along the track the axle rolls along inside its housing as Bohdan says. It looks to me, if the door is as far to the right as it can travel, then the axles are at the wrong end of their tracks.

Originally Posted by poundy

@auscab, time to go back and get more pics?

I started thinking this could happen . I wouldn't mind another look . Check out the walk out there .

Have a look at this, The pt Welshpool long Jetty . This is it before the restoration . Its a good view. They rebuilt it back out shorter to the bit you see at the 1.30 mark . It was just officially re opened a couple of weeks ago.

YouTube

The jetty starts at the 55 mark . Before that is Port Albert Up the road from Pt Welshpool .

The shed with the doors is the 1.50 mark . Its got a huge winch in there.

You would all be amazed at the pile of wood that came off this thing !! The Ports people took the best . Some was sold . The left overs had hundreds of tons of good stuff in there and they put a match to it . It was some BIG BIG piles . letting people get in amongst it would have possibly seriously hurt someone. It was also to sand impregnated to cut . The chainsaw shop guy was shaking his head at the amount of bars and chains he sold these blokes that did it up .

Rob

Originally Posted by Boringgeoff

As the wheel turns and runs along the track the axle rolls along inside its housing as Bohdan says. It looks to me, if the door is as far to the right as it can travel, then the axles are at the wrong end of their tracks.

Apologies, I got that wrong, of course the axle is riding in the top of the housing, not the bottom, so it is right. This is the first of this type I've seen for probably over fifty years , the farm I worked on when I left school had a pair in the shed.
Cheers,
Geoff.

The burning question is what happens to the pin on the other side of the door? If it is fixed then it is not an overshot roller. If the wheel axle is free to move in a slot on both sides it fulfills the overshot function. Some times the axle is cast with the wheel and rotates as the wheel turns. In others the axle is independent of the wheel and can rotate as it sees fit.
These rollers were often used where shed construction did not allow for a track that extended beyond the jamb posts of a doorway and due to the size of the door in was desirable to fit the rollers to the door stile rather than along the top rail.
Sometimes the slots were angled to allow the door to rise or fall to a sloping floor. In this case a foot wheel or skeg in a track in the floor was used.

The way I now see it . If Ive got it .
If that slot was 200 mm long and it replaced a normal single hole for the axle that was placed at the center of the slot position, the 100mm point along the slot, then by having the slot the door gets an extra 100mm left and 100mm right travel over the same track length. 100 mm each way more than the single hole design on that track. That's its advantage ?

I wonder if those axles have a shoulder turned in them to stop the axle going skewif or if its the wheel on the track that stops that ?

Rob