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The Leaders In Timber Are Fast Becoming The Forerunners In Fasteners The Leaders In Timber Are Fast Becoming The Forerunners In Fasteners Written by Jake Frost for Builders Construction Magazine As Australia’s largest independent timber distributor, it made perfect sense that ITI (Innovative Timber Ideas) entered the space of fasteners a few years ago. While many may not know the ITI name, most of you would have used their products, often daily on the construction site. Throughout their 32 years of operation they have developed and established many of their own specialty timber, moulding and wood products; from Ezitrim Plus (pre-primed timber mouldings) and Prolam (structural and decorative Merbau products) to Champion Boards (Radiata Pine boards) and Extreme Timber (Engineered Wood Products). “The most well-known of the ITI owned brands would be Design Pine,” added ITI National Category Manager, Matthew Tojic. “If not the name, the distinctive blue coloured timber. This was a product developed by the ITI team and has been one of our best selling products for many years.” As well as championing the strength, beauty and environmental benefits of using timber, ITI are also exclusive Australian distributors of other leading brands; TimberTech, Modwood, Tier Flooring and Fortress Railing. Since first being established in 1987 by Paul Shadbolt, who still remains the Managing Director today, the proudly Australian and privately-owned company has grown exponentially and continues to stay ahead of the competition by constantly developing new ranges of innovative products that provide solutions to real-world, industry problems. “ITI has nine centres located around Australia with a Head Office based in St Marys, New South Wales,” Matthew outlined. “We have three distribution centres in New Zealand, a manufacturing site in Chile and a sourcing office in Indonesia. We have approximately 400 staff spread around these countries and locations.” ITI’s vast knowledge gained from over three decades in the construction industry, their detailed understanding of the precise products that requires fastening (that being wood) and the extensive research and development that they undertook to get to this point, has given them an undeniable advantage and helped them produce an unparalleled product range that they have just launched to market. “The Blackhawk brand was established in 2015,” explained Matthew. “The original Blackhawk products included hidden decking fasteners and joist tape. In 2018 the decision was made to start expanding our fastener offer to greater compliment the wide range of products supplied by the other ITI brands.” Blackhawk haven’t just released some new, groundbreaking (and wood piercing) decking fasteners, they have completely reinvented their brand and are shaking up the industry even further with revolutionary new packaging and a web platform that will actually benefit customers. Excited about his development role in the Blackhawk brand, Matthew continued “Blackhawk strongly leverages the knowledge gained over the 32 years ITI has been in business.” With all their experience and contacts they were able to find the right methods, materials and collaborators to help engineer the very best fastening products for the Australian market. “We travelled the world speaking with industry experts to source the right manufacturers for our products,” he said. “We have two manufacturing sites in China and one in Taiwan. We have also partnered with Nanjing Forestry University in China, an industry leader in wood technology and research, to ensure a high level of quality is maintained throughout the Blackhawk product range.” Blackhawk have their own R&D base in Australia that houses some state-of-the-art equipment to analyse their products and create optimum results. “We have set up a testing facility at our St Marys Head Office to test the quality of each shipment that arrives,” explained Matthew. “The facility includes a custom-made accelerated weather chamber, a ductility block and a custom-made 3D printer to develop prototypes”. “Because of the harsh climate in Australia, we have sourced advanced materials to reduce the risk of corrosion. Blackhawk Protect™ is a tri-layer, high-grade coating system that we are using on some of our fasteners. This system creates a chemical barrier against the formation of rust. Blackhawk Fasteners decking screws are also available in 304 stainless steel, 316 stainless steel and 304 Extreme stainless steel. 304 Extreme stainless steel shares a lot of characteristics of standard 304 stainless steel, but has a greater resistance to corrosion. Adding to the innovation, part of the Blackhawk range will be the Speed Drive decking screw. This uses a patented, self-drilling point that can be used for fixing hardwood decking boards without the need for pre-drilling or countersinking” Innovation hasn’t stopped with the product itself. Through extensive market research, the team at Blackhawk found that customers were finding it difficult to find the information they needed on fastener packaging. So they spent a great amount of time designing their packaging labels so the customer can find what they need at a glance. Colour coding and iconography is cleverly used to make the most relevant info stand out; from different lengths, gauges and package quantity, through to being able to identify the characteristics of the screw quickly and easily. And then the packaging itself wasn’t skimped on either. On the contrary, it was enhanced so it was no longer a wasted byproduct, but instead transformed into something of value. “As an environmentally aware company, it was important to us that the packaging for our fasteners be as environmentally friendly as possible. The idea came up to be able to reuse the containers after all of the screws were gone. And what can you never have enough of?… storage. One hundred per cent designed by ITI, the Versi-Tub™ was born.” This secure box incorporates a hanger tab on the back so it can be used as hanging storage, and it has a foldable lid with a fully integrated, one-of-a-kind bit holder on the underside. All this, along with being made from recyclable materials, makes it safer, easier and faster for you to organise, find and retrieve what you are looking for, and save the planet, all at the same time. Blackhawk are also

Decking Through The Eyes Of A Beginner Decking Through The Eyes Of A Beginner Learn from my mistakes I am pretty handy with the tools and had just finished full renovation of my house. It was time to tackle the exterior and first the first job on the list was the existing back deck. The bones were good but the boards were ugly and had been damaged during the reno. As someone with no decking experience, I thought it would have been as easy as removing the old boards and screwing down some new ones. Boy was I wrong! Buying The Materials The first step was to choose a decking board that I liked. More accurately, a board that my wife liked. I went for 136mm x 22mm spotted gum. I got some samples and tested out some stain colours. I ended up with a stain called Cutek in a colour called Rustic Gold. Not only would this give the boards a nice colour, it will protect them from the elements as well. Then came the big question… how much would I need? Decking timber is ordered in lineal meters (lm). I knew the area of the deck in square metres so needed to convert this to lm. There is an array of decking calculators available online. All I needed to know was the length and width of the deck, the board width and board spacing. Length and width was easy as I was just using the same sizes as the existing deck. And I know that the board width is 136mm. But board spacing?? This was something that I had not heard of and didn’t know why it was important. I asked my local timber merchant who educated me in decking spacing. Timber expands and contracts depending on the environment. When it is wet/cold, the timber absorbs moisture causing it to expand. This is where the spacing of the deck is most important. If the boards are too close together, they will push against one another and cause the boards to deform and potentially break the screw heads. Each species of timber reacts differently and I was advised to go with 4mm spacing. With that question answered, I could use the calculator to work out how much decking I needed. It was then time to work out what screws to use. This question was a little more difficult to answer. I went to a few different timber merchants and hardware stores to get some advice. Unfortunately, no one had asked (what I know now to be) the most important questions (more on that later). The two questions I was constantly asked were “Are you using softwood or hardwood decking boards?” and “Are you screwing into metal or timber joists?” Both questions were easy to answer and resulted in a very large number of options for screws. Thinking I knew what I needed, I then based my decision on looks and chose what screw I thought looked best. I ended up with a 12 gauge, 50mm, type 17 screw. To figure out how many screws I needed, I went online and found a generic decking screw calculator. The Pain Of The Stain With the purchasing done, I ripped up the old decking boards and waited for my delivery of timber. When it arrived, the first thing that dawned on me is that I would have to stain the boards before I installed them. Because the stain also protects the deck, the boards need to be coated on all four sides. While this was not a hard job to do, it was very time consuming and I needed a lot of space to be able to stain all 288 lineal meters at one time. Good thing I hadn’t ripped up the old deck… oh wait… With that chore out of the way, it was time to start laying the boards. But where do I start? My deck is in an alcove. This means it is surrounded on three sides by the house. The forth side has a balustrade and overlooks the backyard which is about a metre lower than the deck. The boards will go parallel to the backyard and I can either start from the house side or the backyard side. After consulting Dr Google and a few phone-a-friend’s, I found out that you should always start from an open end. In most cases when decking, to fit the last board in you will have to cut it down its length. By starting at the open end you can have a full decking board where you will see the edges and leave the cut end against the house where it will be hidden. Starting To Deck. Well At Least I Hope… Okay. Now it is time to start laying the boards. I placed the first one down and realised that the end of the board didn’t line up with a joist. I thought this was a bit odd so I grabbed a few more. I then realised that no board length was the same and none lined up perfectly with the joists. This means that I will have to cut each and every board to suit my joists. And FYI, my joist spacing is standard 450mm centres. So I get the drop saw out of the shed and went to cut the board to length. New issue… my saw won’t cut all the way through the width of the board. After convincing the wife that I actually needed (not wanted) a new saw, I went out and bought a sliding compound mitre saw with a laser sight (insert the Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor grunt here). The Trouble With The Wrong Screw Back to it and the first board is cut and ready to be installed. I marked out where I wanted the screws to be and attempted to drive the first screw. Then, with a puff of smoke, the board split. A bit confused at what had just

Innovation Of The Versi-Tubs Innovation Of The Versi-Tubs Written by Matthew Tojic – National Category Manager for Blackhawk Fasteners When the decision was made to expand their current product range into fasteners, ITI (Blackhawk Fasteners parent company – Innovative Timber ideas) not only wanted to offer the best quality fasteners possible, they wanted to improve the process of buying and using fasteners. The Idea Stage While the process of sourcing the fasteners was underway, the team at Blackhawk started to work on ideas for the packaging. The question was asked – “How can we repurpose the plastic tub that most screws come in and make it into something useful after the screws have been used?”. The answer to this question was quite simple. Storage. It is something that everyone needs, uses and can’t really have enough of. With the main repurposing idea for the packaging decided, the team needed to take the key factors of a great storage container and incorporate them into a package to carry screws. So what are those key factors? Strength – Being able to withstand continual use Versatility – Stackable, hangable and easy to carry Safe – Having a lid to keep items safe Blackhawk now had to find a way to bring these key storage factors together with its primary purpose of transporting screws. Fortunately, these factors mostly overlapped with each other. Design Development One of the key storage factors stood out – “Hangable”. This is something that has not been seen in fastener packaging before (excluding smaller, retail packs of screws that come in blister pack – not suitable for storage). Looking at different storage options, the team found the answer right under their nose. In the ITI warehouse in Sydney, they have a rack with different sized storage bins that hang from a backing plate. These bins did not have lids but the principal design of the tubs could be transferred over to the screw packaging. When designing the tubs, the Blackhawk team used the agile method. They would start from an initial idea and then develop and adapt the design to add in new ideas. The base of the design centres on fitting the required number of screws. There are four sizes available – 100 screws, 250 screws, 500 screws and 1000 screws. These sizes were loaded into a CAD (Computer Aided Design) program and the design process started. Reviewing the shape of the storage bin borrowed from the ITI warehouse, the tub needed to have a tab on the back so it could hang from the backing plate. While this was fairly easy to design into the tub, it was far more difficult to get the tub to hang with the lid on. The lid must overhang at the back which initially prevented the tab from being able to hook on to the backing plate. After some tweaking and a few prototypes were made on their 3D printer, the tab design was finalised. Another distinctive feature of the storage bin was that the front was angled at 45 degrees. This allows easier access when there are bins hung on top of each other. This was added to the tub design but reduced the amount of screws that could be stored in each. The dimensions had to be increased to account for this design aspect. The Lid Originally the lid was a basic idea. Clip it on and take it off. Was there a better way to do this? There were 3 key features that the lid had to have: It needed to allow the tubs to be stackable. This meant having some way of connecting to the bottom of the tub so a tub can be placed onto the lid securely. An indentation was made into the top of the lid which was the same size as the bottom of the tub. But due to the rounded edges of the tub, the indentation was not deep enough to hold it securely. We needed more grip so 4 bolt heads were designed into each corner of the lid. With corresponding indentations on the bottom of the tub, they could now connect securely. We added ITI to the top of these bolt heads to show the relationship between ITI and Blackhawk. We wanted the lid to fold, giving the user easy access to the contents. We had to come up with a hinge design that had no moving parts. Avoiding moving parts was important for the longevity of the lid and to simplify the manufacturing process. A simple solution to this was to reduce the thickness of the plastic where it was to fold. This is quite common in foldable plastic packaging. Cut-outs had to be added to the side of the lid where the indentation was made to make the lid stackable. Without these cut-outs, the lid would be restricted in how far it could have opened. The lid needed to remain open by itself. Opening the lid each time you wanted to get a screw out could become quite frustrating. To hold the lid in the open position, some small clips were designed into the side cut-outs. After speaking with the manufacturer we found that they would be too small to be effective and impossible to make. We decided to make a small hook on one side that the user could latch. This way the user has the choice of keeping it open. With the lid and tub design complete, it was time to make it all work. The back half of the lid that did not open needed to attach tightly to the tub so it would not come off when opening and closing the lid. But it could not impede the hanging tab on the back of the tub. A few different designs were tested and we finally had the right design. Then we needed the front section of the lid (the part that opened) tight enough that it would keep the screws in the tub when

Fusion X1 Power 10 Product Release Fusion X1 Power 10 Product Release

Speed Drive Product Release Speed Drive Product Release Written by Jake Frost for Builders Construction Magazine Power – Performance – Precision