*** This app is for educational purposes only. Connecting the diagonal to the shelf and/or wall is a critical aspect to actually installing a diagonal support and should only be done by professionals. ****

 

This app converts rectilinear specifications of a diagonal support (i.e., how far away the support will extend FROM the wall, and how far ALONG the wall the support will extend) into ALL THE DISTANCE SPECIFICATIONS you will need to create the diagonal support with ease, including distances along the length of the diagonal. One can create a diagonal support from a correctly cut length of a piece of lumber by cutting off a triangle from each end.

 

It is assumed that the user is familiar with a carpenter’s square. This is a handy tool that enables one to find the corresponding point across the other side of the lumber. The creation of such a point is a useful reference for marking the diagonal cuts.

Step 1. DETERMINE your shelf design.  

 

MORE: Below are three design possibilities.

 

Step 2. DETERMINE if you wish to utilize 1/16th of a unit option.

MORE: Instead of dealing with many decimal places, rounding to the nearest 1/16th of a unit can make marking and measurement much easier. With the 1/16^th of a unit option selected, the user need only concern himself with 15 fractions instead of the 99 that are implied by the result being displayed in two decimal places. Eight sixteenths is one half. Four sixteenths is one quarter. Two sixteenths is one eighth.

 

This feature reduces mistakes and saves time while not sacrificing accuracy. It is only available in the pro version of the app.

 

The 1/16th of a unit option has a format that is different than the familiar decimal format. Instead of a decimal number like 12.572, the 1/16th option displays the number as 12-9. Although nine sixteenths has the decimal equivalent of 0.5625, 0.572 is pretty close to 0.5625 so the app approximates 0.572 by 0.5625. The frequent user of this app tends to gravitate to the 1/16th option because the possibility of making a marking mistake is greatly reduced when the number of your fractions are reduced from being 99 to only 15. If you wish to use the 1/16th option, simply move the “Use 1/16th increments” slide to the right. The slide should then illuminate green.

If you don’t want to deal with fractions and a millimeter resolution is close enough to describe the width, depth and height of your diagonal support then you can use millimeters as your unit. Naturally you will need to express your blade width in millimeters (including fractions of a millimeter if you like. But, the blade width is only used for the lumber optimizer). In this way, except for possibly the blade width entry, fractions are avoided.

You can express your inputs either in decimal format (.) or in 1/16th format (-).

 

Step 3.  ENTER the width of your diagonal support.

 

MORE: This is done in the “Settings” section. After ignoring the length dimension, square cut lumber has only two sides to from. Of these two possibilities, we select which we want to be the width of our diagonal support. For strength and space reasons, usually the wider side of the lumber is chosen to be the width of the diagonal support.

 

To determine the width of your diagonal support, you need only consider the material cross sectional dimensions (e.g., a 2”x4”, 2”x6”, 4”x4” …) and then ENTER the appropriate width (e.g., 3.5”, 5.5”, 3.5” respectively, if you are not using the 1/16^th units option, or 3-8”, 5-8”, 3-8” if you are using the 1/16^th units option) in consistent units as noted by Step 4.

Step 4. Recognize your units.

Whatever units you entered in Settings->Lumber Width are the units you are committed to in your height and depth entries, as well as the units which should reflect your blade width entry. So if you want to use different distance units, begin with expressing the lumber width in your units in Settings->Lumber Width, and then enter the blade width in those units in Settings->Blade Width. Then you can enter the desired diagonal height and depth in those same units.

 

MORE: The outputs are giving in the same units as your inputs. By design, angular units are not an input. Errors can be reduced by marking the cut line across the diagonal by two points on either side of the diagonal. The only output angle given is the angle between the wall and the diagonal. This angle is given in degrees. The other two angles are 90 degrees and the complement of the output angle. You must be consistent in using the same units used to specify the width of the diagonal to also be the same units which determine the height and depth of your diagonal as well as the width of the blade (for the lumber optimizer only).

Step 5.  ENTER the depth of your diagonal support, AND, if you are not using the lumber optimizer. the height of your diagonal support

 

MORE:

5a) ENTER (into one of the four regular diagonal calculators) the depth and height of the diagonal support into one of the following calculators 

·         the inner depth and inner height (first option)

·         the inner depth and outer height (second option)

·         outer depth and the inner height (third option)

·         the outer depth and outer height (fourth option)

See the examples document

5b) Alternatively, if you are designing identical diagonal supports and wish to make these out of a single piece of lumber, first enter the blade width on the Settings page. Then, ENTER into the diagonal optimizer calculator selection

5.b) 1.) the outer depth of the diagonal support (i.e., d2),

5.b) 2.) the length of the lumber, from which the diagonals will be extracted and

5.b) 3.) the number of diagonals you wish to extract out of the diagonal.

If your shelf is going to support heavy weights it is advised to have the angle the diagonal makes with respect to the wall to be less than 45 degrees. That way the pull out force from shelf on the wall can be better mitigated.

 

See the examples document

 

 

Step 6. PRESS “Calculate.”

 

MORE: This will produce the specifications by which to cut the material of the diagonal. To recover your inputs you can press on “CALC INPUT” If you need to be reminded of your inputs, just slide the screen to the right. To return to the outputs page, slide the screen to the left.