Springing into action to secure sheet metal edges into brickwork

. While the idea has been devised for the building industry, it applies to any situation that requires securing a sheet of material in a crevice. Invented by James Egercz of Vulcan Leadworks, the ‘Wedge’, as it is known, consists of a folded over piece of stainless steel, with serrated outer extremities and a depression at the apex of the V shape, which forms a projection or buckle inside. This serves as a locator for a special tool used to push the clip in to the gap between the metal sheet and the upper side of the gap between the courses of a wall. The serrated edges at the base cause it to engage on the metal and brick surfaces, so that it cannot be worked out again by expansion and contraction of the metal. The present technique for achieving such goals is to jam the sheet in with pieces of lead rolled wedges, but lead is a metal which slowly deforms (creeps) at ambient temperatures – so the wedging pressure achieved by a piece of lead sheet decreases with the passage of time. The clip takes a moment to insert.