Rather than buy tensile steel rods to reinforce concrete I wonder whether I can effectively recycle scaffold tubes that are presently on my roof.
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Like molitor said, if someone wants your bike bad enough, there's hardly any way to stop them. However, theives are like roaches; they don't want to be seen and scurry away when they think they're found out. Anything you do to slow them down works in your favor because it urges them to move on to easier pickings. Incidently, every system has its weakness. How good is your chain? Just because a chain is big doesn't mean it's strong. Even cheap Chinese bolt cutters will cut through a really big cheap chain, soft bolt or cheap padlock. Go for the high quality chains used by truckers to bind down loads or the type designed for overhead hoists. They may not be as big as others, but they are really tough and will give bolt cutters a run for their money. If you have bolts anywhere on the chain, use grade 8 and a good, hardened lock.
You can, but I can think of two reasons why it might be unwise. Firstly, reinforcing bars are ribbed to provide a key between the concrete and the steel, whereas scaffolding bars are much smoother. This leads me to believe that scaffolding bars, weight for weight, wouldn't be as effective as reinforcement bars and you wouldn't have as much reinforcing action as you think. In extremis, you could end up with an under-reinforced concrete beam which will be brittle - reinforced concrete is usually deliberately slightly over-reinforced so that the behaviour close to failure is ductile, as it gives you time to run away. Secondly, scaffolding bars are hollow and reinforcement bars are solid. In reinforced concrete, the alkalinity of the cement paste helps to protect the reinforcement from corrosion - the reason for specifying a minimum cover - but the inside of your scaffolding bars would not benefit from this and so I'd worry about the risk of shortened life due to rusting from the inner face. At least when reinforcement bars rust they tends to spall the concrete cover off, which you see happening.
