Daily Fabrication Thread

[Nebraska]

Farmer nails.   A carpenter friend of mine turned 60 a few years ago so I gave him 60 bentish rusty nails out of my bucket. He laughed his dad dad saved nails too.  The stories made me smile. 

[TimW]

It is amazing what an old bucket of nails did for all of us.

[Tom K]

It is amazing what an old bucket of nails did for all of us. 

Yup, sure is. It's also the reason I don't have a rusty bucket of nails sitting around now 

I know I'm a little younger than some of ya'll, but I have similar memories. While we weren't poor when I was growing up we weren't that far from it. My parents bought their first house in '88 when I was 7 years old. It was an old farm house with a big old barn that needed some love. My dad spent a whole summer tearing down the rougher part and rebuilding the better part.....yup, many buckets of nails were saved and re-used. 

A couple years later he put a new roof on the house. I remember begging him to let me get up on the 2 story roof to help, he finally gave in and let me help as long as I stayed near the valleys. I'm pretty sure some of those roofing nails were used as well.....

[wudshp]

This brought back lots of good memories.  I spent a couple weeks in the summer with grandpa and grandma.  He moved houses, sold pig feed,  kept a few beef cows and some pigs.  He also survived the depression.  I wanted to drive the riding mower but he had other jobs first.  He set me up on an anvil with a oak cask of bent nails and showed me how to straighten them.  I went at it with the hope of simplicity riding mower glory.  It took me a couple days on and off because we did lots of chores with him.  I struggled to stay with it but finally finished the cask.  Showed him what I did.  Got a nod and he walked over to another one of his lean to sheds and brought out another cask and I saw the were still a bunch more waiting in the wings.  That was the end of the highly motivated part.  I kept at it but not as fast.  He did let me drive the mower.  He had rigged up a vacuum pickup on a big plywood trailer and we fed the cows with the grass. Thanks for the reminder and smile. 

[TimW]

Tom K,
      That gave me a laugh. I can imagine how deflated you were when he brought out the 2nd cask of nails.
 I remember, when I was around 12, I wanted a new riding 8hp lawntractor for my birthday present!  Dad bought a new one, but not for my birthday.

[caveman]

A
A few weeks ago I took some L shaped scraps that the students use to practice welding on and made a tabletop jig for them to use.  A full 2x4 will fit inside the hole, although it currently has a 1x4 in it.  The idea behind this it to hold the narrow edgings off of the edger and accumulate them.  The forks will fit between the board and the edgings and if spaced and marked, they can be bundled to be sawn to length for stickers.  We used it yesterday and it seemed to work pretty well.

[PJS]

@barbender 

Here's the pics of the broken bunk.




 My thought was to grind down the broken ends. Then take a 6-8" chunk of 3x3x.375 HSS weld it into the upright. Then slip the bunk back on and build the welds up with the tubing inside as support. But I'm open to suggestions, I don't like doing things twice! And next time it breaks will be my fault haha! 

[barbender]

 PJS, that should work- but I would also plate both sides and strap the top and bottom. For an example of the job the top strap does, the Ponsse forwarder bunks tend to break where two pieces of strap are butted. There is a lot of tension strain on those when you have a load of wood mounded up👍😊

[711ac]

Our very own @mike_belben made it onto the pages of "farm show" this month with one of his clever projects!
Good job Mike

[teakwood]

Have a link?

[PJS]

Here's what I found with a google - 

https://www.farmshow.com/a_article.php?aid=39493

For bracing the bunks on the forwarder, would you guys use angle iron or c channel? 

[barbender]

 Neither. For the sides, cut gussets out of steel plate. Then on the top and bottom, whatever width of steel strap fits in the channel best. You might consider swapping that bunk from the rear with the next one forward as well. It probably snagged one to many trees in the back corner and that is what caused it to break.

[caveman]

My grill made out of an old 250-gallon propane tank finally rusted through.  It still did a good job of cooking chicken, ribs and butts, but it was due for rehab.  I cut out the rusted hemispherical ends back to good metal and made some square boxes to replace them.  The vent covers and the inside wood/charcoal racks need to be cobbled together but this should add several more years of life to it.  I've been using it for over 20 years.
A paint job, fresh trailer boards and maybe an additional SS table and this thing will be ready to go.

[711ac]

Have a link?

I get the actual paper but PJS's link is the same as what I saw.

[PJS]

How I fixed the forwarder bunk. Went with 3@5 channel sections to give it more torsional strength, they had already welded a plate and ripped that in half too... too lazy to move the bunks, hopefully it doesn't bite me in the butt! I'm not a professional welder but I figured I added enough layers something's gotta hold!

[redneck]

interesting video here on changing a gearmatic winch to a john deer winch on a 380A timberjack skidder
hope this might help someone

https://youtu.be/Bc40wKL3Dgw?si=lr1-ELa-zGzfyHOu

[trimguy]

I made a tow hitch to go on the front of the skid steer. It should make moving trailers and the sawmill easier.

[g_man]

Last winter I was watching some videos by Scandinavian members here using their tractors with simple cranes on their logging trailers. I started wondering if I could do a similar thing by putting a crane on my winch instead of a trailer. I built a crane out of wood just to experiment with using my 30 hp L3010 as a mini forwarder.





I was having fun so I decided to keep going. I pretty much copied the wood model and used it as a templet.





I made a 3-1/2" X 2-7/8" channel out of 3/16" flat bar for the boom.





These are the top and bottom winch mounts and the hinge pin.







So it goes together like this.





I gave it a test by picking my 370 lb grapple.





Here is the finished boom. You can see the bottom pully, 4 slider hangers/ cable supports, and the top pulley and cable guide.





The boom weighs about 80 lbs and I mount it like this.





I use my tractor top and tilt hydraulics to angle the winch so that the mounts align wit the hinge post. Then slide down the hinge pin.





Finish by threading the cable around the pulleys, hanging the sliders, clamp the top cable guide around the cable, and hook on the trailer.





The hinge post needs to be plumb to give me any chance of being able to swing a log. Out in the woods on rough ground I use the TnT hydraulics to plumb things up. There is some drift in the hydraulics plus angles change from mechanical slop as the load changes so I need to plumb up more than I thought I would. It is a slow one man operation but works well.





gg

Must have reached some limit on thread size or number of pics because new ones come out as duplicates ??

[aigheadish]

That's pretty incredible g_man. I have a small boom lift, for my tractor, that the neighbor gave me that I haven't messed with. While I don't do anything like what you are doing it looks like my lift may be handier than I'm considering. 

[Andries]

'Necessity is the Mother of Invention'.
Imagination and excellent metalworking skills Mr g-man.

[NE Woodburner]

g_man that is very creative and quite impressive.

Do you think you could add a double acting or two single acting cylinders to give you hydraulic swing motion? Might make is less fussy to set up, not worrying so much about drift and you could swing logs to the trailer without manhandling. I realize that it might not be worth the effort to you to do this.

[Hilltop366]

NE I was wondering the same thing, I was trying to come up with an idea that would work to get enough swing using the top link cylinder but the issue is the vertical pipe is in the way of the cylinder rod to get much swing.

The best I got so far is to put it at the bottom of the vertical pipe so the pipe does not interfere with the cylinder rod. The piece coming off the vertical pipe would only have a pin on one side to connect the cylinder.

Add an extension leaver out the back of the tractor to run the remote valve.

The concern I would have is the cylinder would have too much power for the rest of the build without lowering the pressure relief or adding one inline. Another way would be to add a valve and go from the tractor remote to a valve mounted on the winch then to the cylinder.

[barbender]

 You've created a jammer loader👍 You can find them around here still, there were armies of them on trucks, and also small trailer set ups for behind tractors. 

 The Scandinavians definitely have the goods on everything small scale logging!

 There is a publication available as a free download, that is out of Scandinavia and is all about efficient tractor logging of private woodlots. It's excellent.
 

[barbender]

 It's called "The Farm Tractor in the Forest". Originally printed in Sweden, and translated into English for North America.

 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.maine.gov/dacf/mfs/publications/general_publications/farm_tractor_in_the_forest.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiJ7Jj518-IAxXukIkEHTDILc8QFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1syWkQz8wRgZpeMQU767cT

[Crusarius]

Use an electric motor and a worm gear for rotation. it will be slow but will probably work very well.

could also use an electric motor with a link arm for rotation.

My snowblower actually has a cable, pulley, and electric motor. the cable is double wrapped around the snowblower chute and the motor pulley. when the motor spins it rotates the chute. very crude and simple.