lostmymanual
Well-known member
This is something I knocked out last summer. I had several drop pieces of 1/4" plate following fab of my welding booth. I had planned a larger welding table but I ended up paying someone local to do the cutting for me. They hacked it all to heck and left me with a bunch of pieces that didn't fit after sitting on it for a month.
I went down to my friendly welding store where I bought my MIG and contracted my bottle, picked up a Hyperthem plasma cutter and never looked back. I love my plasma cutter!
Now keep in mind that I learned to weld by making that welding table shown in the background. I'm an automation tech offshore, not a welder. So with that being said:
I had the plate handy. I wanted something that I could offload heavy items out of my truck with (like a tractor box blade or a shop compressor) and to pick up that welding bench and move it around as needed quicker than using jacks and rollers. Basically, I was tired of chaining things to my bucket and dealing with loads swinging.
I priced the forks built to the specs I wanted (I eventually plan on buliding a heavier duty skid for my 3-point lift) and came up with about $500+ freight. Ouch. I kept the plan simple and only had to buy the rectangle tube. Everything else was leftover from the bench.
I bracketed in my rectangle tube with 1/4" plate. I remember being really excited about the weld below because I managed to go from pushing to pulling the weld on the fly, in the same pass. I was pretty psyched about that being that this was literally my second welding project. I also used substantually fewer grinding discs than when I was building the bench.
I welded in a socket for a set screw so I could clamp the forks to the bucket. I used leftover hardened bolts for this as they were leftover from when I made the welding bench foot levelers. I planned on having another 2 feet on that before they butchered my plate.
Then for a dry fit to see how long I wanted the forks and to do a little stress testing before spending any more time on the project.
I then realized I was going to bend the bucket pretty quick, so I added the "wing" brackets to spread the pressure across a greater area and help keep me from bending/shearing the bucket. I rounded them because I absolutely see myself kicking them on my way round the bucket some day... I then cut down the tube to length, notched out a triangle on both front ends and hammered the steel up to the top of the skid before rounding them off too.
A little surface prep/degreasing, some Valspar industrial primer, some orange to match the tractor.
Load tested by tearing the box blade out of the weeds so if I dropped it, no big deal. That's 500lbs which is about as much as I care to put on the end of an extended lever like that. No problems other than the poor little tractor struggling. It's not rated for much in the front but serves my purposes. I'm sure the bucket or hydraulics would give up before the forks would. Now I have something that I can keep for years and not worry about instead of the commercially available forks for about 1/10th of what I would have spent on buying them. But the best part was just doing the project. It was a lot of fun and a learning experience.
I went down to my friendly welding store where I bought my MIG and contracted my bottle, picked up a Hyperthem plasma cutter and never looked back. I love my plasma cutter!
Now keep in mind that I learned to weld by making that welding table shown in the background. I'm an automation tech offshore, not a welder. So with that being said:
I had the plate handy. I wanted something that I could offload heavy items out of my truck with (like a tractor box blade or a shop compressor) and to pick up that welding bench and move it around as needed quicker than using jacks and rollers. Basically, I was tired of chaining things to my bucket and dealing with loads swinging.
I priced the forks built to the specs I wanted (I eventually plan on buliding a heavier duty skid for my 3-point lift) and came up with about $500+ freight. Ouch. I kept the plan simple and only had to buy the rectangle tube. Everything else was leftover from the bench.
I bracketed in my rectangle tube with 1/4" plate. I remember being really excited about the weld below because I managed to go from pushing to pulling the weld on the fly, in the same pass. I was pretty psyched about that being that this was literally my second welding project. I also used substantually fewer grinding discs than when I was building the bench.
I welded in a socket for a set screw so I could clamp the forks to the bucket. I used leftover hardened bolts for this as they were leftover from when I made the welding bench foot levelers. I planned on having another 2 feet on that before they butchered my plate.
Then for a dry fit to see how long I wanted the forks and to do a little stress testing before spending any more time on the project.
I then realized I was going to bend the bucket pretty quick, so I added the "wing" brackets to spread the pressure across a greater area and help keep me from bending/shearing the bucket. I rounded them because I absolutely see myself kicking them on my way round the bucket some day... I then cut down the tube to length, notched out a triangle on both front ends and hammered the steel up to the top of the skid before rounding them off too.
A little surface prep/degreasing, some Valspar industrial primer, some orange to match the tractor.
Load tested by tearing the box blade out of the weeds so if I dropped it, no big deal. That's 500lbs which is about as much as I care to put on the end of an extended lever like that. No problems other than the poor little tractor struggling. It's not rated for much in the front but serves my purposes. I'm sure the bucket or hydraulics would give up before the forks would. Now I have something that I can keep for years and not worry about instead of the commercially available forks for about 1/10th of what I would have spent on buying them. But the best part was just doing the project. It was a lot of fun and a learning experience.
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