This thing has been a hit in my build thread and I've had several people ask how I put it together. I found some old pics of it when I first built it so I figured I'd post up.
Here it is after painting it
The construction for this particular tailgate was somewhat K.I.S.S. I no longer had the truck the gate came off of (scrapped it years ago) so that meant i could not use the "pucks" that the gate normally rotates on. So I improvised.
I made the frame the mounts to the wall out of two 2x4s and a two 2x6.
I measured the ID of the barrel that the "pucks" normally fit into (turns out they were 1.25") and went to HD and bought 2 pieces of 6" long 1.25" rigid conduit and 2 pipe caps.
I measured the length and height of the tailgate to get my frame dimensions allowing a bit of space on the length for clearance. Found the center of the 2x6 front to back and drilled a 1.25" hole all the way through it.
This allowed me to put the conduit through the board for support and into the tailgate pivot points. I threaded the pipe cap onto the outside to keep the conduit from being pushed all the way in and to clean up the appearance.
I tossed a level on it (front to back) and marked where the holes needed to go for the support straps and secured them with carriage bolts the appropriate size to fit into the strap slots.
Frame is held together with three 3" deck screws at all corners and fastened to the studs in the wall with the same in 6 places (note this is NOT a heavy duty bench I use it for assembly work/tinkering). There is no latch to keep it vertical (it would be awesome to make the latch function work but I'm too lazy to source/make the parts necessary to do so) but the fit is tight enough that it will not fall on its own.
I'm glad so many of y'all have got a kick out of it and that I'm not the only one crazy enough to think it is cool.
Here it is after painting it
The construction for this particular tailgate was somewhat K.I.S.S. I no longer had the truck the gate came off of (scrapped it years ago) so that meant i could not use the "pucks" that the gate normally rotates on. So I improvised.
I made the frame the mounts to the wall out of two 2x4s and a two 2x6.
I measured the ID of the barrel that the "pucks" normally fit into (turns out they were 1.25") and went to HD and bought 2 pieces of 6" long 1.25" rigid conduit and 2 pipe caps.
I measured the length and height of the tailgate to get my frame dimensions allowing a bit of space on the length for clearance. Found the center of the 2x6 front to back and drilled a 1.25" hole all the way through it.
This allowed me to put the conduit through the board for support and into the tailgate pivot points. I threaded the pipe cap onto the outside to keep the conduit from being pushed all the way in and to clean up the appearance.
I tossed a level on it (front to back) and marked where the holes needed to go for the support straps and secured them with carriage bolts the appropriate size to fit into the strap slots.
Frame is held together with three 3" deck screws at all corners and fastened to the studs in the wall with the same in 6 places (note this is NOT a heavy duty bench I use it for assembly work/tinkering). There is no latch to keep it vertical (it would be awesome to make the latch function work but I'm too lazy to source/make the parts necessary to do so) but the fit is tight enough that it will not fall on its own.
I'm glad so many of y'all have got a kick out of it and that I'm not the only one crazy enough to think it is cool.
