Ye Olde wheelbarrow

[MushCreek]

Another small play project here. A few years ago, I bought an old steel wheelbarrow wheel at a flea market, and finally got around to building a wheelbarrow around it. With a combination of memory plus looking at pics, I came up with this. We'll park it in the yard with a big pot of flowers in it.

When I was a kid we had a cottage on an island. With no vehicles, there was a fleet of community wheelbarrows to haul stuff from the boat to the cottage. The old ones were like this one, except the wood was plywood. The ability to take the sides off was handy for moving bulky stuff, so the old ones were more popular than the newer replacements.

I need to take it apart and soak all of the wood in copper napthanate so our hot humid weather doesn't destroy it in 6 months. This is the kind of project I like, with a combination of steel parts such as the braces combined with wood. All carriage bolts and square nuts to complete the old-timey look.

 

[NUTTSGT]

Pretty darn cool. I'll give you a thumbs up.

 

[driftpin]

Do you use wingnuts to make it easy to remove the sides? Looks good. I also like to pick-up old dog wheelbarrows, I keep the steel parts and the bucket and replace all the wood. We have 3 houses, and each one has a mongrel-wheelbarrow doing duty. I'm not usually lifting things hundreds of pounds as a load, I like the no-maintenance aspect of the solid tires instead of going to use the 'barrow, and having to air it up before I get to use it.

Maybe you can have a cottage industry of making those, if you had a source for the steel wheel. I suppose you could weld 'em-up if you wanted-to.

 

[MushCreek]

The sides just lift off. I created a channel on the front with two thin pieces of wood, and the stake on the side fits into a bracket I made out of angle iron. The ones I remember had a metal channel on the front to hold the side boards in place. I didn't have anything handy to make a narrow metal channel out of. The whole thing was made out of scraps I had laying around.

They would be pretty expensive to make. McMaster sells an 18" steel wheel- for $83. I suppose if you had jigs to make all of the other pieces, you could knock them out pretty quick, but it would still be an expensive wheelbarrow. There are people selling strictly decorative ones with a wood wheel, probably mass-produced in China.

 

[three arms]

What kind of wood did you use?

 

[Miss the Pontiacs]

Nice job I’ve never seen a convertible wheel barrow before.

 

[tombell572]

A pretty accurate reproduction. I still have my father's which probably dates from the 1930's when he built his first house. It still gets used for some light duty work on occasion.

Tom B.

 

[MushCreek]

What kind of wood did you use?

Tree wood. In other words, whatever was laying around. The handles and legs are poplar because I had some full 2". The rest of it is white pine scraps, left over from paneling my great room. Poplar in particular will rot, which is why I drenched all of the wood in preservative. If I were building a 'real' wheelbarrow, I'd probably use white oak.

Yesterday I spray painted all of the hardware satin black, and I'm going to paint the wood pieces barn red, as I have plenty of that left over from painting my shed.

 

[Lookin4'67Galaxieconv]

That looks cool. Looking forward to seeing the painted version.

 

[y'sguy]

Very cool. A simple thing. Wish I were able to take my Grandma's wheelbarrow when she left this universe.

 

[gahrajmahal]

Love it!

 

[Lwel9226]

Very damn cool.... More thumbs up here....

LynnW

 

[MushCreek]

Quick 'n dirty paint job and stencil. I didn't want it to look too perfect.