Projects

[red750]

9 minutes ago, willedoo said:

even some good stuff for free

Be careful with "free" stuff. Sometimes they are too lazy to put a price, or want to ensure someone calls quickly. Then again, some mean postage or delivery (small household items) is free.

[onetrack]

The Americans still love their "A-frame boom", or "gin pole" on their pickups and trucks, for picking items up. There's some way-out ideas for lifting things out there.

 

https://au.pinterest.com/gehrke1831/crane-boom/

 

Edited August 31 by onetrack

[willedoo]

14 hours ago, onetrack said:

The Americans still love their "A-frame boom", or "gin pole" on their pickups and trucks, for picking items up. There's some way-out ideas for lifting things out there.

 

https://au.pinterest.com/gehrke1831/crane-boom/

 

The only left hand drive vehicle I've ever driven was an old Peterbilt ex pole truck that was being used for a water truck. The good thing about pole trucks is that the poles and snatch block brackets all pack away in recesses flush with the deck, so you can have a crane truck capability or a flat deck, whichever you need. A big powerful winch and a full width roller at the rear tops it off.

 

Just a straight winch truck is a handy item as well. One mob I used to know had semi trailer winch trucks. They had no sleeper cabs as the winch took up that space so you'd always see a swag tied on the back of the prime mover. The rear of the prime mover chassis behind the turntable was sloped and had a roller at the end similar to that on the rear of the trailer. The trailer legs could fold up parallel with the trailer deck so when the winch cable was connected to the trailer front, all they had to do was pull the turntable pin and drive forward dropping the front of the trailer on the ground. The front of the trailer was rounded off to move easily down the back of the prime mover chassis and roller. I had one of them move a D7G once. I drove the machine straight on the back as there was a high ramp available. There was no ramp at the destination so the winch truck driver dropped the front of the trailer on the ground and I drove the tractor straight off. You just had to be careful crossing his winch cable that you didn't damage it with the track grousers. After I was clear he sucked the empty trailer back up with the winch.

[willedoo]

19 hours ago, red750 said:

Probably cheaper than new though.

I've made a start. Today I picked up two stub axles and hubs from a bloke on Facebook marketplace. They're a perfect fit for the two wheels I have and about one third the price of buying new ones. It looks like he's even repacked and adjusted the bearings.

[willedoo]

Apparently OSHA is the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

 

[willedoo]

16 hours ago, onetrack said:

https://au.pinterest.com/gehrke1831/crane-boom/

 

Thanks onetrack, I love Pinterest. You can get so many ideas from that site.

[willedoo]

On 31/08/2024 at 11:50 PM, onetrack said:

The Americans still love their "A-frame boom", or "gin pole" on their pickups and trucks, for picking items up. There's some way-out ideas for lifting things out there.

I've been doing a bit of research on gin poles on utes and light trucks. There's some information on places like US welder's forums, but they seem to do a lot of debating about which pole setup is best. They seem very predominant in Texas, no doubt due to their history of use in the oil fields.

 

They have some good points but I have a feeling they would be more appealing if you were born and bred around them. From what I've seen they are used a lot for lifting and emplacing items, hence their use by welders. Lifting a load onto the  same deck as the pole setup seems a bit clunky though. My main requirement would be to lift an object off the ground onto the tray and the reverse of that. Taking into account the work involved setting up a pole system, it might be more practical to have a removable small crane boom mounted on a back corner of the tray with a stabilising leg to take the weight. With a rear mount, a load either to the rear or to the side could be picked up and put on the deck easily. It would also work ok with a trailer if the hitch was short enough and the crane boom long enough. You could jacknife the trailer, pick up the load, then move forward to straighten up and plonk the load on the trailer.

 

On the other hand, with the gin poles you could get a longer and higher reach. The main problem is the awkwardness of hoisting a load onto the deck. It's quite doable, just a lot of stuffing around. Flip a coin maybe.

[nomadpete]

I once put a simple A frame on a box trailer, slightly foreward of the axle. The A frame when laid down reached about a metre aft of the trailer. I put a little chain block on the peak of the frame, and an old hand winch on the trailer coupling, linked back to the A frame. With the A frame about 30 degrees up, the chain block lifted a engine and transmission up, then the winch pulled the A frame up to almost vertical. The chain block then lowered the load onto the middle of the trailer.

The only issue was the uplift on the ball coupling but that could have been fixed with a simple leg on the back of the trailer.

All made from scrap, it lifted maybe 1/3 of a ton. How heavy is one end of your log?

[willedoo]

It's hard to guess. I have a billet from a brush box outside. I could weigh that and do the mathematics.

 

[onetrack]

Brush box has an average dry density of 900kg/m3. 

 

https://kalanihardwoods.com/pages/brushbox

[willedoo]

23 hours ago, onetrack said:

Brush box has an average dry density of 900kg/m3. 

 

https://kalanihardwoods.com/pages/brushbox

That would mean a log 500mm diameter at the base would weigh a bit less than 900kg at 4 metres length. A bit less because of the round profile and tapering of the log.

[willedoo]

I haven't built the log jinker yet but I've dragged out the big saw and started to clean it up before taking it into the dealers for some needed maintenance. It's been sitting for a few years so will need a good going over. I haven't got it reassembled yet to test the spark but it was ok last time I tried to start it. It wouldn't fire up on that occasion after sitting for quite a long time so I'd say it needs a carburettor kit. Same thing happened to the smaller Stihl saw after sitting around eg: the diaphragm drying up and going hard.

 

Hopefully the Husqvarna won't cost a fortune to fix. It wouldn't have any more than five hours work on it so is fundamentally a new saw despite the neglect. Replacement cost now is over $2,100 so it's worth fixing. I'm keen to try out the eBay special slabbing jig I bought about three years ago and never got to use.

[willedoo]

My Husqvarna is a 372 XP, about 70cc, and predates the newer models with fuel saving and emission technology. I looked up the newer system that Husqvarna calls X-Torq. They basically have air blowing in the cylinder to purge the exhaust gases.

 

 

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, willedoo said:

the eBay special slabbing jig

Pictures, please?

[willedoo]

4 minutes ago, old man emu said:

Pictures, please?

I'll see if I can locate it (buried in the shed somewhere). It's fairly similar to this one: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/405134261000?_skw=chainsaw+slabbing+jig&itmmeta=01J8HHQ5P1DP0QSFA9ABBGQJPE&hash=item5e53e23b08:g:dDUAAOSwv6BmqX7G&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA8HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKkyax%2B7QtvSccvV7df9a%2FF14FZrsw2YGAsyXBf56FchguvkKxSI4slgbw%2FVpDSYgXv2CkWmPI7dLY39qNCMRyB64c4HU0rDfvG9K7dviaCHDnLc1%2Bji0rWHHC%2FR23M39Em978HLcw8IC%2FVbU6tLC7fCJM6l%2F4JyYpA2hav0tMzT9ArIRLROmaddoB2alEJJjSILggLkt%2FZQjkO7rrXC2h7Z5VHE8Yq2F9FEy%2B81ptO9zrLR0CmYO4R4lsmSszpBFLIwUG3nJPOeb60Itlhq3ClBkqsMK7c0et7AZatsQ0dp1A%3D%3D|tkp%3ABFBMjNvcscRk

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, willedoo said:

It's fairly similar to this one

Yeah. I've seen videos of similar things, sometimes made from a ladder. Under $100 is less than I thought a store-bought one would cost. My BIL wants one to mill some Cypress pine which grows on the place. 

 

The BIL identified some local trees for me. Someone here metioned that they saw belah (????) trees in a photo I posted. The BIL showed me a big stand of them. I know them as She-oaks

[willedoo]

50 minutes ago, old man emu said:

The BIL identified some local trees for me. Someone here metioned that they saw belah (????) trees in a photo I posted. The BIL showed me a big stand of them. I know them as She-oaks

If that was the photo you posted near your place, I thought it looked like brigalow. There's brigalow in your area as far as I know. It polishes up well as most acacias do. Belah is a casuarina. This is a turned brigalow bowl:

 

[nomadpete]

Wille,

I think you might need a skip tooth chain for your chainsaw. I believe a standard chain get bogged down when cutting slabs.

I have no experience but the seller of the jig I was going to buy, recommend it.

 

https://www.chainsawspares.com.au/

[old man emu]

9 hours ago, willedoo said:

If that was the photo you posted near your place

The picture I meant was the one of the wattle in flower. 

 

The Belah, Casuarina cristata, is a different species from the Swamp Sheoak, Casuarina glauca, I grew up with on the shores of Botany Bay.

[willedoo]

We get a variety here in this arrea. We get the swamp sheoak C.glauca, the horsetail sheoak C.equisetifolia, the river sheoak C.cunninghamiana, black sheoak Allocasuarina littoralis and the forest sheoak Casuarina torulosa which I have on my place. I also have a line of horsetail sheoaks I planted many years ago along the street frontage. They're nice trees - hardy, attract birds and fix nitrogen in the soil. If a sheoak blows over I usually try to cut it up as it's excellent firewood. If you pull the branchlet segments apart you can see the true leaves arranged around the segment join if you have strong glasses or a magnifying glass. A lot of the species have different numbers of leaves. I think from memory my forest sheoaks have five leaves.

[willedoo]

4 hours ago, nomadpete said:

Wille,

I think you might need a skip tooth chain for your chainsaw. I believe a standard chain get bogged down when cutting slabs.

I have no experience but the seller of the jig I was going to buy, recommend it.

 

https://www.chainsawspares.com.au/

Thanks Pete. The one I have on it is a ripping chain for ripping fence posts out. I'll see how it goes on slabs.

 

On the subject of fence posts, I saw these on Facebook Marketplace recently. They're rip sawn Gympie Messmate posts. Almost a shame to use such nice timber for a fence post. My weatherboards are Gympie Messmate. Wall frames, rafters, ridge boards and verandah joists are all very old recycled Iron Bark from the local RSL. Verandah posts and verandah floor boards are Spotted Gum, bearers are Blackbutt and the floor inside is mixed species, mainly Spotted Gum mixed with a dark red board that I'm not sure of the species. A lot of nice wood. I'm glad I built it years ago; good timber costs a fortune these days.

 

[old man emu]

It annoys me when I watch woodworking videos made in the States or England. Every variety of wood they use seems so easy to cut, plane or chisel. Australian woods just want to keep fighting you long after the tree they grew in has died. The only easily worked wood that is readily available is pine, but that doesn't have the extraordinarily straight grain that those Northern Hemisphere woods have.

 

I'd also like to know why 19 mm plywood is so expensive. 

[spacesailor]

My parents house in NZ was made of 1 inch by 18 in inch. ( rough-sawn )

KAURI wood . When selling , the first ' realestate offer ' was less than the

Timber's worth . When pointed out that I could sell the timber & still have the land to sell after.  They soon upped that selling price .

All the timbers. Were KAURI.  100 years old .

spacesailor

 

[willedoo]

47 minutes ago, old man emu said:

It annoys me when I watch woodworking videos made in the States or England. Every variety of wood they use seems so easy to cut, plane or chisel.

They also do a lot of building stuff we can't do because of termites.

[old man emu]

8 minutes ago, willedoo said:

They also do a lot of building stuff we can't do because of termites.

But we don't get woodworm in our furniture.

 

I love it how they go on and on about the wood swelling and contracting in response to humidity changes. Where I am the humidity is constantly so low that wood never gets much moister than kiln-dried.