Hay Mover

When we went to big bales, we worried about moving them around the property. The first year wasn’t bad since we had 8 delivered at a time, and just dropped them in the barn from the trucks and fed off them. However this year, with a hay shortage, we decided we needed more and had 24 or so delivered in the fall. A friend has a similar, but slightly smaller, tractor, and he built a set of pallet forks for his tractor.

We were hoping he would help us, but he ended up getting hurt, and with hay getting in short supply in the barn, we decided to just order some. A little bit of trouble since the original forks we planned on were not being made, but we decided to move to a skid steer adapter, and then add pallet forks, or other attachments to that.

I’d been meaning to go get them, but too busy. However today, despite waking up a little late, I packed up Kendall after feeding horses and raced up there. We were pushing 82 in a 75 most of the way, arriving at 11:58 (they closed at 12). They’re in the country, and good neighbors, and a guy stuck around to help me load my stuff, and take the bucket off. They’re going to adapt the bucket to work with the skid steer, and so  I left it, bringing back the load above. Pallet forks on top, and the skid steer adapter on the bottom.

We got home, and my first step was to remove the old bucket quick attach frame. Not sure what we’ll do with that, but I pulled it off.

It’s four bolts held in with pins and they were fairly easy to remove. A little pounding, but it worked fine. However it’s a pain and definitely not what I want to be doing to switch from the forks to the bucket.

I then lifted and grunted the adapter near and managed to get it attached. The first pin is in above, and surprisingly it wasn’t too bad to get them all in. However that thing is a 100 lbs of solid metal and not easy to move. Taking this one and off would not be fun.

 

Once it was on, it looked pretty good. I had to lift the tractor and then adjust it slightly to get the pins in, and then I added the forks.

We didn’t move hay, but we did test them out and they worked pretty good.

Building a Box

We set up our arena to run the lights off a generator since we expect it to be used only 100-120 hours a year, and that makes for an expensive electrical run.

We got the lights up, the generator bought, and now we need a place to put it. Having it inside doesn't work for a few reasons: CO2, noise, and it's hot.

The plan was to then put the generator in an all weather box. I searched around for some plans, and read what some people had done, and then decided I should build my own. The first step was building a sturdy base. I did that with some 2x6s and OSB, bracing the floor with 4 cross joists.

It was quite sturdy, and I think it will do well. Now I need to add some sides.

The Virtual Lathe

A friend sent me this animation from Grizzly tools, and I thought it was pretty neat. You can power up the lathe and make cuts in the wood, allowing you to see how the tool works. It’s hard, and you don’t get the feedback you get with an actual tool, but it’s a neat way of explaining to people how a lathe works.

Build a Bad Guitar

Go Build Bad Stuff

A good reason to go out there and start a project. I need to do this, having been waiting to fit a class in on cabinets so I don’t waste too much wood.

Instead I need to just do it.

Roof Repairs

Not on the house, and not much sawdust involved, but some splinters for sure.

A few years ago I built a couple shade shelters for the horses. Essentially just roofs on poles that provide some shade from the sun in the summer and protect from moisture in the winter if we feed out there. I never completely finished trimming them, mostly because it's a pain to drag tools out there and that came back to haunt me. My wife noticed one of them had metal loose on the edge, and it was flapping around. With a forecast of winds gusting to 50mph, I thought I should work on it.

When I got out there,I found that along the edge, the screws had pulled through the OSB board and that was why the metal was loose. My first action was to screw down a few of the screws into the wooden joists, which weren't in line with my other screws, but no one can see the roof, so it's no big deal.

As you can see, there wasn't a side trim piece, so my plan was to add a 2x4  to the end with hurricane straps and then add a covering piece of metal trim. The wood is below, and it was a bit of a challenge to try and secure it while up in the air myself. I managed to measure the spot and then screw the strap to the 2x4 first before attaching it to the structure.

That done, I screwed down the metal to it, lining up screws with the 2x4 and other joists while it started to rain. To top if off, I was 1000' from the barn, further from the house, and the drill battery started to die. I managed to get enough screws to hold (I hope), load the ladder on the ATV, and ride back.

Only one side done, another needing to be done this weekend, but at least this should keep the metal intact in the weather.

A small rip is in one end piece as well, so I'll need to go patch that at some point as well.

The Back Railing

My wife has been asking me to put a railing up on the back porch for a few years. However our kids were old enough and we didn’t spend much time there, so I hadn’t worried about it. Actually, I was hoping to build a deck there sometime and the railing seemed like a temporary project. However we got a new puppy, and he’s not too bright. He fell off once, and as you can see, it’s a good drop, so I decided to work on this:

That’s two stories, straight down. I have some cleanup to do down there as well.
Here’s what I started with, an 87” space. A few years ago my wife tried to motivate my by buying a pre-built rail, but it was 6’ long and wouldn’t work. I thought adding a post somewhere in here would look dumb as well, so I needed a new plan.

I measured things and went to the hardware store. I came back with a pre-drilled rail, a top rail, and a bunch of balusters. I also had a couple 1x2” pieces for trim. I based my design on some pre-built (6ft) railings I saw at the store.
I added some 2" screws and some 1 1/4" screws, both exterior, thinking that I'd need them. As it turned out, I only used 8 1 1/4" screws to attach the L-brackets and only one piece of trim.
At first I couldn’t decide how best to do this. Should I build it in the front yard and then move it and attach it? I decided that was a bad idea and went with top down. I’d put the rail up, then add balusters and finally trim.
My first step was to measure some spaces, left to right to get the distance on the outer post and also the height of the balusters. I used a couple L-brackets to get the railing up there.
These were easy to attach, and I screwed them into the post and the house. They seemed as though they would be plenty stable, and it’s not like this railing gets a lot of use or it really would be leaned on. This is a side of the porch that basically as an old grill and a bunch of chairs stacked up.
This post is against one side of the cement foundation, so I used that as my offset. I measured the post, got the middle, placed that bracket up there (as shown to the right) and screwed it in. I then measured how far it was from the end.
I took that measurement to the other side, measured away from the foundation wall, and then up and screwed in the matchine L-bracket. It might be slightly off, but not enough for my wife of anyone to really notice.
Once this was done, I screwed in the rail bracket and as you can see, it looked good.

And it was level. I actually checked this before I screwed in the second bracket.

Next I attached balusters. I had to use 2” screwed to get through the railing, but as you can see, I’d put a few in, then add a baluster and screw it down.

As I screwed them in, it looked good. I got almost done that afternoon. I couldn’t finish because my wife had one set of balusters in her truck and I had to wait until early evening to get them back.

Once she got back, I screwed in the rest of the balusters. I took my other two L-brackets and attached them to the trim board at the bottom, and then attached that to the house. That was tricky with the balusters in there and I had to remove a few of them. Lesson learned: get the supports up first.

I also got out my trim nail gun and added nails to the front trim piece that you see here. Once that was secure, I added the top railing and nailed that down to the rail that holds the baluster.

That was last week. This week I started painting with primer. My daughter helped and we got one coat down. Now I need to get the matching paint for the house and add that on top.

 As you can see, there's a little more work to do.

Hooks

One of the things that I’ve been wanting for a long time is some system to hold the air hose on my mini-cart. I’ve looked at some of the air hose rollers at Home Depot, but spending $50 for one of those seemed silly. So I’ve wrapped the hose around the handle for a year, but it kept falling, and it was hard to drag the cart around.

So I had some time recently and decided to build this:

This is the final product where I have six hooks screwed on the back, holding the air hose on the back.

I started by cutting one hook, roughly, on the band saw. I had drawn it, sketched out a rough size that I liked and then cut it large. Here’s a quick look of my first one.

Once it was cut, I then used the random orbit sander to clean it up and round off the rough parts. I then checked the hook against a large coil of air hose to be sure that it would hold it all, with some spare space, and also be as small as possible. I ended up cutting it a couple times more and sanding it to make it better.

Then I grabbed a 2x6 and traced out 5 more copies of this.

These were all cut on the bandsaw, and then rounded on both sides with a 1/2” roundover on the router table. It was a nice day outside, so I spent 20-30 minutes sanding them further to make them smoother and less likely to catch on anything.

Once that was done, I removed the back of my cart, and measured out a circle, marking 6 spots on it. I didn’t try to be exact, but rough guessed where I’d want the three axis to be, drew them, traced the six pieces, and then screwed them in, one at a time with a single 1 5/8” screw.

This was the result, and it works great at holding the hose, and also letting me drag the cart one handed.