metal WORKING today

FYI: Slip on bucket forks are really handy on a front loader. If you only need them once in a while its no big deal to put them on and take them off, and they are pretty cheap. They have a couple issues, but if you don't use them often you can live with it.

--------------------------------------------------------- My younger neighbor has slip-on forks for his loader and tried to use them to stack the logs the tree company left in a tangle in my yard. He found they were useless for lifting all but the smallest logs, though he could knock the larger logs around so he played with them for a while. I weighed one he could barely lift at the specified capacity of his tractor, proving its hydraulics were still in good internal condition, if not so pretty externally.

Then I set up my manual hoists and neatly stacked all of them on blocks to cover for winter, including two at ~25' long and over 4000 Lbs each.

FYI: Slip on bucket forks are really handy on a front loader. If you only need them once in a while its no big deal to put them on and take them off, and they are pretty cheap. They have a couple issues, but if you don't use them often you can live with it.

--------------------------------------------------------- My younger neighbor has slip-on forks for his loader and tried to use them to stack the logs the tree company left in a tangle in my yard. He found they were useless for lifting all but the smallest logs, though he could knock the larger logs around so he played with them for a while. I weighed one he could barely lift at the specified capacity of his tractor, proving its hydraulics were still in good internal condition, if not so pretty externally.

Then I set up my manual hoists and neatly stacked all of them on blocks to cover for winter, including two at ~25' long and over 4000 Lbs each.

Bucket forks or even a bucket swap fork are still limited to the capability rating of the tractor. Typically for a compact, but real, working tractor that's 750-800 pounds. Basically more than the weight of a bucket full of dirt. There is a safety margin. Having pushed mine to its limits I know it will lift around 1500 lbs through its range, and lift 2000lbs a few inches and stop. This does not mean its inferior to your home made stack up. It means it has design limits. Your stacked up tool may be able to lift 4000lbs or even a lot more, but it might not be practical for "knocking around" an 8500 lb container. You bump an

The home made stackup might not be so good at lifting pallets off of a truck. That can a new compressor out of my pickup bed for the shop, and placing it right where I want it a couple hundred feet around back by the door where its going. It could be a pallet of salt for a water softner, or the better fork attachment that will replace it. Sure you "can" unload things with non optimal tools. I once unloaded a welder from a semi truck with a cherry picker, by running a pair of lifting slings through the pallet. The tractor forks with its paltry 750lb "rated" lifting limit would still be the better tool for the job.

I recently lifted/dragged a boat off a trailer and set it on the ground in order to repair the trailer. Sure I could have done that with a home made stack up, but it was much easier and faster to do it with the tractor. When I pull the engine on the Bronco I'm considering making road worthy again I may use the tractor, I may use a chain fall and an A-from, or I might use the cherry picker. Its going to depend on what is most convenient at the time. A the moment there is an outboard hanging from my cherry picker, so it would be the least convenient.

They can generally lift twice their rated capacity if you have a counter weight on the rear to prevent nose diving, and air up all the tires to prevent 3 wheeling.

Sounds like a good tool.

Sounds like a good tool. Bob La Londe

------------------------------------------------ I can lift to the limit of ground support with tripods light enough to carry, but not move very well. Dropping the load, stepping the tripod sideways, then lifting again moves at best a foot at a time. I had to set up the sawmill beside and parallel to the log pile and straddle both with the gantry, centered lengthwise over the bandsaw mill track. Then I could move a

The goal is to save wide, knot-free furniture grade oak from trees that grew straight without branches in a forest. Anything else becomes firewood or shed beams.

Otherwise I have a 1 ton engine hoist modified as an off-road trailer, a half ton truck bed jib crane and the platform stacker which is like a manually operated forklift, and might be your answer for heavy dies and chucks. Those are the survivors after trying less successful gear and methods. Shear legs of 2" pipe worked well until the trees around the house that anchored them came down as storm risks. Now they are the gantry's movable center support. jsw

Sounds like a good tool. Bob La Londe

------------------------------------------------ I can lift to the limit of ground support with tripods light enough to carry, but not move very well. Dropping the load, stepping the tripod sideways, then lifting again moves at best a foot at a time. I had to set up the sawmill beside and parallel to the log pile and straddle both with the gantry, centered lengthwise over the bandsaw mill track. Then I could move a

The goal is to save wide, knot-free furniture grade oak from trees that grew straight without branches in a forest. Anything else becomes firewood or shed beams.

Otherwise I have a 1 ton engine hoist modified as an off-road trailer, a half ton truck bed jib crane and the platform stacker which is like a manually operated forklift, and might be your answer for heavy dies and chucks. Those are the survivors after trying less successful gear and methods. Shear legs of 2" pipe worked well until the trees around the house that anchored them came down as storm risks. Now they are the gantry's movable center support. jsw

...Having pushed mine [tractor] to its limits I know it will lift around 1500 lbs through its range, and lift 2000lbs a few inches and stop. This does not mean its inferior to your home made stack up. It means it has design limits. Your stacked up tool may be able to lift 4000lbs or even a lot more, but it might not be practical for "knocking around" an 8500 lb container. You bump an

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I didn't mean to imply that my stuff was better, it's fine for the one task it was designed for and almost useless for others. I'd love to find a justifiably affordable tractor/loader/backhoe, even one too small to be commercially practical, since I can hoist a boulder or log beyond the capacity of any loader I could maneuver through my woods.

I didn't respond to the container post at first because I have no idea how to move that much weight without large trees for anchors, and you are much too far away to borrow my reject* pipe bollards for rollers. The neighbor's ~2000 Lb shed was near my lifting limit, with my equipment distributed among four corners. I picked it up high enough for him to back his heavy equipment trailer under it with his New Holland.

• They are 4" in diameter, which is 3-1/2" nominal pipe. The requirement is

Here in NH I could legally own a muzzle-loading cannon that big if I had a place to fire it. We still have militias, and Redcoats to oppose them.

As you may be aware the big green, red, and blue, ag (and construction) equipment manufacturers are fighting tooth and nail against "right to repair." Particularly green, but they all are. As a result in some regions some ag equipment users have bought up older stuff they can work on. Some are buying stuff they would otherwise deem to costly to repair, because it equals out when they have to pay a servicing dealer for all their repairs no matter how minor on new stuff.

If you really want something like that I think you will have to actively look for it. I'm not dismissing serendipity, but the odds are longer than they used to be.

That being said, I've got a clapped out 1950 John Deere Model M sitting out at my folks property that I have no idea what I am going to do with. My Grandfather purchased it brand new and paid for it one nasty winter in North Central Ohio plowing roads and driveways. My dad wanted it, and he hauled it from Ohio to Arizona some years back. Interested? LOL. I haven't gotten into it at all. I expect it will likely need a major overhaul from hitch to grill. I actually used that tractor back in 1980 hauling grape lugs out of the vineyard behind my Grand parents house. That vineyard is now a Christmas tree farm, but all the trees have grown to lumber size. My Grampa would tie a toboggan on behind and tow us down the road after a snow.

One thing that might extend your odds is looking in areas with crazy strict emissions on equipment demanding basically new equipment every year or two in order to keep up. I wouldn't count on a steal. Companies in that kind of business are aware other states want their "used" equipment.

Hmmm... I just recalled he had a forklift for it. Not an adapter. A real forklift. It mounted on the rear with a proper vertical hydraulic. I wonder where that is. Having a real forklift on a tractor frame might be worth fixing it up. I seem to recall it would lift enough he had to run a rack of counter weights on the front when using it.

... If you really want something like that I think you will have to actively look for it. I'm not dismissing serendipity, but the odds are longer than they used to be. ...

-------------------------------------- I've been passively looking and tire-kicking for a long time, it will keep. First I need to drill test holes or trenches in the hillside close behind the house to check for 'ledge' (solid rock) that would prevent excavating and putting a shed there. The simple answer may be to make a dirt bucket for the hydraulic loader I made for my Sears GT18 garden tractor, its snow bucket is too big and too flimsy, 0.050" stainless. It cleared the roadside snowbank and a front yard turn-around very well for several years before I retired and didn't need to get out early every morning.

The job I need to finish is cutting a metric internal thread in the adapter sleeve of rock drill rod, on a 60-year-old inch lathe with a non-standard metric conversion. I just finished an aluminum test piece and found the minimum compound infeed for a snug fit.

Then split next winter's firewood and complete and assemble the unfinished kit of heavy shed beams I cut last year on the sawmill. I found that a sharp bow saw guided between clamped-on 2x4 blocks cuts end joinery quickly, smoothly and precisely. Much of the wood will be stored as oversized framing.

Several people said, "Just throw some pipe under it," including my buddy who delivered it. That doesn't really work in sand, and I was a bit disappointed in him for that. My method of setting it on square timbers (reclaimed guard rail posts) as skid surfaces worked. It was a lot of work which I expected, but it worked just the way I envisioned.

I have used the new forks several times in the last few days however.

I suppose I really should clean it up now that its not pouring hydraulic fluid everywhere any longer.

Several people said, "Just throw some pipe under it," including my buddy who delivered it. That doesn't really work in sand, and I was a bit disappointed in him for that. My method of setting it on square timbers (reclaimed guard rail posts) as skid surfaces worked. It was a lot of work which I expected, but it worked just the way I envisioned.

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Needing timbers or pavement under the pipes seemed so obvious I didn't want to insult you by mentioning it. I've kept the scrap 6x6s and other PT the neighborhood contractor threw into his scrap pile. We saved him several large dumpster loads by burning the untreated wood scrap in big party bonfires, his wife supplying the snacks. The small PT scrap blocked up the pallets I store my firewood on, to slow or prevent their rotting. I had enough 6x6 timbers to support the shed high enough to back the trailer underneath. It's kept logs downed in late fall off the ground over winters.

Pipes do tend to twist out of parallel and need to be knocked straight again, with chocks handy to block them, they can be as much annoyance as help. The timbers under them should be overlapped at the ends instead of abutted, which may let the pipe force them apart.

... and you actually have to HAVE the pipe for the job, and you have to get everything lined up so the pipes and the timbers line up with the cross beams under the container, because if you don't you can make it worse.

...and you have to level the ground where you place the container and the timbers temporarily so it doesn't roll in the wrong direction right into the sand making it worse, not better.

The clear space where the container is now had a couple tons of steel, fence, aluminum etc setting there when my buddy delivered the container or I would have just had him slide it off the trailer into place.

I was concerned about catching on the end of the timber in the middle, but only one actually hung and a few cranks with the farm jack allowed me to pull it right past that spot.

Then when you are finished you have to put the grade back so any rain will drain away from the slab. Everybody thinks they have a better way, but I think I did it the easiest way for the conditions and what was available.

When I was contracting each time a client used the word "just" or "only" or the phrase "all you have to do" I would double the price.

I could have easily turned a half day (4 hrs more or less) job of moving a container into a two job by trying to make it easier. Time is the most valuable commodity. I don't mind hard work. I hate making a job take longer than it should.

I could have easily turned a half day (4 hrs more or less) job of moving a container into a two job by trying to make it easier. Time is the most valuable commodity. I don't mind hard work. I hate making a job take longer than it should.

-------------------------- Several times I've ended an intellectual discussion of do we move it this way or that way by putting a shoulder to it and heaving. If it budges we have a quick answer. In person I can be crude or subtle, whichever does the job. Remotely like this I can only be subtle.