simple shop made hydraulics?

Anyone here ever made simple shop-made hydraulics? I do have a pretty decent lathe (Enterprise 1550) and I'm a not-half-bad home shop machinist after decades of very slow learning whilst creating lots of scrap.

Once a year I need to lift the close-fitting 4' x 4' plywood lid on my well house to get at the valves within to de-winterize. I pay someone to winterize in the fall because the consequences of getting that wrong are too ghastly to contemplate. If I screw up the spring turn-on, the worst I can get is wet. That happens with regularity that others find far more amusing than I.

Now that I'm in my ninth decade, lifting that lid is getting to be almost more than I can handle and I obvously didn't sire enough sons or strong daughters. Hindsight is always 20-20. But wait ... given the cost of university tuition, it'd be cheaper to buy a helicopter than to have more progeny to educate, and probably more fun.

That wellhouse lid is probably only about 50 lb but it's awkwardly situated. I've thought about purely mechanical solutions but everything I came up with (levers, chains and sprockets, four-bar Chebychev linkages, gears, yada yada) was unduly complicated. I'm a sparky, not a gearhead.

If I had four little hydraulic cylinders that each could produce about 2" of lift with probably no more than 20 lbf (89 newtons for y'all thoroughly modern mechies) with some $2 bearings from Ax Man Surplus (already on my bench) I think that might work slicker'n molebdynum loon poop. That's the very slippery black stuff.

Question is, how to make the cylinders so they won't leak over time. Might automotive wheel cylinder parts (cups or seals or whatever they call the anti-leak moving parts) in shop-made cylinders work OK? O-rings? How about fluid: might water with antifreeze work as well as brake fluid without creating the mess if and when it leaks? We're talking MN, it gets cold here. Would the glycol antifreeze have enough lubricity?

No, I'm not gonna try to motivate a big strong Minnesota Swedish girl to help me out. S.O. Vicki knows where I keep the pistol at the cabin.

Anybody here ever done anything like this? McGyver hydraulics, that is?

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I built a bucket loader for my garden tractor from mostly surplus hydraulic components and steel stock. The four lift cylinders are used 4-ton Porta-Power types that magically appeared in a nearby discount store at $15 each for the smaller pair and $20 for the larger when I needed them. They did leak so I had to track down new seals that could be made to fit, with some modification and some remaining leakage.

For what you suggest a 4-ton kit should do the job, either with the included cylinder pushing or this add-on unit pulling:

[...rest deleted] The alligator on mine is rated 500# at the jaw tips.

This little guy has the advantage of taking up minimal headroom compared to other hoists:

The HF 60732 truck bed crane both lifts and swings sideways: [...rest deleted] The parts are pretty heavy to install and it needs a solid foundation.

Personally I would use a wooden A frame controlled by ropes and pulleys or a boat trailer winch that lifts the lid and swings it clear. _\ | /_

I injured my back in high school sports and it's never fully healed, so I built a lot of portable lifting gear to help with logging firewood and moving boulders the builder left too close to the house, etc. It all breaks down into parts weighing 40 Lbs or less. jsw

An afterthought: when building theatre scenery I learned to make retractable landing gear for heavy items from casters on hinges that flipped underneath to move the load or out sideways to land it. Typically both casters per side would be on a strip of wood and move together, and could be flipped in or out with one foot while lifting the load with both hands.

If you have the space available that option separates the operations of lifting the lid and uncovering the opening. If it has to tilt open a boat trailer winch and overhead pulley may be the cheapest and easiest to install. I have several lifts that operate with block and tackle but securing the rope onto the cleat can be difficult with winter gloves. Cotton braided rope, sash cord or clothesline are the easiest to handle, and thin fingered gloves under removable thick mitten ones help.

Jim has some good ideas ... I was thinking something simpler . I use a home made pivoting jib crane to handle heavier chunks of firewood , something similar with a boat winch might be just the ticket for your lid lift . I used 2" square tube and an ATV electric winch , you could probably use chain link fencing tube and a boat winch . Actually , a lever and pivot device might work well since you're only lifting a few inches . And you'll be loading the lever rather than lifting anything .

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You can get Electric Actuators nowadays pretty cheap. Especially if they are odd-ball length/sizes. Some are pretty beefy in what they can lift. Check out the Ebay search for ideas

I was thinking something simpler . I use a home made pivoting jib crane to handle heavier chunks of firewood , something similar with a boat winch might be just the ticket for your lid lift . I used 2" square tube and an ATV electric winch , you could probably use chain link fencing tube and a boat winch . Actually , a lever and pivot device might work well since you're only lifting a few inches . And you'll be loading the lever rather than lifting anything . Snag

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Chain link fence post is quite versatile for structures. It's the same OD as water pipe although the nominal sizes are different, fence post size is closer to actual OD. If the well house frame permits an upper support the jib crane could be an upright post that rests on a foot-operated lever to lift the jib crane and well cover a few inches to swing it clear. A standard tee joint clamp could connect the boom to the mast if their outer and top ends are chained together to transfer the load to the upper support.

You can get Electric Actuators nowadays pretty cheap. Especially if they are odd-ball length/sizes. Some are pretty beefy in what they can lift. Check out the Ebay search for ideas

Fisk

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Thanks. They have come way down since I last looked. I've wanted to play with robotics for a long time but don't have a practical use, since everything I want to lift tends to weigh 500 Lbs or more. I did a little with Segway robotics, though only the bases for customers to add to. They make quite capable, relatively fast and extremely maneuverable all-terrain vehicles. One version had four wheels but could rise up and balance on two to turn in place or perform acrobatics, a favorite of the engineering staff. It had been an engineer's "frog day" project.

How 'bout pneumatic cylinders? Even a 1" one with 40psi air would lift

30lb±. There wouldn't be any worries about leaking. Some leaking really won't be a problem - the compressor would make it up.

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That's really cool and could see many uses for it👍

Johnny Buckets use an actuator for their Lawn Mower addons:

Noticed it years ago when I first heard of Johnny Buckets and was looking them over.

I've spotted actuators being used on farm machinery too. For turning chutes and other misc things...

Johnny Buckets use an actuator for their Lawn Mower addons:

Noticed it years ago when I first heard of Johnny Buckets and was looking them over.

I've spotted actuators being used on farm machinery too. For turning chutes and other misc things...

Leon Fisk

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I considered a remote actuator to raise and lower my TV antenna to help find sweet spots in the diffraction pattern over the ridge, then I discovered that chain link top rail can substitute for Radio Shack antenna mast at about a quarter the price, so I raised the antenna into stronger signal and added guy lines that ruled out the variable height idea. I still use a spectrum analyzer to aim the rotor for minimal ghost reflections, which cause interference notches in the otherwise nearly flat channel spectrum.

In the analog TV days with a lower antenna that channel showed a faint -leading- ghost, which I think was the direct path signal arriving ahead of the stronger reflection from the water tower.

If you want to see some impressive "shop made" hydraulics check out a YouTube channel called "Make it Extreme." They are more infotainment than informational, but may give you some inspiration. That being said... "how simple?"

Seriously. A tube/piston that won't cut an o-ring and a plane old basic round profile o-ring can work short term as a simple hydraulic cylinder. Backer rings and it gets a little better. Use actual hydraulic seals and you are limited by the strength of your tube and end caps. Dual acting hydraulics are in my opinion the simplest in terms of use, but single acting with weight or spring for counter force "may" be easier to fabricate. The control for a single acting cylinder is simpler to setup. Pressure source, and relief valve.

If its for a relatively low force maybe consider a pneumatic. Most shops already have an air compressor, but fewer have an independent hydraulic power pack laying around. The danger of failure with pneumatic is much higher if high pressure. More akin to an explosion. They make quite lethal pneumatic air rifles with "air" for a reason. I doubt you have high pressure air in your shop, but a large volume failure with the low pressure of a common shop or industrial compressor can be dangerous. (I do have high pressure in my shop, but only for charging air guns (3000-4500PSI).)

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I joined a motorcycle offroad club that hosted competitions like ice races and moto trials, which emphasize finesse and balance over speed. In the "boulder kissing" event you stop the bike, raise the front wheel, turn sideways and tap it on a boulder, straighten out and ride on, all without putting a foot down. It was what the Centaur could do, on a motorcycle. I couldn't even stay balanced for more than a second or two at a stop and barely could make a full-lock turn by balancing with the throttle.

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I remember watching little snippets for that type of riding long ago. Bikes were geared way down as I recall. Ride over stuff like old VW Beetles, retaining walls, dumpsters... without any starting or exit ramps. Way past my motorcycle handling abilities.

Motorcycle Trials... had to look it up to be sure I recalled it correctly😉

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Yeah... sometimes you could bet a better picture, signal pointing in the "wrong" direction but at some object that was reflecting well🙂

Way past my motorcycle handling abilities.

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My neighbor told me about commercial carpentry jobs when he was young, where many of the crew could walk along the 2x4 at the top of a wall several stories up; there was no scaffolding and few ladders. I can't walk reliably on a 2x4 flat on pavement or get very far balancing on railroad rails, despite much practice to improve my balance. An Army buddy walked around the narrow and crumbling top of the ruins of an old German castle I'd taken him to visit, about 3 stories up, while I stayed safe and secure on the old air raid observers platform in one corner and wondered how to explain getting him killed.

I kept climbing rope in the car so we could practice midnight castle storming raids on those isolated ruins. By law German commerce shut down at

6PM and during the week no one was out afterwards, except around the urban bars that stayed open until 3AM. Then we'd adjourn to the flat of a friendly barmaid to sober up a little before driving back to the base. The Army had told us we didn't really need much sleep and my time in Heidelberg proved it, even more than college.

Hi the Don and all you very experienced contributors.

Opinion of hydraulics shop - what "kills" hydraulics is non-use.

Sounds like once a year application? Not a lot of use.

Mine was "opposite" discussion - could I use over-the-counter hydraulic cylinder for fatigue-testing, where you'd be driving it through 10's to 100's of millions of cycles. They said likely no problem.

You have this rig and you are using it once a year...

Other thing is consequence if it does not work - weather window to do this, winter fast approaching and suddenly you turn it on and it doesn't work. Then you don't have time on your side to sort it out.

Others are already mention solutions which more come to me too. Beam on a couple of stands; a lever (crowbar?) and rope - or maybe go for a strop as used in lifting operations = stiff and load comes on with minimal stretch? Or a winch of some kind.

The thing is these solutions have wide-ranging application, you can substitute if any "curve-balls" come at you, things like a crowbar will be as good when you pick it up as when you put it down whenever that was, etc. You'd likely find lots of other applications.

My feeling is that other contributors like Jim and Snag have already pointed the way...

Rich S

Hi the Don and all you very experienced contributors.

Opinion of hydraulics shop - what "kills" hydraulics is non-use.

Sounds like once a year application? Not a lot of use.

Mine was "opposite" discussion - could I use over-the-counter hydraulic cylinder for fatigue-testing, where you'd be driving it through 10's to 100's of millions of cycles. They said likely no problem.

You have this rig and you are using it once a year...

Other thing is consequence if it does not work - weather window to do this, winter fast approaching and suddenly you turn it on and it doesn't work. Then you don't have time on your side to sort it out.

Others are already mention solutions which more come to me too. Beam on a couple of stands; a lever (crowbar?) and rope - or maybe go for a strop as used in lifting operations = stiff and load comes on with minimal stretch? Or a winch of some kind.

The thing is these solutions have wide-ranging application, you can substitute if any "curve-balls" come at you, things like a crowbar will be as good when you pick it up as when you put it down whenever that was, etc. You'd likely find lots of other applications.

My feeling is that other contributors like Jim and Snag have already pointed the way...

Rich S

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The missing element is a description of the conditions: is this a covered well in a separate doghouse with limited space above or beside for the open lid and places to attach mechanisms, or is the lid the weathertight roof of an exposed well with space around but no helpful structure above, or something else, for instance my Alabama grandfather's well was a tube that came up through the floor of the veranda and the water shuttle hung from the roof. I tried to address multiple possibilities. jsw

That wellhouse lid is probably only about 50 lb but it's awkwardly situated. I've thought about purely mechanical solutions but everything I came up with (levers, chains and sprockets, four-bar Chebychev linkages, gears, yada yada) was unduly complicated. I'm a sparky, not a gearhead.

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How about a lighter lid? I made several roof access hatches from corrugated Suntuf polycarbonate panels framed with 1-1/2" square PT near the outer edges and thinner PT purlins spaced 16" supporting the roofing. Steel angle brackets join the corners without complex carpentry. They have survived many years of falling acorns and NH winter snow loads and holes can be temporarily repaired with tape. Window screening over the bottom, resting on and overhanging the well rim, would keep bugs and wasps out while allowing ventilation, or the space could be insulated with styrofoam. Hooks and eyes keep them from blowing off. The ones most susceptible to falling branches have double layers of panel. A 2' x 4' hatch with a grab bar across the center is easy for me to lift open and set aside with one hand from below.

Before the polycarbonate panels came out I used PVC ones, and the colored panels held up longer in sunlight than the clear ones. Corrugated steel roofing isn't very heavy either.

It's a covered well in a separate doghouse that is ridiculously large for its purpose. It's like a 4 foot cube. The lid in question is the flat roof of the doghouse. No helpful structure above or near, and I don't want to add any signficant external structure because it's ugly enough as is. I'd like nearly all of the solution to be inside and out of sight, with maybe just an actuating lever on the outside. The idea is to raise the roof just about 2" so a surrounding lip clears the structure below, and it can then roll it back just enough to get at three valves inside. I've already made tools to reach and operate the valves from outside. The tools stay inside the wellhouse. Because it will be a passive system with rollers that push the lid up from inside, if the rollers and/or lifting mechanism fail to work then I just do it the hard way as I have for years.