It is Sunday and a day of rest, unless you are me. I am a believer that God wants me working every wakeful hour or he'd have made me wealthy by now, so today I worship, work, and leisure simultaneously at the Church of Applied Agricultural Metallurgy. Extend tongue and substitute the Eucharist with two ibuprofen and get to it my son. The paint was still curing on the BOOM POLE OF UNLIMITED LIABILITY, but it was time to complete another project impeding the Most Expensive Tomato Ever Grown to eat with the Most Expensive Apple Ever Grown (yet to be even determined to be viable). The parts for which block my entrance to my workshop. Therefore it must be next.
To remind myself that I should be grateful for the mind numbing job at a car parts factory, where I sit behind a desk, for 10 hours a day to do two legitimate hours of work, and two more hours of creating productivity tools to reduce that actual two hours of work into one hour, and the rest of the time in exaggerated meetings where my input is unneeded and unheeded, or barely making myself look busy, or dealing with the borderline personalities that report to me, or daydreaming of farm implements I wish I had, to make the farm I wish I had, I weld. (What a painful sentence. Mark Twain said the reason German verbs come at the end of the sentence is because people would stop listening if they didn't. Okay I won't do it again.)
Welding is hard, physical work. Well, the actual welding part isn't so physical, for it only requires years of practice and steady hands. The other part of cutting, grinding, lifting, drilling, shaping, more lifting and kneeling on tiny bits of metal and inhaling fumes laden with heavy metals and carbon monoxide is the more physically demanding part. I'm no spring chicken. The first time I heard the Beatles was on 8-track. Add some Southern heat and humidity and you can separate men from boys fairly quickly. I've yet to meet a professional welder that had a gram of pretence in his being. If I had to support a family by welding, I'd be mostly unemployed.
The Walter Mitty meets Eddie Albert sometimes finds me spending my lunch break at local tractor merchant's lot, looking at overpriced implements and seeing how they are fabricated. I'm not there to buy, I'm there to steal. Every design element, dimensions, catalogued in my mind, ect. I buy steel a bit rusty at .30 cents a pound, and make implements worth .15 cents a pound. This hernia helper is no exception. Note the compensation for an apparent difficulty to handle, transport, and cut sheet goods. By the way, a old circular saw and a $19 HF carbide metal blade is way better than a cut off wheel.
The Heaviest BoxBlade Ever belies every penny pinching manufacturing axiom I've ever known. Overkill for the sake of overkill. Of course you can buy tube but it's more fun to fabricate it from angle iron, as do the implement manufactures. I didn't add rippers. I'm going to add a single ripper to the 3pt HITCH OF DEATH. Here it is. By titling the workpiece many welds were done in 7024 that is typically only for horizontal welds. The others were 7018AC. All were in DCEN. Most of the welds were nasty, except one which was damm near perfect and I have no idea why.
My lift arm axis 9 from the ground this design will have 4 of subgrade reach. 24 inch spread between lift arms taken from the 3pt HITCH OF DEATH. The holes and slots in the I beam need to be patched. That metal was free. I had another piece of I beam that was much heavier that I chose not to use. I used C-channel again. Strong, adequate linear weld surface, and not so expensive. Still need to add the vertical element for the top link. I have the concept and the material but I need a protractor. 3 sqare tube from the back with rebar supports. I might need a curved insert as a cutting edge. I don't know. Maybe a few old LP cylinders cut lengthwise. The work shown except for the angle iron tube was done in one day. The saw blade really helps. The whole thing is fairly heavy but I could lift it. **** yes there will be a balanced lift point for pickup with the BOOM POLE OF UNLIMITED LIABILITY which is why I made that first. Gsa Gsa is getting ready for me to stop f'in around an plant something so I'm looking forward to relax my welding schedule after this and finish the kitchen. After dropping an object and shattering the rangetop, she's been cooking for the last month for four on a Walmart hot plate and I'm not joking.
To remind myself that I should be grateful for the mind numbing job at a car parts factory, where I sit behind a desk, for 10 hours a day to do two legitimate hours of work, and two more hours of creating productivity tools to reduce that actual two hours of work into one hour, and the rest of the time in exaggerated meetings where my input is unneeded and unheeded, or barely making myself look busy, or dealing with the borderline personalities that report to me, or daydreaming of farm implements I wish I had, to make the farm I wish I had, I weld. (What a painful sentence. Mark Twain said the reason German verbs come at the end of the sentence is because people would stop listening if they didn't. Okay I won't do it again.)
Welding is hard, physical work. Well, the actual welding part isn't so physical, for it only requires years of practice and steady hands. The other part of cutting, grinding, lifting, drilling, shaping, more lifting and kneeling on tiny bits of metal and inhaling fumes laden with heavy metals and carbon monoxide is the more physically demanding part. I'm no spring chicken. The first time I heard the Beatles was on 8-track. Add some Southern heat and humidity and you can separate men from boys fairly quickly. I've yet to meet a professional welder that had a gram of pretence in his being. If I had to support a family by welding, I'd be mostly unemployed.
The Walter Mitty meets Eddie Albert sometimes finds me spending my lunch break at local tractor merchant's lot, looking at overpriced implements and seeing how they are fabricated. I'm not there to buy, I'm there to steal. Every design element, dimensions, catalogued in my mind, ect. I buy steel a bit rusty at .30 cents a pound, and make implements worth .15 cents a pound. This hernia helper is no exception. Note the compensation for an apparent difficulty to handle, transport, and cut sheet goods. By the way, a old circular saw and a $19 HF carbide metal blade is way better than a cut off wheel.
The Heaviest BoxBlade Ever belies every penny pinching manufacturing axiom I've ever known. Overkill for the sake of overkill. Of course you can buy tube but it's more fun to fabricate it from angle iron, as do the implement manufactures. I didn't add rippers. I'm going to add a single ripper to the 3pt HITCH OF DEATH. Here it is. By titling the workpiece many welds were done in 7024 that is typically only for horizontal welds. The others were 7018AC. All were in DCEN. Most of the welds were nasty, except one which was damm near perfect and I have no idea why.
My lift arm axis 9 from the ground this design will have 4 of subgrade reach. 24 inch spread between lift arms taken from the 3pt HITCH OF DEATH. The holes and slots in the I beam need to be patched. That metal was free. I had another piece of I beam that was much heavier that I chose not to use. I used C-channel again. Strong, adequate linear weld surface, and not so expensive. Still need to add the vertical element for the top link. I have the concept and the material but I need a protractor. 3 sqare tube from the back with rebar supports. I might need a curved insert as a cutting edge. I don't know. Maybe a few old LP cylinders cut lengthwise. The work shown except for the angle iron tube was done in one day. The saw blade really helps. The whole thing is fairly heavy but I could lift it. **** yes there will be a balanced lift point for pickup with the BOOM POLE OF UNLIMITED LIABILITY which is why I made that first. Gsa Gsa is getting ready for me to stop f'in around an plant something so I'm looking forward to relax my welding schedule after this and finish the kitchen. After dropping an object and shattering the rangetop, she's been cooking for the last month for four on a Walmart hot plate and I'm not joking.
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