My biggest project yet - a rear blade.

[BGL990]

The first project I was going to build when I got my tractor was a rear blade. As many of you may have noticed, it didn't turn out that way. Finally I have completed it and for those who might be interested, here is the story ....

First shot is of some of the raw materials. The blade itself I got along with the old Ford 9N I bought a few years ago. It appears to be homebuilt but is done quite nicely and is fairly heavy. The rest are just a few of the raw steel bits I bought at the local steel vendor.

 

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Here I've done a little bit of cutting and layed some of the pieces out to help me plan things out in my head. I had a general idea of what I was going to do but mainly made it up as I went along (my favorite way to do things).

 

[BGL990]

Another angle of the initial layout. You can see the main beam has been cut out to fit the large diameter pipe. I just traced around the pipe and free-handed the cut with my plasma cutter as close to the line as I could. A bit of grinder work finished it up for a nice fit.

 

[BGL990]

Normally I am a bit reluctant to hide bolts inside something where you can't get at them, but in this case I relented. The 3pt pins needed to stick out of the ends of a piece of round pipe and it just didn't seem right to cut open the pipe enough to get at the nuts. I made some round pieces of flat bar and bolted AND welded the pins in place. I also machined a small shoulder in the pieces, mainly to help hold them in place while I welded them on the ends of the pipe, but I think being slightly recessed into the pipe ends will also add some strength.

 

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Here's an end cap welded in place (a bit fuzzy - sorry). I almost forgot to make sure the lynch pin holes were lined up the way I wanted. Remembered before welding luckily.

 

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The main beam parts all stuck together. The horizontal pipe was fitted to the main beam the same was as the larger piece of pipe. Trace around the pipe where I wanted it and a bit of plasma cutter and angle grinder action. I also bevelled the edges of all the cutouts to leave a bit of a 'V' to weld into along the seam, hopefully creating a stronger weld.

 

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For the top link attachment I more or less copied my JD landscape rake. I needed to make two identical pieces and didn't want it to look too square and clunky, so a cardboard template proved useful.

 

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Almost a full evening of playing with the plasma cutter, bandsaw, grinder, and hole saw yeilded these pieces. This was the point I started to question what I had gotten into with this project. My back and feet were sore and a few hours of work only produced these two pieces. Basically it just takes some time and effort to cut and shape 1/4" and 3/8" thick material (which most of this project uses).

 

[BGL990]

The two pieces I just made will sit something like this ...

 

[BGL990]

I'm a believer in eyeballing things where it makes sense. I don't mean standing back and going "hmm... good enough", but rather pick a reference point or edge and line something up with it by sight. In this case I wanted the top link pin holes to be centered above the horizontal pipe and of course they had to be parallel to it. The string and weight let me know when the holes were directly above the pipe centerline and the solid bar inserted through the holes is where the 'eyeballing' came in. Standing above the assembly, with your head in just the right position, you can get the edge of the solid bar and the edge of the lift arm attachment pipe to line up. Any misalignment is very obvious and with a little practice you can align things extremely accurately using this method.