6 Attachment(s)
A couple of farm related projects
Hi all,
I'm not sure if anyone will be too interested in my projects, but I am always looking through the Metalwork Forums for ideas and inspiration. I never cease to be impressed by the quality of work the members post here as well as the great imagination involved in coming up with some of the projects. I love to recycle stuff, especially scrounging materials from the tip to turn into something I need. A lot of my projects take a while to complete, because I get distracted by something else or I haven't managed to find the parts I need at the right price. :D
A while ago I bought a three point linkage grader blade to be able to grade the driveway and level a few bumps in the paddock. Here it is with some fresh paint.
Attachment 375924
Of course, to get a really good job, it needs a guide wheel. I have come up with the following arrangement that I think will work okay. I searched around the net a bit and the design I ended up with is based on a mixture of several I found. The idea of the guide wheel is to hold the bottom of the blade level with the surface height you want as much as possible so that the blade cuts the high spots and drops material into the low spots. Sometimes you might just set the wheel so that there is pretty much no weight on the blade (just touching the surface) so that your final surface finish will be fairly smooth with minimal undulations. The longer the distance is between the tractor and the blade as well as between the blade and the guide wheel, the better.
Attachment 375925Attachment 375926
Gee my welds look bad in photographs :B More practice required. The wheel is a "flat free" beastie. That and the axle shaft are the only new parts, the rest is scrounged and re-purposed - hence the rust etc. I still have to rig up a way the retain the castering part. Most seem to have a compression spring, a big washer and a pin mounted on the end of the vertical shaft to keep the wheel attached firmly and still allow it to caster. I am still looking around for a suitable spring or a way to make one.
Attachment 375927
This old Massey Ferguson linkage stabiliser is what I intend to use for the wheel height adjustment. That is, if I can get it freed up as it is stuck solid at the moment even after soaking in penetrating oil for a month. Otherwise back to the drawing board or the rubbish tip for that one. The intended mounting point for the adjustment is between the vertical fork on the guide wheel assembly and the diagonal brace on the grader blade. I will need to make a bolt on bracket or drill a couple of holes in the brace to mount the blade end of the adjustable link.
As for fencing, tensioning ring-lock type wire can be a pain, especially if you are doing it wire-by-wire. My father has a wooden arrangement of 2 4X2s bolted together to sandwich the wire so that you can strain the whole lot at once using a chain attached to the top and bottom along with a set of wire strainers. Since I have a few hundred metres of fencing to do, I needed my own system. So, back to the internet and then to the scrap heap. This is what I came up with. The same idea of sandwiching the wire mesh between the pipes and then using wire strainers to tighten the wire.
Attachment 375928Attachment 375929
The middle pipe unbolts for the wire to be placed between the two parts. I haven't tested it out, but hopefully it will work okay.
I hope someone finds this stuff interesting.
Simon