The weight box project continues to be painful. I have flopped between the wire welder and the stick welder. The wire is great for the light duty sheet metal welding and the stick is great when doing heavy pieces of metal. I am just pulling scrap out of the machine shop that I have accumulated over the years at various auctions or yard sales. Plus I keep digging around in the scrap pile for various other pieces. Honestly, it doesn’t matter what the thing looks like when I am done it just needs to not fall apart from getting bounced around on the back of the tractor. The corner pieces are made out of 3/8” thick angle iron and the two cross pieces that need holes drilled in them for the 3 point attachments are 1/2” thick and 4” wide. I do not believe that those will be bending from a little bouncing around. The rest of it is just assorted pieces of scrap that I found laying around on the ground in my work area.
I do plan on hitting it with a wire wheel when I am all done so that I can spray some paint over the entire project. I had to switch out tractors to hold the weight up in the air while I am working on it. At one point the little tractor started to tip over onto its side! I had to grab a hold of the tractor side and hurry to the controls to let the front end down. If I had a counterweight on it there would have been no issues! So I switched over the forks to the bigger tractor and I can now lift this weight up to waist height without worrying that it will tip the tractor over on its side.
I am not sure that I have a metal drill bit that will go up to size 1”. I am going to have to dig around in the tools and see if there is something like that out there. I honestly don’t know between donated tools and auction tools I may have one.
I dug around today and fount 1/4” bit and was able to drill both sides of the counterweight. Then I went up to 1/2” bit and was only able to drill out one side and got about 2/3 through the other one. I had a 1” bit but it would not go through. I ordered some hardened bits in graduated sizes so I could get to the 7/8” hole I need for the three point lower pins. I had some brand new pins so I don’t have to reuse the abused and bent ones. Now I will just need to wait for them to arrive this next week.
I did work on my rifle holder supports for the tractor. I need something that can take the abuse of constantly getting beat around and vibrating all of the time. Commercial gun holders are just not built that way. I cut and bent some angle iron and then worked on trying to fill weld the parts were I bent the U shape into the angle iron.
The U shaped pieces would not just fill in with the stick welder. I was only able to get about 50% of the metal back together. But I tried to spread these U-shapes apart after I did get them welded and I was unable to do it. They are solid. I need to get some pipe insulation now to go over these supports and then I just have to mark and drill a hole and I can bolt them back onto the support bar I already have installed on the tractor. I do not believe these will break and I made the high so there is no cross piece necessary. I do not believe the gun will bounce out of the arms now because they are so deep.
