Bucket extension project.

Shield Arc · Apr 23, 2013

Went to Montana couple weeks ago with a good friend of mine. His brother-n-law grows Timothy hay on hundreds of acres. He has a 5-feet wide bucket for his John Deere tractor, can't remember the model number of the tractor:confused3:, but the bucket looks way to small for the tractor. We brought the bucket home, now we are in the process of adding 18-inches to each side. Yesterday we cut everything out, and bent. Today got it just about welded up, and started removing the bow in the top of the bucket. Tomorrow we'll finish removing the bow, and weld some 4-inch C-channel under the top to reinforce it. Then weld a new cutting edge on. He bought AR-235 for the cutting edge. We cut a bevel on the AR-235 yesterday as well. Kind of a fun project.

CNC Dan · Apr 23, 2013

Looks great. How thick is the steel that you bent for the extentions? And how did you bend it?
As for the AR 235 steel, why that grade and not some other AR steel?

LD1 · Apr 23, 2013

Nice project. Must be a pretty good sized tractor to want a 96" bucket.

Shield Arc · Apr 23, 2013

CNC Dan said:
Looks great. How thick is the steel that you bent for the extentions? And how did you bend it?
As for the AR 235 steel, why that grade and not some other AR steel?

The plate is 3/16-inch thick. Used my Northern Tool break. I asked for AR-400, but I think the steel supplier in Montana only had AR-235.

LD1 said:
Nice project. Must be a pretty good sized tractor to want a 96" bucket.

If I had to guess, his tractor is 3 to 4 times the size of my JD-4200.

Shield Arc · Apr 24, 2013

Finished it up to day. Preheated the AR-235 cutting edge to 300-degrees and welded it with 7018 right out of the oven. Wrapped it up until it cool down. No cracks! :thumbsup:

Arc weld · Apr 24, 2013

Looks excellent but all your projects do. I'd guess you couldn't get enough angle with the plate flat and cut from the plate side to narrow side? For Victor straight torches, you can get an adaptor that allows you to do higher angles with the radiagraph running on the plate your cutting. For those who don't know, a radiagraph is a motorized carriage to carry a cutting torch on a track or with a radius rod for circles. Airco inventing them but the name is used for all of them, just like all bulldozers are cats. Most people call them radiographs but that's incorrect. Yours looks like a Koike Imax 3. Koike bought the rights to the Airco machines but discontinued them after 65 or 67 years. A lot of shops were mad the Airco style machines were discontinued cause they were the cadillacs of radiagraphs.

Shield Arc · Apr 25, 2013

I paid $50.00 for that tractor torch!:cool2: Can't remember the brand name right now, have to look.
When I worked in that tank shop someone set up a tractor torch to cut circles. Had about 6 or 8-inch long piece of 6-inch diameter round stock with something like a concrete nail welded to one end in the center. Had a hole drilled through this round stock so some 1/2-inch round stock rod could run through it. The 1/2-inch round stock connected to the tractor somehow. You turned the wheels on the tractor to match the diameter of the circle you wanted to cut. I don't think we ever cut anything smaller than 8-feet in diameter with it. In my little hobby shop what few circles I ever cut I use this rotating table and unit that attaches to the torch. Both home made. I can cut some really accurate holes with this set up.