Forks Homemade Brush Forks Success!

[mmchap]

Frustrated by the high cost of brush forks and my lack of welding equipment, I decided to fabricate my own forks for moving the piles of brush around the property. The first stab at it involved the fairly lightweight steel you would find at Tractor Supply or Home Depot and techscrews.........disaster! The first attempt to penetrate a pile of brush bent the forks like a pretzel.
At this point I was resigned to the fact that I would probably have to buy my forks and be out a lot of money. Then one day a coworker told me about some of the things he built from Unistrut and how strong it was. Today I went t o Home Depot to check it out. I bought the stuff I thought I would need, got out my Portaband and some wrenches and viola, brush forks! I use the ratchet straps from my Ratchet-rake (awesome purchase) to lock it in place and went to work. Results have been great so far!

Here are some pictures:

 

[C-Range]

Great creativity MM! Necessity is the mother of invention.

 

[mmchap]

Thanks Chris. I am pretty pleased so far and all of the materials only cost me about $80 (already had the staps though)

Mike

 

[PILOON]

I'd suggest buying a welder and some 3 or 4 inch channel and you'd still be ahead of the game with a new toy (tool) to play with.
Have fun as well.

 

[SylvainG]

That's clever. I might do something similar next Spring. Any reason you went with square tubing instead of T posts? T posts have holes alone its length which would allow the cross section to be bolted to the runners.

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

Unistrut is far stronger than t-posts. I can stand on a t-post and bend it.... try jumping on a Uni-strut.... you will definitely NOT bend it!

 

[Wyobuckaroo]

An older thread, but imagination and ingenuity never gets old..

My thoughts are to open the pallet forks as wide as possible on my FEL pallet fork frame, and build a slip on set of teeth to fit inbetween the forks to use for brush moving..
Kind of like a dental bridge set up..

Easy, cheap, homebuilt, and useful is always better than just spending money for the latest, greatest, new thing available..
My 5 cents of opinion..

 

[airbiscuit]

Here's what I made with some scrap 2 1/2" angle iron to bolt on my Titan economy forks.