Building my tractor bridge across the creek

[deezler]

Thanks for posting this, need a small wide bridge and your ideas are effeminately inspiring, except for the mud bath and shoe throwing.:laughing:

Haha! Are you.... sure that effeminately is the word you intended? I thought it was a pretty masculine effort, Lol.

 

[kenmbz]

I love spell correction. definitely would be the correct wurd.

 

[JethroB]

I love spell correction. definitely would be the correct wurd.

Ha. I once sent out an email to several IT people in our large multi-state company. I was thanking them for considering a project I had proposed. Spell check really bit me. It got passed around quickly. :ashamed:

Thank you for your constipation.

Sorry for the drift...

 

[EddieWalker]

Good job and thanks for all the pictures. I'm really enjoying them!!!!

 

[LouNY]

It's to late now for your bridge but,
around here a great many of the older smaller bridges used 2x's for the deck,
they are laid on edge so the deck was 6 or 8 inches thick and quite strong many of them actually got
oil soaked and then had black top poured on them when the road was paved.

 

[deezler]

Thanks gents. Yeah Lou, that's what my father in law wanted to do, stand the boards up sideways - definitely a strong way to go. Problem is, that would have taken a LOT more wood. I used ~74 boards to get across my span with them doubled, which is literally every single one I had that was usable. Putting them sideways with no gaps would mean needing almost twice as many, more like 136 of them. Leaving gaps between them would be great and reduce the number of boards needed by at least 20-40%, but then how do you attach them together in a convenient way, and then secure them all to the poles? Just seemed tricky. Not to mention having twice the dead load always sitting and weighing on the poles.

 

[deezler]

Sealing the wood before winter

At this point the decking was pretty much completed and the weather was starting to turn cool.

Some of these boards are in better shape than others. Collectively they've been refinished at least a few times when in service on my parents deck. The sunniest and highest traffic areas were pretty well worn back to exposed wood. So, I figured it would be wise to throw a coat of wood preservative on top before winter. I was a little concerned that the weather might turn cold any day now, preventing me from doing this before next spring.

The problem is, I am cheap and didn't want to go spend money at home depot. So I raided my dad's workshop to see what cans of wood preservative he still had on hand. Turns out, he had plenty! But how old was it? who knows, but it still smells and looks like normal. So we use it.

My son helped me rig up plastic sheeting under the bridge so that we wouldn't drip any into the creek, which worked out great. I was so proud of him for helping out and working hard on this part of the project. We brush painted the ends of the boards, in between each crack, and then I rolled a layer on top of all the boards. It was looking real good.....

And then, it cooled off rapidly as the sun set. And more humid weather moved in. And then it rained a half inch overnight and into the following day. I honestly don't think ANY of what we painted on stayed put. Our plastic sheeting under the bridge blew out as soon as it collected rain puddles, and had an orange tint all over it. SO much for not putting any wood preservative into the creek..... UGH! :mur::mur::mur:

 

[deezler]

Final wood work

I still needed/wanted to put some wood trim on the sides to finish the look and maybe serve as little "bumpers" or guides in the rare instance of a tire coming up against the edge. I don't think these really offer much insurance, but, it would add 2" of width to each side of the bridge, in any case.

Well I learned my lesson about painting outdoors this time of year with this old junky preservative, so these trim boards got special treatment and dried indoors for a couple days before install.

Two of the boards were specifically to fill in the gaps on the sides where there are single boards reaching out to the ends. Ran them sideways underneath, like so:

And then the remainder were for side trim. I spaced them out about a 1/2" from the bridge deck with a pile of plastic grommets that I found in my parts bins, to allow full water drainage and airflow. Between the underneath fill boards and this side trim, I must have put well over a hundred more deck screws into the bridge assembly overall. Every board got one or two screws into every piece of bridge deck it was passing by....

Which brings us to a completed wood assembly, as she sits today:

You can see that the wood sure doesn't look freshly painted anymore, doh.

I've been waiting on a gravel delivery for a couple weeks now. Guess I gotta pester my trucking guy again about it.

 

[EddieWalker]

Re: Starting the Decking

Am I seeing this correctly? Is the weight of the tractor on the 2x6's that are spanning the beams, and not directly on top of the beams? Why?

 

[srs]

Deezler, enjoyed reading this bridge build and great job on posting the pictures. Quick question for you can you please tell me where you got the tooth-bar for the bucket? Thanks, Stanley