Before I pulled the trigger on either the TSC carry all or a fork attachment, I decided to see what I could do with what I had on hand. Part of this inspiration is because we're in the middle of a house building project, and there's a ton of scrap available to me at the moment. I came up with this carry all deck for my box blade, using nothing more than pallet wood, scrap 2x4 and 2x6 lumber, nails taken from pneumatic strips that house framers seem to discard like cigarette butts (I've probably got 30lbs. of nails picked up from the yard), and half a box of screws. Total cost, after I paint it, should be about $10.
Base is made of 2x4s, fitted to the recesses in the box blade:
The decking and edge banding are from pallet wood. The fiber cement siding for our new house is delivered on long pallets, about 16 feet long. Lots of long, straight pieces of SYP in those pallets, sturday and very useful once the nails are out. The uprights, which will support a tote box made from pallet wood, are 2x6s.
Here's the tote box. It's already loaded up with the tools I used to make the carry all.
And the final product, ready for some limbing work around the homestead.
The carry all is only connected to the box blade by gravity. I ran a few tests to check stability, and found one problem I will have to address: Going downhill, if the tote box is filled with gear, and there is nothing on the deck, the carry all wants to tip forward onto the quick hitch. I'll have to add some type of attachment to prevent that. I also tested it by transporting about 300 lbs. of cut logs. Worked great. Was able to get a satisfying amount of log sections on the platform. They were stable. My steering was a little light with that much weight on the back (5' box blade, platform, logs, tools), so I may add a couple more suitcase weights to my front fender.
Still have some more mods to do: Holes, hooks, tubes, etc., to make it more versatile for carrying long handled tools, rope and chain, among other things, and of course, painting. I made the carry all platform 4" wider than the box blade on either side. Might add legs to it so it can stand alone, but for now, the extra width allow me to set the carry all down on some stacked cinder blocks. It's not hard to take it off by hand when it's empty. Just a bit awkward.
With this setup, I can't achieve one of my goals: Rolling a log onto the platform using a timberjack, as I might with a lower carry all or forks. Thinking about other ways to solve that issue. But overall, I'm really happy with it. Although I was only able to use it for actual work for about 3 hours today, it was incredibly handy.
