first welding project - forks - again

[mikim]

Seems bucket forks are a real popular first project for beginners with a welder - ... for me too.... here's mine --
in progress

 

[mikim]

and completed

 

[mikim]

the reason I needed them this past weekend - I bought 20 acres and the previous owner left piles of junk laying around

 

[mikim]

forks made short work of moving those piles

 

[mikim]

I also made a little enhancement for them -

 

[mikim]

that enhancement worked ... sort of ... limited success - but don't know if it was the teeths fault or my operation of them - wife kept saying I wasn't hitting the brush at the correct angle --- made them for yaupon removal - trying it out here on some small ones - will try again when I have more time. We were in a hurry this day to finish mowing the pasture and doing the cleanup we wanted to get done.

 

[NCDeere]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Seems bucket forks are a real popular first project for beginners with a welder - ... for me too.... here's mine --
in progress )</font>

Hey, your forks look real nice. I was wondering though, how do you fix them? I see they fit on the front of your bucket but is the back side fixed in any way? My brother-in-law made a set similar to yours. He welded a piece of angle to the bottom back side of his bucket that had drilled and tapped holes in it. He said he wanted to fix them.

So if yours are fixed, how did you do it?

Thanks,

Bryan

 

[mikim]

Check the second pic ... see the hooks coming in from the back? I welded a chain on the bottom of the fork at the back where it extends under the bucket then ran it up the back and planned on hooking it into those slots I cut in the vertical pieces with a chain binder .... but the distance from that slot to where the bucket bends in the back was too short for the binders I have - so for now I used a turnbuckle .... will change that to a small binder when I get a round tuit.

 

[Mike_C]

Very nice forks! I may have to build some for mine one day.

 

[creeper]

Looks good to me!

 

[txhawg]

So, how hard was it to get the welding thing down? Looks like you must have had some practice before starting on the forks.

 

[KiotiMutt]

Nice job Mike. I just got my new mig welder a couple days ago. Don't know how to use it yet. I think I'll practice a little and try to build a set of forks like yours.

KiotiMutt

 

[mikim]

very little practice --- took a class a couple of years ago ......but took a lot of time doing this ... every weld took 15 - 20 minutes of looking at and lining up before I struck an arc on it. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

 

[mikim]

get 'em done - bring them to my office so I can see 'em ..... It's the new Galveston Co. Emergency mgmt building on 646 just over I45.

 

[mygoatboy]

Those look like you did a good job with welding them but I doubt you will be happy with the strength of them. I work with some made out of channel iron twice as wide and thick and I have seen them snap many a time when moving logs. Just my 2c

 

[mikim]

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif.....yer right .... re: In the pic with me lifting a pile of lumber the iron is flat and it worked really well cause that pile was sitting on concrete blocks ... but when I tried to dump the load on a flat boardwalk made of landscape timbers & treated 2Xs .... oops .... I tipped the bucket a bit too much and the next thing I knew I had the front of the tractor in the air! Lifted with the tips of the channel ... forward to the pic with that tooth thingy attached ... bucket is level.... forks are not .... they're bent .. but ya know what - they work great for getting under brush piles and scooping them up with that curve in 'em. /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif ... sort of bad news good news -- bad news = I bent the forks. good news = my welds held.... bad news = forks are bent. good news = bent forks work for scooping up old piles of brush....... HOWEVER --- I will be making new ones again someday and have learned that I can't do it on the cheap like I did this time.