"PS : Steve, I see the way you analyze the advantages and functions of technical mechanisms. I think there is an engineer eye here. Do I mistake ?"
Never officially schooled as an engineer, just did half of their jobs and all of mine for most of my working life - taught electronics in military schools in the '60's, Engineering Tech for major hard/software companies including training of incoming techs in the '70's, Industrial instrumentation/control tech for rare metals manufacturers (2) for the next 30 years, ran a maintenance crew with ALL trades for the last 5, then finally escaped :cool2:
Now scheming on keeping my 10 acres under control with minimum effort on my part - I've often heard that "lazy people make the best inventors"
and I believe it - I'd MUCH rather spend days designing (if necessary) and building a "widget" to do some repetitive (or back-breaking) task using air, electric or hydraulic power than doing it the hard way over and over.
My current project in that vein -
Our place has a lot of hedges, trees, etc, around the house and shop that are constantly in need of trimming, pruning, etc - I'm nearly finished building a "brush bucket" for my full size Case backhoe - it's 6 x 8 x 2 feet deep, built of 2 inch square tube, and will hold nearly two full-size pick-up loads of brush at a time. Once it's loaded (by whatever means, including wife
I just drive to either the shredder area or the burn pile, dump it (with a hydraulic lever, NOT my back :thumbsup: ) and go back for another load. I've been taking a few pix and will start a separate thread when I'm done.
A second facet of the "brush with death" project - hydraulic sickle bar cutter
Sabre Samurai | Features
I spent the better part of a year looking for an older, longer sickle bar mower to modify - just missed out on one for $400, every other one must have been made of platinum (or at least its owner THOUGHT so) because they wanted anywhere from $1000 up to $1500
Anyway, I'm getting ready to cut pieces of square tubing, etc, and mount small hydraulic cylinders and a second set of trailer hitch receivers on the front bucket of the backhoe so I can drive along a hedge, trim the face of it and have (hopefully) all the trimmings fall into the large bucket, go dump it, repeat as necessary, all without leaving the seat of the tractor.
Trimming the TOP of a hedge will be just as easy, but clearing the trimmings will likely require the NEXT little project - a set of long brush forks so I can drive them into the hedge, lift, and "comb" the trimmings out of the hedge and dump them into the brush bucket (brush bucket is designed so it takes maybe 2 minutes to attach/remove, all from the seat of the tractor)
There are several more projects on my list, but I've already hijacked your thread for too long :ashamed: I'll try to keep taking pix and share some of this later... Steve
