Hand Cart Conversion, Leaky Tire and Rodent Trap Repairs

Sunday July 18, 2021 Guerneville CA.

Hand cart work

Back to work on the hand cart conversion. I needed to cut the rod for the axle at the right length so I had to set things up to get that measurement.

I cut the rod and welded two washers on it for the wheel stops.

Using tack welds on the wheel assembly

Then I needed to mount the wheel assembly to the cart so I started out this way. I just use tack welds just in case I needed to take it apart again. For those not in the know a tack weld is just a small weld to hold things together that can be broken easily if one needs to change something. When assembling things it’s a good idea to use tack welds especially making something for the first time.

Here’s the wheel assemble I’m setting up to the cart.

Carts together sorta

Ok I got the cart mostly together so now it’s  time to give it a test to see what works and what doesn’t.

Testing the cart out

I put one of my seventy pound sacks on it and it worked pretty good except for one thing I thought was going to be needing some fixing.

Small modification

Sacks aren’t like boxes as they sort of just flow so when the cart is tilted back the sack hits the tires so I need to make something to prevent that.

I found some rebar and formed some guards to keep the sack off the tires.

Here’s where I welded on the sack guards.

One more improvement needs to be done

This is the almost finished sack cart. There’s still something that could use some improvement I hadn’t thought about. The cart handle could use about another foot on it to give more leverage when tilting the cart back loaded. It’s doable with how it is but extending the handle would make it easier to use.

Chicks

I checked on my chicks and they were all resting.

Leaky tire

It turned out one of the tires had a leak so I needed to find it so I got the soapy water out.

The leak was hard to find. It’s on the top showing a rim leak which I will have to fix but for now I inflated the tire a bit over the maximum pressure to see if it will seal. It did slow down when I did that so I’ll check it again tomorrow.

Fed the peeps

Then I went out and got my peeps some weeds and put them in their pen. I think I have about 25 of them.

Rodent traps project

Then I started the rodent trap repairs. My brother Tom brought these by the other day and asked me to repair them and do some improvements. They looked like they’d been sitting out in the bushes for awhile, a long while.

I started with this one and fabricated a piece of metal to extend the trigger as they like to hop over the trip tray.

That’s as far as I got as I’m waiting for my brother to bring back my screw gun as it’s needed to screw things together.

Nice day.