Anybody build their own mini excavator buckets? I'm tight and hate to spend $500-$1000 on a 24" GP bucket and a grading bucket. I have a pretty well suited shop to work out of, and have built a lot of things with steel, but never a bucket. Any pointers or testimonials? Thanks John
I built a tilting ditching bucket for my NH EC25 excavator. I designed the whole thing as a 3D model in Solidworks so I could get the tilt geometry straight and then got a local Hutterite colony to laser-cut the pieces and form them. I welded it myself using my old Lincoln stick welder. As for the cutting edge, I picked up an obsolete zamboni edge at the local hockey rink for free. I bought a small amount of DOM tube from the same Hutterite colony and machined all the bushings myself on a neighbor's lathe. My total cost was well under $500. It really looks nice and works fantastic.
Price out the hardened steel to see if it's worth it. There are so many used buckets on the market that you should be able to find a good deal on something that already fits your machine or could be adapted to fit.