Hello , I am not new here but this is my first post. I thought I would share some photos of projects I have worked on recently. Almost all of it is Logging related equipment. First picture is some track guards on a 308C. Inside and out, welded on and sleeved together with 4 1" solid pins to help fight deflection Second is Line boring a Fecon head for a Timbco Third is A grapple plate to add a little more reach on the same 308C
Made 100 climb saw locks for saw racks
This was a fun project. Bobbed the feed drive, moved the battery, added a better cover plate over the controls. And built the "iron Maiden" over the front. Access doors over the front controls and air filter. The whole unit unbolts for better engine access if needed.
Did a electric scale conversion on a T800. Converted the log bunk to pin to the king pin plate. That allows them to switch from low bedding to log hauling without changing anything except pins.
Very nice work! Makes me want to get back to some fab work. It's been a long time since welded more than a few minutes. Keep the pics coming.....TIO
Nice. And the crawler buggies look good to. As much as I like logging pictures a picture or 3 about them is OK also in my book.
What is a climb saw? What are the locks?
You should install some horizontal supports on either side of the idler guides before they start spreading! I am assuming this is going out in the brush after trees for the chipper? I now understand what a climbing saw is but still would like pic of the locks in use. Again super work
Thank you! That was my primary business for the last 11 years. I have plenty of pictures of those. Thank you. I wanted too, but they were not interested at the time. The climb saw locks get welded to the saw racks. Each saw rack for the crew trucks hold 4 big saws, 2 climb saws, and fire extinguisher. The pin goes through the handle with a pad lock to secure it. They have had a bunch of saws stolen, so we redesigned the mount. I'll try too get some better pictures of it.
This is the start of my swim deck bumper. Still have doors and outriggers to finish
A brush rake style thumb for local guy. And the 308 outside all done
One of the King of the Hammers cars I built. Rock crawler/desert style cars. Full tube chassis,Rear engine LS7 based motor, Th400 to divorced Transfercase. 4wd independent front suspension. 18" of travel in front, 30" travel in the rear.
FISHMOUTH FAB, Very nice work and thanks for taking the time to post the details and pics, will definitely follow the thread ...what grade of steel did you use for the track guards? Regards, Bob
Thanks Bob. The track guards were made from 3"x6"x .625" A36. The vertical gussets were made from .500" A36. I used .045" 71M dual sheild.
Nice looking work. I love it when a person takes pride in his work. You can always tell the good ones by there finished product.
This was the first time I made track guards 2 years ago. Their mechanic asked me too put the leg down. I am not a fan of doing it that way. I prefer the leg out with gussets to the track frame ( like the one pictured above). Easier to weld and more support for the track, in my opinion.
This is another 308 that received a cab guard and another grapple mount. It came with a quick coupler that i cut up and welded a 1" plate too. Made the ears out of 1" with a tube sleeve to support the two of them. The cab guard is 2"x3"x .120 wall box tube. 3"x.375" flat bar for slates. It bolts to the existing ROPS. Covering the front and the top. Notched to follow the profile of the cab.
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And the other grapple plate. They had me open up the hole in the yoke to fit a 2" pin instead of 1.750". I had to do it in my bridgeport because I didn't have my line boring machine yet.
This is one of the 308's and the bobbed Morbark chipper out working in Camino,Ca
One of their other Morbark chippers lost the bearings on the main clutch shaft. Welded it up and re machined it too spec. It was an emergency repair, but it's still in the machine running today
Better pictures of the thumb. It was intended to be "fixed" when I drew it up.2" pins. After I cut it out the customer changed his mind and wanted it to move. So the pivot point for the ram isn't where it should be. Haven't figured out the best way to fix it without it looking like an after thought. it is all 1/2" plate. He only wants to use it for brush.If it starts bending the teeth I will add more gussets to it.
This was an Aluminum engine cover for a Hydro Seeder. It use Dzus fasteners too hold all the panels together. A flat head screwdriver and you can take all the panels off in 2 minuets
Fishmouthfab, Top notch work on all of it. You must have a plasma table in the shop? Post some pics of the tools if you would too...TIO
The current project. Recreate this mobile foam fire suppression unit. It use nitrogen as the propellant. A 80 gallon compressor tank with a 80 gallon water tank above it. Making a total of 400 gallons of retardant. The two pintle hooks are for the dozer or skidder to pick it up and follow the bunchers around. This one does not meet requirements for USFS now. It needs a 300 foot hose reel. The other problem is it is not very secure. So I will make lockable doors and hold downs to keep people from stealing the bottles,axes etc. Should be fun
Thank you. Yes I do. I got it about a year ago. Before that I made everything by hand. I have plenty of tooling pics if you guys want too see that stuff! I am most certainly a "tool whore"
The plasma table is a 4x8 1st gen Torchmate. TD 151 unit. It will cut up too 1.250". I have only cut .750" so far. It does a nice job. Just have to play with the feed/speed for each material. I built the water tray fro it a week after I had it. It was dusting out everything in my shop.
I picked up my line boring machine off of Craigslist. It is a Blacklabel Machine unit. It came with all the bearings, a 2',4', and 6' bars in 1.5" diameter. So far I am pretty happy with it. I made the adapter to put a mill power feed onto it. Hand feeding with the little wheel sucked. The biggest hole I have done so far is 3". For the logging stuff I doubt I will ever see anything over 4". So for $1500 I think it works GREAT!
This is an overlook of the shop late last year. Full of race cars.
BOBCAT arm cracked out. Airarc'd it out. Welded it up and wrapped the ends all around. Welded with .045" 71M
The fix.....
Nice work FISHMOUTH. Was the Bobcat arm previously welded on the inside? I've ran Bobcats for over 20 years and never had anything like that happen. How in the hell did they do that?
Excellent work Fishmouth. Super cool that you built a rig for KOH. I'd really like to go out and watch it some time, but i'm always busy that time of year.
It looked like someone tried before. I have no idea how some of this stuff breaks
Thank you sir, you should try too make it once before the state and BLM shut it down. That car pictured placed 2nd this year. See if he can get ahold of first place next year.
Fishmouth, beautiful work and a cool thread. I got out of wheeling when I moved to Texas, but you stirred up some great memories of the Rubicon, Hammers and all the rest. My favorite trail of all time is Dusy. Makes me miss living out there a bit.
Here's the ones on the chopping block. Another Beever to bob and build an Iron maiden,relocate the batterey etc. And 1 of 2 303.5 getting front and side cab guards. They will be sheeted with1/2" lexan .
Great work, please keep the pictures coming, more of your race builds and shop too.
Ok, sorry for all the sideways pics. My phone just uploads them that way. I will get on my computer and reload them Tomorrow
Common problem with the sideways pics, hint take the pics with phone sideways with bottom of phone to the right. I had the same problem now I take all pics that way. Your quality of work still shines through. Also your shop looks to be as neat and clean as a doctors office,wow.....TIO
The first 303 had stand offs on the ROPS. Made some tabs from 1/4" plate to weld the 1.5"x1.5" box tube frame too. It is skinned with 1/2" lexan. The side is lexan by itself, profiled with the cage. These are used to feed the smaller chippers.
Thank you. I can do that! That's good too know, i'll try that. Yes, I am pretty anal about everything. Kinda has to be with the race cars. try to keep it very professional looking. I have still never made it to Dusy. Rubicon is 45min up the road from me . There is still lots of wheeling in Texas though. You should get another rig.
This is the next one. Notice no stand offs on the ROPS. I am drawing up some clamps that the frame will weld too. Other then that,they will look the same.
Some more of the current car. The rear upper shock mounts and swinging rack holds the action packers down. A door bar/wing window bar junction as well.
A gift too myself. Miller x-treme 12vs. I wanted an old LN25, but no one wants to get rid of them. Or the ones I do find are wasted. I have not heard to many good things about the new ones. Since I am partial to "true blue" any way, I picked one up. I love it so far. Very smooth
Since it is raining, I am going to upload some pics of past race cars.
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Awesome work, love the TIG, you are a craftsman for sure.
I have 2 12vs cases and one 8vs case. You will love them I have found them to be extremely rugged. So why does one man need 3 wire feeders? Tool hoarder! After getting a larger service truck I decided I could pack a full size box around. Then after one project of weeks on end of loading and unloading my 12vs in and out of my service truck and parking the truck outside of shop I decided to get another box and an inverter 350??? only used it once....TIO
Subscribed, great work. Looking forward to seeing more.
So I have been pretty busy lately. Working on too many things at once. I am going too upload them all and go back through with details.
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bobbing the beever
more beever.......
battery box and adjusters
Iron Maiden engine cover with access doors for controls,air filter and engine bay
painted and installed........
Nice work!
Can we see a picture of your truck. Great work, a pleasure to view.
Beautiful welds on the chipper, very nice work. Wish you were closer, I've got all sorts of ideas.
Looking good Fishmouth. I'm guessing all these chippers are for fuels reduction?
Very, very nice work. Did you weld that with hard wire or dual shield? The welds are very nice. I'm a mchanic that welds not a fabricator so my questions may seem odd. Did you use your new 12vs? I have been having a sticky splatter issue with my welding lately and trying to figure it out. I run .045 dual shield with 75/25 dcep. This sticky splatter has been going on so long I thought it was normal until this weekend I grabbed another welder with gas shielded hard wire and it ran so clean and neat I have to fix my dual shield machine now. Any help is appreciated if you get time. TIO
Nice work, one question so far, how to do replace the rollers on the machines you've installed the rock guards on, cut the guards off and replace the rollers then weld the guards back on again?? Keep the photo's coming.
Thank you Sir What part would you like too see? It's just an old 92' F Superduty. non turbo 7.3 Thank you, I wish I was too, running low on work! Yes mostly. We are having so many fires and a very bad bark beetle problem. Most of the timber is garbage and not worth hauling. This company owns 8 M20R and 2 large tub grinders. Thank you. The fire skids were welded with er70 with 75/25. the "beever" was all 71m dual shield .045". I ran that with my 12vs. If you have your settings correct with er70 and 75/25 you shouldn't have much spatter at all. .035 er70 i run around 18-21 volts and 30-42 IPM an 20 cfh. .045 71M I run 28-31 volts and 420-515 ipm on the 12vs 25-30 cfh. It takes a little while to tune it but ear, but you want to hear "bacon and eggs" smooth sizzle. If it's kind of jittery- too much wire speed or not hot enough, if it's kind of a slow popping, wire burn back into the tip it's too hot or not enough wire speed. Hope that kinda makes sense. Their Mechanic just cuts the lower window out of the guard, changes the roller and welds the window back in. He wanted them welded on because he has seen bolt on and bolt on/stitch welded on fall off.
one leaves and another shows up. 3 more too go. This one has a Cat motor like the first one I did. The one that just left was a John Deere. It changes the "Iron Maiden" a little. The exhaust and air filter are arranged differently. It takes about 10 days to bob,shorten feed drive,cut new slots,re weld the tensioner, new guard over side controls, relocate and build the battery box, frame the cage, build doors and fully weld the panels.
Picked up another new "toy" yesterday. CP-302 too match its older brother CP-200. It will be nice too have one with dual shield and one with hard wire.
Here a few for Williams Marine. 92' F superduty. 7.3 non turbo, 5 spd, 2wd 10 lug. Reading box with 1014 IMT crane and IMT pto compressor. oxy/acy hose reel, Trailblazer 251, 50' 1/2" hose reel. I just put that rat pack box in the bed. Not sure If i want to keep it there. I was going to put all my line boring bearings and set-up stuff in it. That would clear out my top box on the driver side. The driver rear and mid boxes have built in drawers already. The front driver box I stuffed an old kobalt lower into. I will take some pics of the inside. It works. not my dream truck, but I own everything. I like not having payments, but sometimes more write-offs would be nice.
Foam fire systems painted and plumbed. Shipped out last week
Got too build a guard on a PC300. 2"x4"x.250" wall box tube with 3" x .500" flatbar for slats. I dont have a finished picture yet. It has vertical supports up the center now also. I drilled and tapped the rub rail for the base plates. The top mounts using motor mount bushings that I use on the racecars. The cab was rubber mounted, so that was the best thing I could think of.
Looks OEM to me Fishmouth! Regards, Bob
Here is one of the suppression units out at work
That's pretty cool fishmouth. This is for if they start a fire while logging?
Thanks! Yes, they are working a USFS job. They require 1 suppression system per Timbco/ with Fecon heads for mowin'
Never did get a finished picture of the guard on the PC300. Thought I would share a pic of Rich and Billy getting that gnarly attachment hooked up. They are using it to split logs and break them up in the sort yard. A lot of their work currently is bark beetle and salvage/clean up Since our whole state is on fire.
This next one is gonna take a while to post. I rebuilt an entire PSM grapple bucket for a Rock wall company. Every pin bore, every pin, cracks in the bucket ears,New teeth, motor cover, main yoke pivot, cracks in the ram mounts, even the whole main chassis had cracked in half before. AND this was the good one! Mechanic said the spare was 10 times worse. So I will start with all the before pictures first.
Bent!
Must be a mistake, looks like at least one of those pins is still straight! Are you going to "fix" this or just use it as a pattern to build a new and better one?
It had been fixed a time or two. Lots of Gouging and grinding.
Found all the cracks in the bucket ears. Ground them out and laid some 7018 in there
All the pin bores were 1.5". My boring set up cannot go that small. So I machined new pin bosses that step from 2.5" down to 2" with a 1.5" ID. I bored the holes out in the ram ears, and used my alignment bar to tack them in place. The mounting distance was narrower for the new rams anyway. I decided this was the best way, instead of adding spacers.
I added gussets to the pin bosses to help keep the rams from bending the ears again. I also added a wing plate made from .500" plate to the ends. welded with .045" 71M dual shield
While its in your shop you should convince them to switch it over to a fixed attachment instead of a dangle attachment. They will be able to build walls about twice as fast. It also appears the reliefs are a little tight maybe....tio
now that the buckets were fixed. I moved onto the main frame. 1" side plates that had been completely tore in half. need less too say, they were not straight with each other anymore. One side was "ok" so I cut the worst side off. I made a new side plate and used my alignment bar once again.
I did the same thing as I did on the buckets. Bored the hole's to 2" and put the new pin bosses in. I also decided to add some vertical gussets on the sides to add kind of a "rub rail" when they use it as a wrecking ball. it also added support for the new side plate. All .045" 71M dual shield.
After I machined the new pin tubes for the buckets, I got them welded up and placed some gussets on the inside to add support to the bucket ears. I also added overlays to the sides where all the welds were built up. hopefully this will help keep it from cracking around there.
Once I got it aligned, I burned it all up and painted it. Shipped it out. I have been trying to get a picture of it on the machine, but no luck yet.
I got a call last Friday that they needed a cab guard on a 314E asap. So I went down to their yard and knocked this out for them so it could go to work on Saturday. 2"x3"x .250" with 3"x .500" slates. goes up and over the top. 16 slates in all.
I think I would have been better off building a new one. But I had a budget of $3200 to work under. I lost my ass, but I look at as a new customer discount. Investing in building a relationship with another company.
Interesting. I will pass that along. What do you mean by reliefs?
I think he's talking about the relief pressure for the cylinders. If the cylinder pins are bending the cylinders are generating too much power. Fab work looks great as always.
I'm thinking "theironoricale" is saying the pressure relief valves in the machine are set too "high"/"tight" for the attachment causing things to bend under excess force. By the time you did all the reinforcing it might hold up for a time. And don't take it personally when it comes back all beat to heck in a heap! There are plenty of "operators" out there that could destroy a D11 Cat demoing a sand castle. Almost for got to say it looks almost to nice to let them have it back again, nice work as always!
You Sir are Truly a Craftsman. You do beautiful fab work. Please keep the pictures and stories coming.
Wow, good stuff. Your not far from us, were in Lodi. And by us I mean me and my wife, I need to hired sumbuddy. How is that area, Georgetown? We want to move...
Seems like you get a lot done in a small space, a lot of road jobs though too, I am not a welder but I am really impressed, nice photos too.
As others have answered for me the pins could be bending because the pressure reliefs in the machine are set to high. This is a fine line between not breaking the attachment from hydraulic pressure and being able to hold the objects (rocks in this case) you want. Your fabrication skills are excellent. TIO
Gotcha. Thank you! Thank you. After watching them beat on the other one, I think I will see this one in a year or earlier! Thanks! I will! It's the hills. Still tweekers around, but no many. I live in Garden Valley. It's about 4-5 miles from Georgetown. Still a cool small town. There are more bay area people moving up here every year. My wife and I will probably move back to NV in a few years. 3000 sqft Thank you TIO. That could be it. I watched them for a little while. If they try to grab a rock and it doesn't quite fit, they lift it up and slam it down wide open. They close it and use the bottom of the bucket as a "hammer" to set the rocks. And if it isn't in line, they use the side of the buckets as a wrecking ball. I think it is a crap shoot and job security haha
Fishmouth, The way you describe how they use this grapple is very informative. My mind always operates equipment from a finesse point of view not a hit it harder point of view. This obviously is because I'm the guy that gets to repair stuff. I will admit I was young and dumb once too but I learned early on to use tools for and how they are designed or there are consequences. I have spent just enough time in the operator seat of all types of equipment to understand ramming and jamming really wears out the operator too, these must be young operators? Again nice work.....TIO
Any updated goodies on your '92 Ford?
I hate the "budget" customers, have one that calls all the time & it's just a hard place to make money. Don't sell yourself short, quality work is hard to come by, shouldn't have to give it away.
young guys, some tweaker white and mexican guys. Haven't had any time to mess with it. They are in every industry. Especially the race car world.
Cab guard on a brand new 245 Link-belt. Front and over the top. Angled slats in the front roof section for viewing out the sun roof
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Low boy conversion on a brand new KW T800. They brought me a Murray kit. It was a ok kit, but I didn't think the pieces fit all that great. Had to massage them a little
200' of 6" x 6" x .250"wall box tube for bumper rails on a above ground scale I finished on Tuesday. Each rail is 70' long. The legs were 38" tall and 20" bottom leg.That was a lot of welding.
And just because, here's a couple of the current race car I am working on.
AND managed too get some R&R in for the first time in a very long time. Fordyce Creek Trail in the Sierra Nevada's
Can you say the name of the customers with the new truck and the scale? Also I heard they were fixing the road in to Fordyce. I have to work on Signal Peak sometimes and wondere if the road up to the turnoff was any better. Used to take 1 hour to go the 7 miles from I-80 to the peak.
I cannot, sorry. They are fixing the road. I heard Cisco was gonna be closed for a little while and you had to access through Eagle lakes.
excuse me for my ignorance but, what is a "Murray kit" ,that was in your previous post and, could you please elaborate further on the installation. I think I know what it's supposed to do, and am curious about it. I've never seen that set up before. Thank you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMXRCEwqgyQ
That's the slickest thing I have seen for a long time! I can't believe I haven't seen that set up before now....
Thanks for this youtube link Birken. I was wondering the same thing.
That part looks slick but the whole process is pretty time consuming Drive out from under trailer Unpin neck and hoses and connector Back under neck (loose at this point) Drive away with neck Load or unload machine Back up with neck Hook up neck and hoses and connector Drive out from under Hook links up Ram truck back under neck and connect This way you need no wet kit or small engine to give out on you at the worst moment and saves weight I guess. It is most common out here in the west.
Hey Fishmouth,I was looking through my subscriptions on PBB and realized you were the one building the mid-engine yota on rockwells. Still one of my favorite threads in the toyota section.
Remember you can get it fixed cheap, fast or right. Pick two.