The rest of the photos show various steps and progress with my fabrication of the stakes. There are 18 stakes, each of them 2'6" long. These were cut out of 8' 2x4s, and then one end of each had to be sawn down to match the pocket size. That involved sawing about 1/4" from the bottom 5" of each of the narrow sides of each stake, and about 1/8" from the wide side. In the first photo below, you can see just how thin a slice that made on the wide side! I did this with my band saw, which made short work of something that would have been quite tedious without it. Then I drilled three carefully placed holes in each of the stakes (for 54 holes in all); these are where the bolts that hold the slats on will go. I finished all of that fabrication today – so now I have all 18 stakes sitting nicely in their steel pockets, and holes in the right place for each one. Tomorrow I'll start putting on the slats!
Doesn't fabricating it all out of wood, particularly 2x4 make it pretty heavy?
ReplyDeleteYou say that like heavy is a bad thing! :)
ReplyDeleteThe really heavy part is the bottom, all 2x6s and 2x8s. That weighs around 160 lbs. The long sides will each have three 8' 2x4s and three 8' 1x6s, plus a bit of hardware and paint. That's probably around 30 to 35 lbs each (the wood is nice and dry). The ends will be around 20 lbs, so the total will be around 100 lbs for the sides. The entire trailer, including the steel frame, should come in under 300 lbs.