Back to Harbor Freight

Well, I finally did it. Made myself a way to move the bagger.

Maybe I should say: I don't have a lot of tools. I'm not what you'd call a "tools" person. First time I ever went to Harbor Freight was maybe three months ago. It's a Wonderland!

I've come around a little, now I'm retired. I have time for things other than work and my computer. Time to invent little projects for myself to do. Not necessarily to do them, but at least to think about. I'm a How would I do that? kind of person. I'll think of something and ask myself "How would I do that?"

If I can answer the question, I'm satisfied. I don't get satisfaction from doing things. I'm not good at doing things. But I get great satisfaction from working out how I would do things. Plus, it saves me all that work.

But I'm coming around a little. I have time to do things, now. And now I want to tell you about something I did.

Maybe I should say: Don't expect too much.

//

I have a 25-gallon garden sprayer. To use it, I hook up the garden cart to the garden tractor and put the sprayer in the cart. It works, but it's not satisfying. The sprayer deserves its own cart. So I started thinking about making a cart.

Then I started thinking about building a cart for the rototiller.

Then I started thinking about hooking up the wheelbarrow like a cart, to the tractor. In case I put too much in the wheelbarrow and can't push it up the hill.

Somewhere along the way there, I bought myself two ten-inch wheels. That was my second visit to Harbor Freight. I went back for the wheels because I saw them on my first visit: $4.99 apiece. With all these carts in my head, I had to have those tires. I knew I'd need em.

A month or so later I picked up a three-foot round rod to use for an axle. Again, I knew I'd need it. Whatever I was gonna build, it was gonna have wheels and an axle.

That was late October.

The stuff sat in my garage for several weeks. I didn't give up on it. I had it on hand, but I wasn't ready to use it.

//

Lately I've been fixing up the spare room in the basement. Cleaned up. Painted. Moved some shelves and installed some more. I'm calling it my "project" room: a place where I can work on little projects I come up with. The room even has a sink: a utility sink, American Shower and Bath, model DFC-1. Looks like they are no longer in business. Plastic tub screwed to the wall, sitting on four plastic legs.

I had to put spacers under two legs so the water would drain rather than pooling at the front of the flat-bottom tub. Half inch, no problem. Then I went looking for concrete anchors to anchor the legs (and spacers) to the floor. So I was down at the far end of the "nuts and bolts" aisle at the True Value, looking at concrete anchors. And I happened to see "shaft collars" there. Shaft collars! To hold the wheels on the axle. I grabbed four of em, $3 apiece. In the moment, it even seemed like a low price.

I went home, finished up my Projects room, and got ready for my first project.

//

The bagger for my tractor installs easily. It sits on a little shelf at the rear of the tractor, and hooks over two bolts to keep it in place. It's okay for the summer, putting the bagger on and taking the bagger off, when everything is right there in the garage. But come winter, the bagger goes away and the snowblower goes on, and there's no room in the garage for the bagger. So I have to lug it down the hill to the shed. Or up the hill to the garage, as the case may be.

The thing is heavy.

So I was looking at the bagger one day, looking at the mounting. There's a plate that sits flat, that sits on the "shelf" on the rear of the tractor. And there are two upright plates, rectangles with a little notch in the bottom edge, that reach in and hook onto bolts to keep the bagger in place.

I suddenly realized that those notches could just as easily sit on an axle and keep the axle in place. If I had wheels on the axle I could move the bagger. Bingo!

I already had the axle and 10-inch wheels. I needed only to drill the axle, or find shaft collars, and to have a design that would work. On a recent visit to Harbor Freight I had seen 8-inch wheels at a good price, $6 and change, max load 300 lbs. The bagger ain't that heavy.

I checked dimensions on the bagger. The 8-inch wheels would work better than the 10s. Back to Harbor Freight.

Out-to-out, those two notched rectangles on the bagger are just under 14 inches apart. So I put collar-wheel-collar on the axle, left a 14-inch gap, put again collar-wheel-collar, then cut the extra off the axle, half an hour with a hack saw.

Tipped the bagger a little, put wheels under it, and dragged the bagger up to the garage and back. It works!

//

Oh, but I need something better than a hack saw.