Home Made Hookaroon......

Kenster said:

I did just have another thought, though. You could mount another half horseshoe pointing the opposite direction that you could make longer and with a sharp spike or however you wanted to configure it. Then you'd have two tools in One!

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That's a good idea! However, I cut the extra length off of the bolts, I would have to use two new bolts and double the expensive! There goes "cheap". LOL

Ken

I couldn't resist trying my own home made hookeroon. Just finished this one. I have not had it outside yet. Will try it later and see if it's going to do the job or not.

The weak links are the galvanized 16D common nail I used, may be a little light and easy to re-bend. Also, the 32in wood handle is recycled- it used to have a 10lb sledge hammer head on it but it broke off from rough or careless use by its previous owner. It's no doubt Hickory. Anyway, the replacement handle for the hammer head was Hickory.

There was a little splitting in the head area. I sawed it slightly shorter and cleaned it up with a file and coarse sandpaper. Intentionally under-drilled the hole for the nail so that it was a tight fit to drive the nail in. I cleaned up some rough spots in the galvanize coating with a file and used bar soap as a lubricant.

The wire overwrap was inspired by traditional corn broom construction. 14 gage copper wire anchored in small holes at the beginning and end of each winding (4x holes). That's a soft solder treatment of the wires. I just used electronics 60/40 tin/lead solder I had around here to encourage it to all hold together. BTW you need a really big, heavy duty iron to get enough heat for soldering this size of work piece. I have a big old 100W iron that's up to the job. The smaller Weller 8200 dual heat gun wouldn't have a prayer of heating something this big. I imagine I will coat the whole thing in epoxy later to really toughen it up. If the nail bends too easily, I'll step it up to perhaps a 3/16in or 1/4in hardened bolt for the point.

Will let you all know how it works out.

Well, it 'works' but the nail is a bit too soft as expected. Still this is a useful tool and I'm getting good use out of it already. I'll get some type 8 bolts and try to get a point on one without destroying the heat treating.

I had a feeling the nail wouldn't hold up. I use my Peavey brand hookaroon to lift small logs. I strong hook makes the tool much more versatile.

I have a couple old axe heads laying around. If I were to use an axe head, how would I cut or grind away the parts of the head that I don't want? I'd want to keep only a small portion plus the hook section, which by weight would only be about a third or quarter of the weight of the axe head. How do you cut an axe head?

If I knew someone with a water jet, this wouldn't be a question. Would plasma work or would it destroy the head?

I made one out of an old hatchet head. Only cost was the hickory axe handle I paired with it. Just used a hack saw and grinder to get the shape I wanted. Then sanded it down and polished a little. It came in handy today man handling some huge rounds. I'll see if I can get some pictures posted.

At first I didn't put the hook on the end. It would sink in a split nice, but if I tried to pick up the split, it would fall off. So I went back and put a little hook at the end. Works great now. The lite hook made a huge difference. It's hard to get the wood off if it now.