Home Made Hookaroon......

I was looking at a Hookaroon for the last few weeks to purchase and could not get over the cost of these things. I ended up building one for about $12.00 with pipe and fittings I had laying around the shop.

The body is a piece of 1" schedule 40 pipe x 36" long. On the back end of the pipe I put a cap so my hand doesn't slide off when swinging and pulling on the thing, and on the attached pictures you can see the head end. The only thing special on this head end is you must use a 5" long grade 8 bolt, and it will most likely need to be threaded down the shank to about within 1 1/2" or so of the head. I needed to do this so the nuts would tighten down on the coupling. I tried a grade 2 carriage bolt the first time around and it failed miserably!

It works very well for dragging and moving splits and full rounds around, sometimes to well as the tip doesn't want to come out of the wood at times!

Craig

Long term, I'd be suspicious about where the pipe is threaded into the coupling. Good spot for a bead of weld.

Looks like an effective weapon. I prefer a wood handle.

Good idea.
On my "to do list" to be ready for this wood cutting season.
A wooden handle should be an easy install in the fitting but an aluminum pipe handle may be a perfect match.

I would temper the bolt. Grinding it like that probably took away most of the "grade 8" strength that it had.

That looks like a handy tool. That should work for many year to come plus it has a replaceable tip if you break it. The best part is you made it yourself a job well done.

I made one out of an old axe. It had a longer tip but it broke off. I just reshaped it a bit and it works great for moving wood.

Nice engineering/fabricating and great to see people think outside the box !

Well I went the cheap route and it's been a big help!



Made out of an old horseshoe and a scrap piece of 1x2.

Axe140, that's a good idea too. I think I have an old fireaxe around here somewhere, maybe I can adopt it like yours.

Ken

Another good idea !!
Left some of the "U" in the shoe too.
Don't want to let all the luck out

Yeah !! But what good is a barefoot horse ?

Why? It's holding up as is, and what is the risk if it fails? Not like it's the "jesus bolt" on a helicopter. Temper deterioration is indeed probably why the grade 2 carriage bolt failed miserably. But, either he kept the grinding-induced heat low enough on the grade 8 or it took the same amount of grinding heat without excessively degrading the temper for the needs of the application. I believe the more likely failure will be in the PVC handle. I personally would choose aluminum tubing for the handle. But, being in the "air capitol of the world" I probably have more ready access to cheap surplus aluminum tubing than do most other "Hearthers". KISS and work with the materials at hand.

Great idea Shmudda! Thanks for sharing!

Just a comment on the different designs. Craig's looks like it will penetrate and dig in a lot better than my horseshoe design but mine is lightweight and is very good for hooking behind the round and pulling it toward me. Since it's lightweight, it can work very fast. It also works very well for rolling big rounds over to the splitter.

Probably need one of each design

Ken

"I believe the more likely failure will be in the PVC handle"
What did I miss, where is the PVC handle?

I thought about making on out of an old pick that I have. I would like to have a longer handle on it vs. the standard pick handle.

I read that as hookah room.

My bad. My brain inserted "PVC" right after "schedule 40". Darned brain.

Chuckle of the day.
Which would have taken WAAAY too long to build while smoking from a hookah. :coolsmile:

Made one tonight
3/4" EMT conduit. Heated & drove a 4" 1/2 sched 40 galvanized nipple inside the EMT
Drilled 11/32 hole, threaded 3/8" X15.
Cut head off a bolt, shaped the bolt with a hack saw mostly so not to get to hot.
Tape on the EMT for a handle
Thanks for the idea Shmudda
Need some Flo-orange paint

Mine gets in the way all the time.

I had made one before from an old Chopper Axe. This thing is worth more than the Chopper ever was

Craig

I like this. My first thought, though, would be to use two cut down horseshoes, bolted on parallel to each other on the handle. (one on each side of the head of the handle) so you'd have two points digging in and would avoid the torque you might get from pulling unevenly with the shoe mounted only on one side. You could use the same bolts to hold both shoes on.

I haven't noticed the unbalance being an issue at all.

Note, the shape of the point doesn't dig in very well like the sharper pointed ones would (hookaroon vs. pickaroon?) Doubling the points might make it even harder to penetrate although the additional weight might help somewhat.

This design works very well for getting behind something and pulling it (hooking it) rather than sinking the point in deep. Of course, the point could be made sharper if that's what you need.

This was my first attempt and it's worked well for me. OTOH if I were trying to grab bigger pieces to pull out of a pickup bed, I would probably go for something with a sharper spike. These are cheap enough to make several variations if you want

Ken

Not being critical of your design at all. Looks like an easy and expensive alternative to a tool that can cost some big bucks. "Cheap" is part of my code as a scrounger. 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!