Trailer painting repairing

[gzecc]

Painting and repairing my landscape trailer. Having a couple of areas welded, replacing a couple of 2x6 boards and using a rust converter, metal prep and spray paint. Slow process outside in this horrendous heat.

 

[clancey]

Well worth it in the end and more safe too...clancy

 

[Ashful]

Nice! Ditch that plastic toolbox, build and mount a metal one, and put a winch on top. Then you can drag full logs onto the trailer, the way I've been doing the last half dozen years. You want the winch mounted about 30" above the floor, unless you're going to do a lifting gantry, based on my own experience.

 

[gzecc]

Nice! Ditch that plastic toolbox, build and mount a metal one, and put a winch on top. Then you can drag full logs onto the trailer, the way I've been doing the last half dozen years. You want the winch mounted about 30" above the floor, unless you're going to do a lifting gantry, based on my own experience.

Really have no need for a winch. Wench is a different story.

 

[Mutineer]

A wench is way more expensive than a winch, in my humble opinion.

 

[Ashful]

A wench is way more expensive than a winch, in my humble opinion.

… and less useful.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Unless you can get the wench to process firewood.

 

[Ashful]

Unless you can get the wench to process firewood.

Now, there's a guy capable of thinking outside the box!

In any case, back to the trailer. I did the usual thing of bucking logs into rounds, then rolling them up the tailgate ramp into the trailer. But I was getting into a lot of big stuff at the time, 40" to 60" diameter oak and ash, and it was truly killing me. So, I installed a winch above the railing at the front of the bed, on my own welded up platform that tied forward to the tongue, and it is one of the single greatest time savers I have ever built. I used it to drag full 15 foot lengths onto my trailer, which happen to be the longest multiple of my 18" split length which will fit on my 16' 3" bed.

Then we had a rare tornado blow thru, and snap off literally hundreds (thousands?) of 12" - 16" diameter trees at my church, and I found myself dragging them by the dozen onto my trailer. I even got pretty good at double-stacking them, by steering the winch cable with a pair of snatch blocks to various points on the railings.

When I get home, I simply pluck the smaller ones (eg < 1500 lb.) off the side of the trailer with my loader, or drag the big'uns off the back. I have even brought individual logs weighing around 5000 lb. home this way, on two or three occasions.



Note you can see the orange striped antique cant hook discussed in another thread this week, on the end of winch cable, in the second photo. Those logs in the second photo must have weighed about 2500 lb. each, not the largest I've hauled in this trailer, but the pair of them was enough to get the 7000 lb. GTW trailer (~5200 lb. payload) nearly to the bump stops.

Unloading and stacking:

 

[salecker]

Unless you can get the wench to process firewood.

My wench is a big help processing wood.

 

[gzecc]

My wench is a big help processing wood.

Mine is only involved in increasing the wood flow into the appliance.

 

[gzecc]

Scrap, metal etch, wash, rust converter, paint. Very labor intensive. Good to have friends with stuff!

 

[Ashful]

That is the weirdest shade of JD Green I've ever seen.

 

[gzecc]

Trailer done, complete with rebuilt ramp. We'll see if all the time to do the rust conversion pays off.