It all comes down to cost MF. Last time I went to the local Stihl shop it cost me over $70 for chainsaw sharpening stones from my Cranberg sharpener. Luckily I don't have to go there often
Yep some of the bearing shops are a little dear Mf ,20 years ago it cost me $35, for 3 bearings to fix a drill back then I could have bought a new cheap drill for that.
$70 for chainsaw sharpening stones is expensive Norm as the whole sharpener is only about $140 .
I've heard lots of stories of shops just doubling the price if they sell to someone they don't know that walks in the door.
I was told some mower shops if some one walked in they didn't know and asked for a new briggs motor and they had no stock of engines they just made up a price that was very close to a complete new mower and if the customer said he would buy at that price the shop just removed the engine off a new mower out the back and sold that engine, then later made more profit selling the rest of the mower in parts than they could have made selling a new mower.
If you go to some of the wreckers and tip shops ,the people behind the counter look the buyer up and down and then make up a price that they think you can afford ,so if you wear crappy old clothes you will get a cheaper price.
So I went to Sydney Tools to get some Gigweld 2.5 mm 2.5 kg rods for $24. but they had no stock on the shelf which is normal for trying to get consumables around here at most of the shops , ended up buying italco 2.5 mm 5 kg for $35.
I don't think these rods are as good as the Swec rods but they work ,next time I'll probably go back to Gigweld or Austark, may try Bossweld one day ,after buying the italco rods I found I still had one new box of 2mm x 2 kg of Swec .
I've tested the italco rods on some scrap galvanised steel below.
5kg for $35 is probably not too bad, I think from Bayswater they were $13 for 2kg packs. Doubt I could afford the Cigweld ones they have always been expensive, but they are good rods, I have problems getting the Chinese rods to start, they won't arc up easily but once running they are fine
The italco 2.5 mm 5 kg are E6013 and they only had 2 boxes on the shelf at Sydney tools so probably next time I may not be able to get them Norm.
If the Chinese rods were hard to start I would strike them on the earth lead bolt and start them that way ,once warm they are fine.
The italco rods are DCEP and DCEN , the test yesterday I was using DCEP but today tried DCEN and I seem to be getting a better weld and flow with DCEN (electrode goes to negative)
I think these rods are just as good or better than the Swec rods you got from FJ's Norm ,I just seem to be getting better results with DCEN when welding 2 hardened axles together but I didn't clean the metal first just welded over rusty metal.
I have heard DCEN can work better on Galvanized pipe.
I've been trying to find the 4 uprights needed for the next rack ,found 3 round upright poles to use but have to use one RHS upright ,all I could find was 3 scrap bits of RHS that needed welding together to make a 5 foot length.
The green parts of the 5 foot Upright is 1/4 inch thick and the blue part of the RHS is 1/8 of an inch thick, not sure if I should put the green part down on the ground or the blue part of the pole on the ground , I guess it would depend how strong the welds are to which end of the pole will be stronger ,I'll probably go with the green end on the ground.
Lucky I have an old train line the clamp the metal to for welding otherwise it would distort too much to use.
The second rack is getting there a little slower to build than the first one as everything on this one is built from scratch.
I was going to use the trailer cage as the shelves and have poles to make it all slide together so the cage was not damaged but it all would have weighed too much so have found enough metal to make it like the first rack with the top that will slot in.
The rack is about 11 foot 4 inches long and each shelf is 50 cm high , the width of the shelves is 30 cm.
No MM, the rack is freestanding , the 4 vertical poles only have to hold up around 135 kg each so so need for any extra work like gussets etc. Just using up some scrap metal so I can get the mowers out of 10 sheds and into one shed.
This is very permissible to keeping many more mowers you may not want to let go of. I wish I had a way to keep all the mowers I ever collected in my life without the hassle.
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
I don't want to collect too many mowers Mf , If I kept every mower it would probably be over 1000 by now. One way to tell if you have too many mowers is when you start storing them out in the yard in my opinion.
The mowers are fairly light Speedy ,I made a rack 25 years ago for car engines ,gearboxes and cylinder heads ,the top shelf is for Autos and manual gearboxes , that top shelf is not too easy for lifting up the V8 gearboxes and autos now.
Copy and paste the link below as the link won't work in this part of the forum. It's a 14 second Vid of lifting a mower off the ground but only using a little finger .
The second Rack is fully loaded now with 28 mowers .That gets rid of a lot of the mowers I had all over the place .
Only problem I still have too many mowers in another shed that are difficult to get to ,looks like I may have to make another rack for at least another 28 mowers and put the third rack in the middle of the other two racks.
Lifting the 7 onto the top shelf wasn't too difficult.
Good set up. It looks like the top bars are bending under the weight. It still looks cluttered but very efficient on space if you're going to have so many mowers and it's not taking up a living area. It allows you to warehouse them properly. I appreciate the before and after pics. Sure beats having them lying around everywhere.
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
The top bars aren't bent from the weight ,the top is 40 mm diameter tube and when I put my full weight on each one there was barely any movement and my weight was in the centre of each metal tube.
You can never trust what you see though ,seeing straight horizontal lines, they can look on an angle sometimes giving an optical illusion.
Yes it beats having the mowers lying around in the back yard under 25 sheets of corrugated iron , it was a lot of work just pushing the mowers up from the back yard .
I've seen other people fill up a single car garage with mowers on the floor and you have to move too many mowers to get one out and you still can't fit many in that way but at least if I get 3 racks, about 80 mowers ,I can get to any mower easily and there is still room at the back of the shed.
Just trying to get the mowers to a more manageable level as I've never counted all the mowers but knew there were hundreds so hopefully I can end up with under 100 and sort them out later.
Yes AVB , I managed to use up some left over blue paint on the welds ,this rack took while to find all the metal and I thought it may be left in the rain for while until it was ready for the shed ,the patchy blue rack used up 3 kg of arc welding rods but the first rack only used about one and a half kg of rods.
The image illusions look more interesting Mf than the lines.
I was thinking one more rack might be enough but I looked in another shed today with mowers scattered all over the place and counted 55 old mowers ,looks like a few more to get rid of.
Finally got some spare time to finish the 3rd mower storage rack ,this one completely bolts together (6 parts) used up some more scrap metal and over 4 kg of welding rods .
A lot of welding but only $50. in materials ,it's made for Victa 18 mowers so the blade plate sits below the horizontal rack.
I think the two 1/4 inch bolts per corner on each shelf should be strong enough.
Hi Max, looks great, massive amount of work but unless you can sort things it all gets too hard and just piles of mowers. I admire your determination, I think it would break me.
Yes I'm sick of crawling under the house and climbing over mowers to drag one mower out , it's also annoying moving a lot of mowers to get to the furthest mowers then having to put them all back again.
It looks like I won't have a problem finding 30 Victa 18 mowers to fill this rack ,already put 13 mower on the shelf and dragged out another 11 that I will lift onto the rack tomorrow.
I think I could get 4 racks into this shed but the 2 centre racks would need to roll sideways to have enough room to get mowers off different racks. I doubt I will put another rack in this shed though.
My only problem now is after this rack is full it looks like I have another 30 mowers ,I've already scrapped over 200 mowers and 200 catchers.
Not sure what the next rack will look like ,I saw some wood under the house from an old carport so not sure at this stage if to make the next rack from wood or steel.
