dan on Nostr: Solid Proof-of-Work content. This is what Nostr was made for! ...

Solid Proof-of-Work content.
This is what Nostr was made for!

quoting nevent1q…ynxt

The round bale hay unroller is finally finished!

About 5 years ago I bought this used trailer, an old heavy duty generator trailer in a past life. We used it as a water trailer for our pastured chickens for a year or two until we put in underground pipes for water delivery. A few times the pipes and storage tanks ran dry we used it to move water in emergencies, but it's been under utilized the last couple years as we've learned and adapted.

Now that we are focusing on cows we exclusively buy and feed round bales of hay. So it felt like the perfect project to repurpose this trailer. The bale unroller trailers we saw ran about $4k including delivery fees. My welding skills are non-existent but she's done and ready to be tested. Even if I break some welds I am developing the skills necessary to perform repairs.

Step 1 was disassembling the upper body with the goal of reusing as much of this steel as needed.


Next came removing the steel bed plate. That thing was heavy. I bought a cheap plasma cutter for the job. The steel I salvaged is likely worth more than the plasma cutter. In the process of plasma cutting my air compressor decided to break--actually a $20 part broke and being that the compressor was multiple decades old fiat law determined this otherwise perfectly functioning piece of equipment was needing replaced. So that happened. After tons of work and rework the tractor separated the frame and plate.


The frame was too narrow to fit a hay bale so about a foot had to be added to the cross member of the frame.


I didn't capture any pictures of the actual stretching, cursing, and otherwise rockety science redneck engineeringish that went into the frame bending, but it was a thing. Not a thing of beauty, just a thing. It involved the tractor forks, 2 heavy street ratchet straps, a come along, and some sledging to get lined up-ish.


Probably my favorite weld on the entire build. The D ring was salvaged from my late uncle's garage/man cave and some pipe salvaged from old bar clamps that got new pipe recently.


The first time the upper cradle and frame came together it started to feel real. I was terrified I'd ruin the entire build at this point getting the hinges lined up right, but it went smooth and turned out okish.


Fabrication error. The upper arms need to sit over and slightly in front of the axle for optimal weight distribution when trailering. This was error two requiring cutting welds out and fixing things. I knew better, just excited to weld more. This error cost about 3 hours of labor. Mistakes with metal aren't like mistakes with wood. Fixes take much longer.



Wheels on for the first time and bale cradle complete! Another mistake discovered. Didn't leave adequate clearance for the wheels. There's about a sixteenth of an inch between wheel and frame... And that's with the rims flipped the wrong way. That's a permanent mistake. The fix will be the installation of hub spacers.


Final touches of the winch mount and bale spears and this thing is ready for action (spacers not installed yet). Build complete.