Quote Originally Posted by metric_taper View Post
I see in your 3rd photo the red painted spreader that comes with the kit of porta-power hydraulic jacks. I tried using mine to move what I though was an easy slide of a new wall I built in the basement, and the cast iron wedge piece broke. I made a new one from steel, after that fix, I've never used it again.
I'm impressed with your home built mini jacks. You must have repurposed some seals from a hydraulic cylinder set you had around.
I had a 6 ft section of new 2 1/2" ID honed cylinder tubing I bought for a previous project but hadn't used so I cut a couple short pieces off squared the ends on the lathe bored 1 end about 3/8 deep then threaded it to 2 9/16"-20 TPI machined the piston/ ram to fit the cylinder and grooved it for the seal made the head nut welded a 1/2" thick plug in the back end of the cylinder welded half of a 1/4" pipe hex coupling for the port then drilled the hole to 3/16" for flow
The short ram gives me about 1/2" of stroke. when retracted the assembly is 1 3/4" tall