Quote Originally Posted by rgsparber View Post
I plan to soon have a large pile of 3/4" diameter rock in front of my home and need to move it to the back. The standard procedure involves a shovel and a cart or wheelbarrow. My problem is that the lifting and twisting action while using a shovel will likely re-injure my back.

Got me thinking about ways to do this job with no lifting even if it means more trips. My rough idea is to use an extra wide hand truck as a starting point. I would then take a piece of sheet metal and form it into a curved form similar to a front loader bucket. The bottom edge would bolt to the front edge of the hand truck plate. The top edge would bolt to the vertical bars. I would then weld on side plates. To prevent the hand truck from falling over while I fill it (by raking), I can have a bar attached at the top of the hand truck. This bar would telescope and have a sharp point on the end. It would pivot at the top.

Swing it out, extend until it locks into the ground, and then start raking in the rock.

Nice pipe dream. Before I start making it I'm looking for problems with the idea.

All of us are smarter than any one of us. Hopefully people will lend a hand here.

Thanks,

Rick
If you have a garden TRACTOR, YOU NEED A STONE BOAT, the most common stone boat is a car hood, you pull it from the front with the tradtor and it slides along the grass. Don't load it heavy, it is better to make many light, fast trips than struggle with a few heavy trips, and it won't damage the lawn as much. lacking that, rent a powered wheelbarrow. Or, for a friend that had to move 30 tons of precast concrete blocks from the front of his house along a 3 ft wide run between his house and his fence, with a 9 foot rise, I had him get four 10" od tires on steel rims from harbor freight, dismount the tires and use the wheels on a 6 ft long plywood and 2x4 cart mounted ising 5/8 " dia galvanized steel rods for axles mounted to the cart by drilling holes in the 2x4s which were under the plywood cart deck. I lent him my harbor freight 800 lb capacity hoist, mounted at the head of a 2x6 rails. He let the car down to the blocksk, loaded it,, walked up to the top and the hoist brought it up to where he unloaded the blocks. As he had to lift the blocks off the cart, he put each in place and build the wall. If you do not have to climb a grade, make the cart, on 2x4 rails on the ground and push the loaded cart by hand.
Use 2x4s on edge under the cart for stiffening and mounting the axles and 2x4s above the deck to keep the rocks from falling off. Mount the sides by drilling holes through them for vertical pins, maybe long, 1/2" bolts, fitting in holes through the deck and lower 2x4s, out past the axles, so you can remove the sides for unloading, dropping the stones on a sheet of plywood th move them away from the tracks. To save money, at the lumber yard, look for warped 3/4" plywood, culls, preferably pressure treates as they warp the most and offer a fraction of the cost of straight wood. The 2x4s will straighten them out ok. if you hae to negotiate a curve with the tracks, do it with short lengths of track with a small amount of angle at each section, or soak them in a plastic lined timber trough and bend them with a come-a-long. Pressure treated lumber needs to be assembled with construction screws, the type with the torx star drive recesses. Don't waste time and money on phillips or cross point heads, the bit will just cam out and damage the head. Phillips head screws were invented for automatic feed machines, never for hand screwdrivers or hand held power tools. Have fun! Kids might want to ride your rail car.