Crane

A couple of months ago, I signed up for an artistic welding course in order to learn how to weld. I figured that this may be necessary in building a house. This weekend was my first opportunity to try out my new found skills. This came about during the week when I figured I needed a crane. My immediate need was simply to get stumps on and off my trailer. It seems like I'd probably use it for other things as well. So I mail ordered 900kg swivel crane, it arrived the next day. These cranes are designed to be mounted on the back of trucks, but I wanted mine to be free standing. So I made my own crane base. I opted for a T style base with the bottom of the T to be in tension to be held down either with weights or ties.

My first use was not actually to load the stumps on to the trailer. It was to hoist really heavy plants over the fence. You can see by the pictures that I mounted the crane on top of the trailer cage and positioned the trailer next to the fence. It worked a treat! There was a bit of noise when the plant swung over the fence as tension swapped with compression, but every thing seemed to be fine. I ended up moving 24 of these 75litre grow bags.