Building a Boom

We started working on a boom to help pick up the bents for the shed yesterday and I finished it up today. It probably should have more lag bolts in but it seemed to hold together okay for lifting a half a log which I'm guessing weighed 800-1000 lbs. We didn't seem to lose any nails or bolts. The boom didn't seem to bend too much which I think is the result of the cables back to the grill on the fork attachment. The one problem I found was that I couldn't get the loader to "curl" which I'm sure is the result of the amount of weight I was trying to lift. I don't think the bents will be nearly as heavy. They will also not have to be lifted off the ground on either side.


I measured the height I could get with the loader at maximum height and I was at 19 feet 6 inches. Hopefully that will be high enough. I could make the boom longer but I would prefer not to have to cut another timber just for the boom.

If this works out it might be worthwhile looking at a metal boom which would be stronger and hopefully lighter than the current one. A big problem with booms is the lever arm of the boom extending out which dramatically reduces the amount of weight you can lift.

One thing I found was that we made the pockets for the forks to big as far as height. I shoved 4x4's in under them to tighten things up. Ideally there should be 5 x5's slid in under them and nailed into place. The problem with doing that is that there would be very little margin for error in getting the forks into the pallet portion of the boom.

We'll have to see how things go but I'm pleasantly surprised that it worked as well as it did today.