Hillbilly Gantry in one afternoon

North Beach

Commander
Joined
Sep 29, 2008
Messages
2,022
I know I have a couple of other threads going on here and I'm not tryin to flood the place, but I thought this would be better off separate from the build thread. Hope that's OK.

We had a really great day forecasted for today so I called my brother and got him off the couch to help with the latest project.

I do some work for a couple of government agencies and we recently removed several large rollong file cabinets on a remodel project. Most of the metal we off load out in the yard behind the shop and as the prices of scrap go up, we load it up and make some goody money:D

I got real fired up when I saw those pics of Genombamagirl's 78 hanging in the carport, I went into Macguyver mode and figured we could lift the back of the boat with our huge engine hoist and maybe we could build something to lift the front out of the metal we had in the yard. I have one of those cheapo pre-fab carports and knew better than to attempt lifting the boat off of it!

Here's a shot of the stuff we used.
Gantry1.jpg


It's all 1/8" painted steel configured in what I'd call 1/2 of an I beam. We took a couple of them apart and cut them up for the bases. Two sections were fairly close to what we needed for verticals so to speed things up we just went with what we had.
Gantry2.jpg


For the top beam we took two sections and bolted them back to back to create an I beam and drilled and bolted them to the top of the verticals. That way we can take the top off and move the rig into the shop later if we want to do some inside work.
Gantry3.jpg


Here's a shot of the finished product. We drilled and bolted the top to the verticals of the carport for some added stability.
Gantry4.jpg


Not bad for one afternoon! I know it ain't purdy, but it will work. Now, once we get the floor back in, we can cover the sides and end of the carport with some 7/16 osb (we have a huge stack in the yard) fire up the ole redeye and go to sanding and painting the bottom. While that's happening, we'll remove all the rollers off the trailer, and blast and paint it also.
 

jonesg

Admiral
Joined
Feb 22, 2008
Messages
7,198
Re: Hillbilly Gantry in one afternoon

No diagonals at the top corners?

What did you weld it with?
 

North Beach

Commander
Joined
Sep 29, 2008
Messages
2,022
Re: Hillbilly Gantry in one afternoon

All of the outhouse engineers argued about diagonals yesterday. So I gave up and after thinking about it overnight, I'll be adding a couple of bolt ons today.

My brother's the welder. He used a gas powered stick welder.
Gantry5.jpg
 
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