No blacksmithing, but a fun little mental exercise. Farmer John had the idea to make a ball hitch for the front of his tractor so he could move the little trailers out of his way when he’s mowing the grass and such. The hitch didn’t need to be anything really stout since the trailers are light and only being moved a few feet across the yard.
The fun part was trying to figure out how to make something with the scrap I’ve accumulated. Oddly enough, the piece of channel that makes up the main part already had the hole torched into it. No idea what it was for before I ended up with it, but it and three others have been sitting there for ages waiting for me to find something for them to do.
The cut-out slipped around the tooth perfectly and catches on the backside of the tooth so it can’t pull free easily. The hitch ball had mangled threads, so I just cut the shank off and welded the two together. Lots of welding, but I needed the practice and didn’t mind going overboard.
Total material cost $0. Everything would have been taken to the scrap yard on the next run I made, so it was nice to see that not happen. Took about an hour to get it all together, and most of that was spent figuring out how we wanted to go about it. Once that was cyphered out, the rest went rather quick.
