Well I finally made use of 3 of the 4 pieces of UHMW I purchased on the big UHMW steal of the century a few years ago. ;0)
Finally had reason for three sleds and we made good use of them. More on that in another post.
Thought I would put a little of the mods I made. No big secret on the basic build.
1. I had taken my sheets to a local welder and had him put them in his break. Be sure to over break them. They do tend to relax a bit for a few days. I actually leave ratchet straps on them to keep from bending back out too far. I had him do three brakes lines to develop the 90 degree finish. We broke more than 90 degrees hoping for a finished 90.
I suppose there is a multitude of different cuts and configurations you could make to piece up the front. I just chose one and went with it. They all work. Some I am sure better than I chose. But no complaints so far. I found the ratchet strap to really help to pull things into place.
Where I strayed from what seemed the conventional approaches to things was the front and rear hitch assembly.
Rear.
Since I wanted to be able to pull one to three sleds from one machine I did the following.
I inserted a piece of aluminum flat bar I bent by heating up with a torch. No problemo! I used clamps to place the aluminum and then heated the base of the sled as I sucked it up with ratchet straps. Really made for a nice secure rear end hitch.
The rear hitch was just a minimal cutting and welding project. The pivot was in the front hitch so nothing complicated in the rear.
I do hate loosing hitch pins so I welded on a nut to secure when not in use.
I used a piece of 20 inch long one inch angle iron for the skeg. I welded on hard surfacing rod on the bottom edge to hopefully keep the edge more robust. Then sharpened it to a pretty sharp point . Seemed to do okay. Your seeing an installed skeg from the top as well as a second set ready to go on sled two in this photo.
If I had had more time I would have liked to put some sacrificial uhmw runners on the bottom and put at least two skegs on each sled. You can't have too many. As you will see in an upcoming post on my trip.
I didn't want to use up any of my uhmw on hitches so I chose to weld my hitches together using 3/4 pipe. All went well. I did bend a hitch pin when we slid backwards on the ice and ended up in a train wreck.
Don't have any good photos of the finished hitch end attachments. Also I will be placing some kind of light plastic material over the large hitch opening to keep snow from coming in the sled. Perhaps putting apiece of conveyor belt like Howler as well.
So for what is worth maybe someone can benefit from my trials and errors. ;0)
