About 6 years ago, a friend made 4 log racks for me. 3- 6'X6' and 1-5'X5'. For a long time I've wanted to put some wheels on one of them and finally got around to it this week. It worked out pretty well, but I can't put as much wood on it as I thought I'd be able to. With the wood stacked 4' high, it's almost at the limit where I can still push it around. Hopefully, I'll be able to get more on it when the wood's split. Either way, it will be nice to roll this much wood from the shed to the back door. Anyone else make something like this?
What's the size of the casters? A larger caster will allow you to move more weight, more easily. You just have to be able to get the cart moving. Probably no different than getting your manual-transmission car push-started. Car weighs 2 tons but it has 28" diameter tires so very little rolling resistance. I bet a 6" caster would make it much easier to push that thing around. What you have there, using my best SWAG, is close to half a ton. 6' long, 4' tall stack of 20% MC American Elm, 35 pounds per cubic foot, cut to 16" length, you have more or less 25 cubic feet of solid wood on the cart so 25x35 = 875 lb and give an allowance of 125# for that solid-looking cart and there's your half ton.
The wheels are 4" I was pushing it up a slight grade, so I'm sure that's a big factor in being able to push it. When I'm moving splits to the house, it will be all downhill, so I'm sure I'll be able to come close to filling it up.
I won't let that happen. The driveway is fairly level, it just has a slight slant to it and when I'm pushing that much weight, the slant is noticeable.
Here is a pic of rolling rack built by Mitch Newton he shared with me in a thread about moving wood into my basement. Building a couple is on my to do list.
Awesome Good friend ! Great work saver +1 on try the bigger diameter castors . You have snow & ice to deal with ? See green leaves, where you located ?
It's a great friend and I may make a companion for it next year. I'm getting the hang of maneuvering this thing and I think these casters are going to work well. They roll over debris pretty easily too. I think bigger casters would make it too tall to be stable and as it is the top of the rack just barely clears the lights on the covered patio. We get snow and ice, but that won't be a problem. I only have to move the rack about 20' to bring it to the door and only 5' of that is outside and I always keep that area cleared. I used it today to bring wood to the splitter and and it was a huge help. It's filled up now, sitting next to the splitter and waiting for next time I'm in Northern Kentucky.
