Question about cant hooks

[Matildasmate]

Cornuta yate

Thanks Serge. Karri is very strong and when dry has the same weight for weight strength as steel but it is not really the best wood for a tool handle. If it gets beat about is resists outright breakage extremely well but will split and the splinters generated are quite nasty so after a while it's definitely a handle to use only with gloves, or back to the workshop for a rubdown and recoat. I was going to give it 3/4 coats of epoxy but its sort of an experiment at this stage so I only oiled it. I used Karri because it was the strongest wood I could get a reasonable size piece of for small $$.

Hi Bob ......... If you can get your hands on some Cornuta yate , I call it concrete wood , hell it's hard and strong , only thing it's also heavy , make's Redgum look like Balsa , it's a native to your part of the country , when I say your part I mean Western Australia . Some bloke over a hundred years ago , put a small plantation in , about 10 -20 acre's , at a place called Robe in lower Southeast of South Australia . Makes exelent firewood , I slabbed some up pretty boring stuff , very plain . That bloke was ahead of his time eh! Cheers MM

 

[Matildasmate]

For your amusement, here is my first go at making a cant hook.

The steel collars and protective sleeve are made from bits of 2" diameter water pipe. the hook was cut from a 1/2" slab of steel found inside an X-ray machine in the dumpster at work. As a result it is pretty heavy but as I said I did not want to under-engineer it.

Handle is cut from a piece of 2 x 4" piece of Western Australian karri, cut down to 2 x 3" and then tapered into rough shape on a Table Saw. Final shaping was with a HSS blade spokeshave and then a hand scraper - near the top the handle is just under 2" round. The shaping took a looong time, but made lots of shavings and dust, very theraputic even if karri is a PITA to work. Karri is a very high strength timber.

The most expensive material used was the $3 half can of spray paint, followed by $2 for the 1/2" tensile steel bolt and $1 for the karri. Don't ask me how long it took but I figure I was probably working for about $12 an hour! It can't have been too traumatic as I am making a smaller one, 48" long one for moving smaller logs, beams and slabs around.

Cheers!

The Logrite has a safety feature built into it , to stop you crushing your fingers with the hook , on some other designs , if you hold the cant hook up , handle down , the hook come's back a crush's your finger's between the hook and handle , the Logrite has a pin behind the hook , in the hinge section , so the hook can't slap back against the handle . Cheers MM

 

[Matildasmate]

Radiation

I was actually thinking of the radiation inthat peice of steel from the exray machine :biggrinbounce2: :biggrinbounce2: :biggrinbounce2: Cheers MM

 

[Judge]

Great job, BobL! That looks superior to anything I've seen on the market.

 

[ads47]

Mill Special

If you don't like the thickness of Logrites you can get the Mill Specials up to 36in. If you call them you will most likely be able to get it any length. Its been a while since I have talked to them but when I ordered mine he basically said they could be built any length you wanted. I have four Cants from them and a log carrier and would buy them all again.


ads

 

[woodshop]

WOW... great job, you certainly impressed this woodworker. Wasn't I one of the ones above that sorta tried to talk you out of this? ... babbling about safety if it broke on you, and whether you had a machine shop etc to be able to make one??? Silly me. That looks better than my Baileys cant hook.

 

[cantcutter]

Nice looking hook.....it sure doesn't look homemade. Wish i had the shop and skills to do work like that.

 

[BobL]

Thanks for all the compliments guys - I'll give it a test run tomorrow and probably be back modifying it in the shed on Sunday.

I was actually thinking of the radiation inthat peice of steel from the exray machine

My small log milling set up is also made from bits of an X-ray machine. X-rays can't make other materials produce radiation so it's safe to use - otherwise as the boss I would onto the techos like a ton of bricks for putting all this stuff in the dumpster! (no I don't get first refusal because I'm the boss, I let it sit in the dumpster for at least a half day before diving in!)

 

[Matildasmate]

Logrite safety feature pic's

Logrite safety feature pic's , picture's are self explanatory , the pins used are hardened steel roll pin's. One of the roll pins , stops the cant hook slapping against the handle and crushing your hand and or finger's . Cheers MM

 

[Sprig]

Hm, I see what you're talkin' about on the Log-rite finger wise, nice feature that my own pee-vee doesn't have (but since I don't ever use it upsidedown no probs ), wouldn't be much for Bob to add a small bit of steel to either the hook base or the top of the collar as a safety extra though.

 

[Matildasmate]

Your Right Sprig

Hm, I see what you're talkin' about on the Log-rite finger wise, nice feature that my own pee-vee doesn't have (but since I don't ever use it upsidedown no probs ), wouldn't be much for Bob to add a small bit of steel to either the hook base or the top of the collar as a safety extra though.

Your right Sprig .......... I don't use mine upside down either , but when your busy sometime's we do silly thing's without thinking about it , I was pretty rapped , when I held it up handle down the first time , without thinking , all I thought thank @%$#k for a good design mate . Cheers MM

 

[BobL]

It's already got to come apart for some "adjusment" as the hook does not turn quite as smoothly in the slot as I like it to so a finger protection mechanism in on the books.

 

[BobL]

Cant hook - the weight test

Took the Cant hook to the milling yard today. It works great even on small logs although it will be good to have a smaller one as well - I'm working on that in the shed. Excellent on bigger logs, should stand me in good stead when I have no forklift access.

I observed it already has that finger protection thing built into it because the hook cannot rotate all the way back and hit the handle or ones fingers.

Although I have forklift access in the yard the logs are not always in the right orientation for milling when I place them on the supporting gluts. Just before I drop the forks I can rotate the log exactly into the right orientation using the cant hook and all is good. The yard owner turns logs by doing this crafty "pancake flip thing" with the log on the ends of the fork - well beyound my skill level.

The other thing I did was test the handle. Here's me placing my full 270+ lbs on the handle - it seemed to bend maybe 1/4 -> 1/2 inch - otherwise all good.



In review, although it's probably too a touch too heavy it's working well.

 

[cantcutter]

You sure you don't mean 270+ kg.......cause it looks to me like you need more lead in your A$$
So when do they go into production and how much is shipping to the US going to cost me?

 

[dustytools]

Nice job Bob!

 

[Matildasmate]

Exelent job Bob

Look's great Bob..............That Karri lot stronger than I thought it was , you have made a fine well built peice of equipment Bob , I put 2000 in about 10 years ago , got about a dozen 15 years old , been itchin to mow one down , gettin hard to resist now , what sort of log was that you were hangin off of . Did you slab any of it up? Cheer's MM

 

[BobL]

what sort of log was that you were hangin off of . Did you slab any of it up? Cheer's MM

Box Brush, its first cab off the rank next week.
I got 10 new logs delivered to the yard to work on.
5 Box Brush, 2 red gums, a Eucalyptus Platypus and 2 blue leaved jarrahs.

RE: So when do they go into production and how much is shipping to the US going to cost me?
No production runs I'm afraid - I'm hopeless at making more than one or two of most things becuase I get instantly bored of anything involving.

 

[Sprig]

Lol on yer testing method there Bob, damned good thing its good and strong as if that sucker had snapped in da wrong place ya might be lookin' for a new kidney! (like next time just set it in something un-movable and reef/hang on it, that way if it does happen ta break you won't get speared........much )

Hm, wonder what the shippin' on a chunk of that'd be ta BC? The karri wood, not a kidney!



Serge

 

[BobL]

Thanks for the concern serge. If the handle was going to break it would break at the collar and I'd fall onto my knees. The probability of it breaking in the region of my gut was extremely low. Karri also rarely breaks outright in an instantaneous manner, it creaks and groans and sort of eases apart. It's amazing stuff.

 

[BobL]

Introducing the "Cant Dragon"

Using my Cant hook I noticed that one has to be very close to square onto the log for the pole face part of the hook not to slip on the log. So with this in mind here is what I came up with. I'm calling it the cant dragon.



Here is a close up of the set of gripping teeth.

1. The teeth are oriented at an angle to the hook swing so if the handle is not applied square this angle will twist the handle toward being squarer to the log and engage the other parallel set of teeth. Together both should naturally set a square handle.
2. The teeth themselves are not sharp or designed to cut, just to grip.
3. The individual tooth angles are oriented such that as one applies more torque to the handle it will ratchet up onto the log.

That's the theory anyway. If it all goes to pot I will grind the teeth down, or off completely and leave a pair of parallel ridges. Point one above should apply (perhaps better) to ridges better than teeth.

Here's how the dragon compares to the regular hook I made a few weeks ago. The regular hook is 62" long while the dragon is 48" long.


Another difference between the two is the bigger one has a double side tapered handle whereas the smaller one has a single sided taper, with the taper is on the compression side of the handle. This should minimize the chance of handle splitting due to fibre ending on the taper. Something my dad taught be about making an axe handle from scratch - now that is going back to the 60's!

Cheers