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Maintenance and Projects (page 5)...

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Projects (continued)...

Ladder Eavestrough Attachment

This was a minor project that took a couple of hours to complete from conception to reality. I was putting up eavestrough and needed some way of avoiding having the ladder lean against the eavestrough itself. You can buy aluminum ladder attachments for this purpose, but rather than go to town and buy one, I decided to make my own. It is inserted in the channels on the outside of the upper section of the ladder. The two sets of legs are joined by a plank that is flexible enough to bend and allow the side boards to be inserted. A couple of carpentry clamps are used to keep the attachment firmly clamped to the ladder.

Ladder Attachment

Trailer Jockey

Small boat and box trailers can be awkward and heavy to move around, and often require you to bend low when pulling the tongue so that the back-end of the trailer won't touch the ground. This is not good for your back. Other injuries can also happen, such as the time when I was moving our heavy box trailer that has a large and heavy spare wheel bolted on the tongue. The ground was icy, and I slipped under the tongue and cracked a rib when the tongue crashed down on my chest. My wife didn't show me much sympathy, having insisted that I always get help when moving that trailer, but I'm a man, aren't I?


Anyway, I had a spare wheel from an old wooden wheelbarrow that fell apart, so I used it to build this trailer jockey. The piece of large dowling fits into the trailer hitch ball socket, but you could find some way of actually fixing a hitching ball to the jockey instead of the dowling. The jockey gives enough leverage to lessen the load, and allows you to keep your back straight. It is, however, only strong enough for small trailers. One improvement that I would make is to use two wheels in parallel to give it more stability when turning a trailer, as it takes a little effort to keep it upright.

Trailer Jockey

Your projects...

If you have any projects that you are proud of, particularly those of a creative or unusual nature, and you are willing to share your experiences with others, you can use our feedback page to let us know about them. If they are interesting and informative, we will add them to these pages for the benefit of other readers. Please send photographs and/or diagrams too if they are available.

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© 2009 - 2019, David Mallinson. --- Last updated 17-Oct-2019