Wheelbarrow Recovery

Short story of the restoration of a damaged metal wheelbarrow.

During winter, the masons who were building my neighbor's house have put a wheelbarrow to trash. I asked them whether I could take it, and they were OK.

At first I thought I would only get the tray and drop the frame as it looked really bad, and the wheel was already gone, but it turned out that if the frame was full of cement, it was not damaged.

So I changed my mind and decided to find a new wheel to fix the wheelbarrow.

My father found one in a trash a few weeks later, with a rather damaged tire, missing an inner tube, but the hub, spokes and rim were in good conditions, so this would only add some small fixes to the whole thing.

Note that the steps do not exactly reflect the timeline and order in which I performed each part of the restoration, which spanned across 8 weeks, when I had some time for it.

Materials :

• The damaged wheelbarrow, salvaged from trash
• A wheel (rim and tire), also salvaged from trash
• An old bike tire ... found in a tree on a roadside ...
• A new tube ... this one I had to buy
• Anti-rust paint
• Contact cement
• Washers (different sizes), screws and nuts
• An old tube, to cut joints used between the washers.

Tools :

• An angle grinder with anti-rust polycarbon abrasive disc(s) and metal cutting discs
• Welding power supply for shielded metal arc welding and welding electrodes
• Various common tools (hammer, wrenches, ...)
• Leather gloves and protection glasses !

Introduction

Table of Content

First : Clean the tray and frame

Repair the tray - Arc welding

Painting and assembly of frame and tray

Get a wheel

Both the tray and the frame were covered with cement, and had started to rust in many places, so I had to clean them in order to apply anti-rust paint.

The tray and the frame were held together by a single bolt instead of four, but the cement and rust had blocked the remaining bolt. My angle grinder solved the problem.

I started with a small hammer to remove most of the cement, and continued with my angle grinder and a dedicated anti-rust polycarbon abrasive disc to get to the bare metal. Well, to be honest it took two disks to clean both the tray and the frame.

Once I was done with cleaning the frame I hanged it in my workshop and applied three layers of anti-rust paint (with one day of drying between each layer), and moved to cleaning the tray in the meantime.

While sanding the tray I noticed that there were cracks below the cement, in different places, so I would have to fix them before applying the anti-rust paint.

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I'm not very good at welding, but considering the thinness of the tray I'm rather happy of the result (my goal was only to recover the tray strength, so the aesthetic and completeness of the weld was not a target).

If you have access to a simple welding power supply with power adjustment capability, place it to the minimum power or you'll bore more holes than you'll manage to close.

To avoid this problem on the tray border I used a martyr (a piece of wood) on the opposite side of the tray to prevent melted metal from dripping.

For the bottom of the tray, I welded with the tray fixed in position, as this both solved this dripping problem, and avoided creating metal bumps on the bottom which I would have had to remove afterwards to fit the tray to the frame.

Once you're done, you get a slag over the weld (the black layer on the pictures, which needs to be removed to get a clean weld. This is done using a small hammer, or an angle grinder (once again).

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The frame and tray got both painted using black anti-rust paint.

I used a strap and a bolt to hang them from a beam in my workshop in order to be able to paint the whole piece at once.

The frame received three layers of paint with one day of drying between each layer, but the tray received only two, as I know I will use it intensively and the paint will go away, whatever the amount of paint I use. The second layer for the tray has been applied after assembly, in order to paint the washers and the top of the screws.

I used very big washers to get a strong assembly of the tray and frame without creating weak points, which is a common problem on wheelbarrows. They were so big that I had to bend them to follow the tray curves on the bottom of the tray.

I placed "home made" joints (made out of an old tube) between the washers and between the washers and the tray so the assembly would be close to waterproof and the wheelbarrow would be usable for cement without leaving a cement trail on the grass.

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As I explained, the wheel was missing, so in order to get a complete wheelbarrow I had to find one.

Hopefully ma father is very good at this game and found one for me, with a damaged tire, but the hub, spokes and rim were pretty good.

I had to cut the hub as it was too long for the distance between the wheel brackets, and I added an aluminum tube inside the hub and a steel tube inside the aluminum one to reduce the diameter as I had only a 12mm threaded shaft to use as an axle.

This was the easy part.

The tire was about to be a bigger problem, as it had holes in it, which meant that a tube would get punctured as soon as used, or even get out of the tire through the holes.

At first I thought I would use some parts of an old tube, but that was not optimal. The solution came from an old mountain bike tire I found in a tree (well, it was in that tree for at least two years ... but I never stopped by to remove it, and no-one else did, though it was right at the edge of town ...).

I removed the bead wires of the old mountain bike tire and cut lengths which would fit inside the wheelbarrow tire, and glued them inside the damaged tire using contact cement. This add a very strong protection and the holes in the main tire are no more a problem (I had to use three pieces from the mountain bike tire). In order to maintain the tire pieces in position inside the wheelbarrow tire I inflated the tube inside the tire without mounting it on the rim.

Once dry, I deflated the tube and mounted the tire and tube on the rim, and then the wheel on the wheelbarrow

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