Cheap And Dirty Lawn Rake

[Goraidh (Jeff)]

Ricky, your laziness is something to behold. Great rake.

[Stanton]

Great project. Makes raking fun--whooda thought!

[Claycomb]

This isn't lazy, a lazy man would't take the time to go to the shop and build something this good. A lazy man would sit on the front porch drinking a beer while watching his grass die under all those leaves. I know, because there have been a couple of times that I was that lazy man!

[Barnyard]

...A lazy man would sit on the front porch drinking a beer while watching his grass die under all those leaves...

You guys don't know what lazy is! I just sit on the porch and drink beer while Rosie rakes the leaves. The only time she stops is when she goes in to get me another beer. I am beginning to enjoy her retirement more than mine.

[cowboy]

Cool Ricky

Great idea. Now I know what to do with all those spring teeth I got to make a horse pie buster spreader before I got a drag mat.

Billy

[ricky racer]

When I first built the rake and tried it out it worked fairly well. I raked some leaves in my backyard which I documented with pictures in the first post. Those leaves were dry and didn't rake too badly. The raking action is not as good as raking by hand. By that I mean you can't expect as good of job of raking as raking by hand, however it moved a lot of leaves out of my yard which I piled up in the field. I never expected it to do as good of a job as hand raking but I wanted some way to get the leaves out of the yard without hand raking or blowing them. I am happy with the results.

Yesterday, I again when out to rake the leaves that fell during the recent rain storm. This time the leaves were wet and the rake did not perform nearly as well as it did with dry leaves. They had a tendency to roll under the rake and although it did move the leaves out of the yard and into the field, it took quite a few more times over the area to get it done. I just wanted to post this to provide full disclosure regarding it's performance.

Anyway, I think I will find more uses for the rake including dethatching my yard and preparing areas in my yard that I plan on seeding with new grass this spring. We'll see.

[Pabst]

Nice lawn rake fabrication, great idea!

[lazyuniondriver]

RR...

You've gotta be kidding' me! I just finished building mine last night... Boo!

Kidding of course... Mine is a little narrower and with less tines per inch as I didn't have a bunch of extra tines in stock.

I, like yourself, tried it dry this morning and was pleased. It's wet out there now but I'll tell you something, it is easier for me to swing the shifter back and forth to make extra strokes than it is to stroke the rake handle or the leaf blower!

Thanks again for the idea, I have time to watch the leaves dry if it is that big a deal.

[ricky racer]

RR...

You've gotta be kidding' me! I just finished building mine last night... Boo!

Kidding of course... Mine is a little narrower and with less tines per inch as I didn't have a bunch of extra tines in stock.

What!!! No pictures???????

[lazyuniondriver]

What!!! No pictures???????

RR.... My only quality cam is on my cell. Unfortunately the file size exceeds the upload limit with no way to reduce the pixelation.

My son recently started using Picasso but he's at sea and won't be back for a while but wants to hook me up so the whole family is on Picasso.

Of course I snapped a pic so if you'd like to see it, shoot me an email address

[Rudi]

lud:

Read these and go get IrfanView. It is free and very useful.

This chapter contains topics relating to picture hosting, resizing, posting and other forum related topics.

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[lazyuniondriver]

Rudi...
.. I actually did peruse over those links a couple of days ago after attempting to upload a picture only to be shot down because it was too big.

I attempted to open a Photobucket account utilizing an app on my cell but that went nowhere fast as well.

I'll look into IrfanView tomorrow and see if that works out better for me.

Thanks for the tip.

[lazyuniondriver]

Lazyuniondriverake

1350554980-picsay.jpg (47.38 KiB) Viewed 180 times

I found software on my phone that apparently trims enough of the pic off to make it acceptable


My budget version of the rake utilized a pickup truck bed extender which a neighbor gave me a few years ago. The opposite end of the square tube beam that slides into the trailer hitch is laid on its side and bolted to the drawbar with 2 bolts. (One 5/8 hole drilled here, one hole from factory for pin)

The T bar which slid over the piece now bolted parallel to the drawbar slides on the straight end with another 5/8 " hole drilled for the pin.

The tines are screwed with flat washers into a 2x4. This was the prototype to test if it would rake with so few tines. It did so I decided to mount the 2x4 to the T bar so I wouldn't have to drill so many holes and aquire through bolts because I'm lazy. 2 bolts hold the wood to the T bar.

The tines were scavenged from a snapper dethatcher, another gift from somewhere.

The drawbar lift chain was already set up so I can back under my trailers to move them by scooping the tongue off the ground without getting off and cranking because I am lazy.


There is about a 12" adjustment where the T bar slides onto the main beam which somewhat adjusts the weight or pressure on the tines after the drawbar drops to its lowest position. Of course the tines raked the ground at the wrong angle and needed to be bent.

If the wood tine base doesn't work out, I will simply remove it and drill a hole for each tine directly into the T bar

The rake is 50" wide.

[Smokeycub]

Nice job Rick! It looks nice and sturdy and does a good job. Well thought out. It also looks like all new steel, I'm guessing about $100 worth of new steel?? I like it, I might have to build one of my own! I think I'll put "wings" on the ends sorta like a snow plow would have and allow for it to angle a bit. I have a huge amount of leaves to deal with, I live in the middle of a sugar maple grove. I've tried all kinds of ideas but this seems to work well and you don't get off the tractor to "unload" leaves, simple is usually better after all.

[ricky racer]

1350554980-picsay.jpg

I found software on my phone that apparently trims enough of the pic off to make it acceptable


My budget version of the rake utilized a pickup truck bed extender which a neighbor gave me a few years ago. The opposite end of the square tube beam that slides into the trailer hitch is laid on its side and bolted to the drawbar with 2 bolts. (One 5/8 hole drilled here, one hole from factory for pin)

The T bar which slid over the piece now bolted parallel to the drawbar slides on the straight end with another 5/8 " hole drilled for the pin.

The tines are screwed with flat washers into a 2x4. This was the prototype to test if it would rake with so few tines. It did so I decided to mount the 2x4 to the T bar so I wouldn't have to drill so many holes and aquire through bolts because I'm lazy. 2 bolts hold the wood to the T bar.

The tines were scavenged from a snapper dethatcher, another gift from somewhere.

The drawbar lift chain was already set up so I can back under my trailers to move them by scooping the tongue off the ground without getting off and cranking because I am lazy.


There is about a 12" adjustment where the T bar slides onto the main beam which somewhat adjusts the weight or pressure on the tines after the drawbar drops to its lowest position. Of course the tines raked the ground at the wrong angle and needed to be bent.

If the wood tine base doesn't work out, I will simply remove it and drill a hole for each tine directly into the T bar

The rake is 50" wide.

I like it. I always enjoying seeing what guys can come up with using what they have available to them. It looks like a very well thought out unit. Not bad for a lazy guy. I can relate.