For reasons that should be obvious by now, I volunteered to rebuild a wheelbarrow used at the Vassar Community Garden plots. It spent all its time outdoors and one of the handles eventually broke off:
I’d already removed the wheel and front strap, which were in good condition.
The new handles were undrilled, so I marked and drilled them with a nice brad-point bit to get clean holes:
The metal “barrow” had cracked around the carriage bolts holding it to the frame, so I filed a quartet of fender washers to fit the square section under the heads:
After a false start, I marked the bolt heads and washers to line them up properly while tightening the nuts on the other end:
One front strut had gone missing, so I replaced it with a mashed-and-drilled section of ski pole:
All in all, a few hours of Quality Shop Time interspersed with a few pleasant bike rides to various local stores, wherein I learned who doesn’t stock the necessary hardware.
Protip: Home Depot has the highest-entropy hardware assortment.
For the record, all the bolts have a 5/16-18 thread.
No epoxy? Waiting for delivery of the 55 gallon drum from halfway around the world?
I had to fight down the urge to fill the cracked sections around the bolts, but eventually decided having four drains in the steel pan was a Good Thing.
Volunteered or voluntold?
They were going to throw it out and my “must fix broken thing” reflex took over.
Home Desperate has a spotty supply of hardware, which is why I’ll get box-loads of the more common sizes. If I really need a few ANSI fasteners of a given size, I’ll go to Ye Olde Farm Supplye store. They’ll have the common and the odder sizes needed by various machines. They also charge by the pound for a given grade. I hate paying Depot prices for a half-handful of bolts. (Some metric gets stocked. Lots of furrin’ tractors out there. [grin])
I’ve bought one or two things from Tractor Supply Company, but the local Farm & Ranch stores are regional outfits. OTOH, TSC was Good Enough on the one occasion I needed something in the middle of Wyoming.
I rode to the Highland TSC with the trailer, ready to haul a pair of handles back, only to find they were No Stock. Didn’t buy bolts for handles I didn’t have, so after I ordered online and picked up handles at Lowe’s, rode to the North Home Depot for hardware, whereupon I once again realized the error of my ways.
Pfui!
I’ve seen wheelbarrow handles at one of the ranch stores (the other is a bit more citified, but when we really need frostcloth for the garden, they’ll have it).
Not sure if the local HD has barrow handles. I’ve seen others there. I’m going to need a new handle for the ancient garden rake. The head was forged rather than welded together, and it will keep going as long as possible.