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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  6d ago (text post)   615 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for April 15, 2025

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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Currently building a 2kW, 5kWh, 24V off-grid system for my summer cabin, and for carting around to power tools anywhere (very useful for all the tree clearing & burning I'm doing, which would otherwise take a lot of starting and stopping my small limbing chainsaw. And I don't even have a gas pole saw.)
Amazingly, by resorting to salvaging from garbage dumps and even buying from Temu, it's working out cheaper than running aluminum SER to the building.

It's probably going to come in at 150lb or so. So I should probably figure out how to put some wheels and a handle on it. Maybe off-road bike tires would work best?

What's the terrain and the path look like? If it's paved or nearly-flat hard clay, you can get away with pretty cheap caster wheel like those used for tool carts, which have the advantages of being trivial to install and swiveling. If it's muddy or sufficiently uneven, then you're going to want hefty pneumatic wheels -- either wheelbarrow, or hand cart -- though I'll caution that they're a lot more sensitive to alignment. If it's gravelly or sandy or if this isn't going to get used often, they do make 6+ inch hard rubber tires that aren't fun to work with, but are a lot more resistant to sliding due to underinflation, or to being punctured.

Could need to take it all over, but luggage casters are definitely out. I've got an old two-tyre wheelbarrow base that might work nicely, and would be a lot better for storage than bike wheels.

I've got a hard rubber wheelbarrow, and god it's miserable to use.

Wheelbarrow wheels innit, plus I think a lot of wheelbarrow tires are solid.

Wheeled litters use a Surly 26" fat bike wheel with 4.6" tire, but this is a relatively expensive solution I think.

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