Finally finished my Walbanker yesterday.
Firstly, a big thank you to Wal for sharing his design and expertise - the Walbanker ticks pretty much all the boxes I can think of and has been proven in the field. Thanks to Johnh001 for sorting my head out with cam-lock fittings and Andrew at Monaro Metal for folding and welding the box together.
Things I've learned:
- A ready built Walbanker for $750 from Detecta Den is REALLY good value - particularly if you value your time
- Canberra is a small place and everybody is either Wal's mate, knows Wal, worked with Wal, works with Wal or is possibly related to Wal
Maybe I'll bump into Wal myself one day.
- When you buy a new pump of eBay, it doesn't have a lot of oil in it. On the bright side, low oil sensor is tested and working.
- Fitting hoses (particularly suction hoses) to cam-lock fittings is hard work but go on more easily if you shout expletives and use a hammer
- Cam-lock fittings are cool - should replace those dodgey plastic hose fittings on the garden hose
Pics below. Mostly happy but might do the leg supports again as not enough outward angle. Ran out of angle to support the cable tray so used some reasonably heavy mesh which seems to do the job really well. Setup with catwalk mesh as the sloped aluminium still eludes me. Getting it's first run at Eldorado meetup later this week.
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/5386/1445837548_walbanker-min.png
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/5386/1445837578_mesh-min.png