2 Wheel Floating Grain Bucket

2 wheel floating grain bucket GRAIN HANDLING Accessories 16-3-35 "We store grain in four 100 by 50-ft. Quonset storage sheds that have dirt floors covered by plastic. We needed a dust-free way to load grain fast without tearing the plastic," says Merv Helgason,Foam Lake, Sask., who removed an 8-yard bucket from a damaged pull-type scraper and turned it into a 52-bu., 2-wheel "floating" grain bucket on his Deere 265 self leveling front-end loader. The bucket originally was equipped with four wheels and was 85 1/2 in. wide, 26 in. high, and 74 in. deep. Helgason removed the wheels from the bucket, cut 24 in. off the front, and angled the sides back at a45 degree angle. He added 14 in. of sheet metal on top at the rear to make the bucket 40 in. high. The last step was to add a quick-tach adapter and mount a set of 15-in. wheels which were taken from an old auger mover.The bucket and loader are mounted on Helgason's Deere 4055 MFWD tractor. "It lets one man fill a 2,000-bu. semi in 45 min. from the comfort of a tractor cab," says Helgason, who built the bucket with help from his father Joe, brother Bryan, and son Glenn. "We had been using an auger and hydraulic bin sweep, but the job took 2 hours and generated far more dust and sweat. A conventional bucket would hold only about 20 bu. of grain. "To move grain, the bucket is set level with the ground and driven into the pile. The wheels keep the bucket about 11/2 in. above the ground. As the bucket begins to fill, the operator lifts it a few inches to reduce pressure on the tires. Then he tilts the bucket back slightly, finishes filling it up, and backs out. We had to shorten the bucket because it was too big and heavy for our front-end loader to lift. Even now when the bucket is full the loader has all it can do to lift it." Helgason spent $550 to build the bucket. Contact FARM SHOW Followup, Mery Helgason, Box 503, Foam Lake, Sask. Canada SOA lAO (ph 306 272-3361).

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