When Michael Heron needed to move snow from his roadways last winter, he devised an idea to use his small Deere 300 tractor.

     “The tractor already had two hydraulic circuits I could tap into,” Heron says. “I had two cylinders lying around, so I thought I could use one to lift the bucket and the other to curl it.”

     Heron used sections of 2 by 2-in. steel tubing on either side of the frame and a brace across the hood where he attached the lifting cylinder. He secured the other end to the arms and the top pivot. He made the lifting arms 1 1/2-in. by 1 1/2-in., and he added a thicker brace where he welded the two sections together. Another brace between the arms supported the curling cylinder that he also attached to the bucket. The brackets were built from scratch.

     Heron made the bucket from an old toolbox, which he cut diagonally in half.

     “My design limits were that it shouldn’t cost very much because, at that time of year, I didn’t have very much,” he laughs. “I scrounged around, found all the spare metal I needed, and cut things up to make everything fit.”

     If he could start over, he would’ve made the bucket a bit bigger, as snow isn’t overly heavy, and the bucket path would be wider than his front wheels.

     “The trickiest part was getting the brackets in the right place so the loader would lift to 6 ft. high and dump the bucket completely as snow likes to stick,” he says.

     Heron estimates that if he purchased all the materials, the build cost would be around $500, but he already had the cylinders and used hydraulic hoses from other pieces of his equipment. He plans to replace the bucket with a larger one next winter.

     Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Michael Heron, RR1, Site 1, Box 1, Main Station, Lloydminster, Sask., Canada S9V 0X6 (ph 306-307-8632; m.heron@sasktel.net).