Home made Laser Dolly

M

macwas16

New Member
Hi all,

I was sort of kicking around the whole idea of making myself a home made dolly for my Laser to cut costs for my restoration boats. I found the instructions as well as dimensions and a cost sheet all at www.drlaser.org. I have a few questions though, and was wondering if anybody with first hand knowledge would mind lending some advice (Goonie, perhaps, as I saw the pictures you posted of yours a while back.)

1. My first question is about the pipe itself. Is it a white PVC pipe painted black or do they actually make black ones that are stronger or what not? The cost sheet said you could get these pipes at the Home Depot, although I don't remmember seeing any black PVC there last time I checked.

2. My second question is of the durability. Will these things last me a few seasons?


I'll probobly have more questions along the way but thanks for looking. Shevy, maybe you could help me out here?

Happy Sailing.
 
hi MacKenzie

if u hear anything about building dollies let me know i was interested in the same thing myself

thanx
 
If you search thru old threads you will find a bit of discussion on the PVC dollies - I built one, white PVC (the black does not seem to be available in the NorthEast US, I have seen it in Canada and it may be a more durable schedule)

Mine did not last in cold weather, the joint fittings would crack and break) and unless you find suitable tires, will be very hard to pull in sand (thin tires just sink)
 
Hello Macwas and & fellow Laserites interested in building a dolly,
If your going to try building a home made dolly out of PVC pipe... I'd suggest using schedule 80 PVC. The white stuff you see at Home Depot is schedule 40. The schedule 80 is a thicker walled pipe and fittings it is significantly stronger. Try checking your phone book for local plumbing supply places. Even if you do decide to use schedule 40 it will be ( I suspect)markedly cheaper to purchase it through them. Home Depot marks up thier stuff pretty good. You could probably check prices via telephone to verify. Goonie's design looked pretty good. Good luck on your project.
FishingMickey
150068/150087
 
Hallo all
I imitated this plastic-tubed dolly from drLaser-webside in last autumn. In solution I had some problems with rebuilding, because im living on „planet Europe". So, some „equal-named"-parts are not available here in Europe (and maybe in other parts of world, too).
For instance: I didn´t got that „ABS-Cement" to glue easly the tubes together. Maybe you must use a lot of little screws for all - This works, but it dosn´t looks perfekt. First mistake you can make is to take Polypropylen (PP) „HT"-tubes for all, as I did. This will not work very good for the axle-tube. This part is to build most strong to keep clear with the upcomming tensions, from the Laserhull. If you take diameter 75mm HT-PP-tube, the axle-tube will bent down to ground in the center of the axle, grrr.... You have to use this PVC-tubes (maybe the other name is „KG"-pipe) for it! Therefor you will have another problem to clear up: to get the right connection-parts for the lower diametered main tubes (here you can use the PP-pipes and a lot of screws - glueing will not work for HT). In Europe the PVC-„KG"-tubes (min diam.: 110 mm) are coloured in orange, the PP-„HT"-tubes are coloured in grey or white (and have a tender bending than the stronger PVC-KG-tubes). Look at www.marley.com. go to „Plumbing+drainage" and then to „soil+waste". At „Productselector" and „Design" (there: „Material+Manufacture")
you will find descriptions for PVC-tubes and PP-tubes and all that.
For the main-tubes I used 75mm-HT-tube, because I didn´t got connectionparts „50mm"to „110mm" for KG-Tube from the axle-tube. Therefor I have in the moment no solution. I took the 75mm HT-tube for the axle and screwed a metallbar for clothes in it (wasn´t easy to screw, but it works). This will minder the bending of the HT-PP-axle beam a lot. You will easy get „T"-connectionparts for „75" to „50"mm in HT. For the little tubes Where the front-part of the Laserhull stands on, it is possible to use diam. 40mm HT-tubes and connection-parts. Next problem is to build the vertical parts on the axle-tube. I did it with HT. This dosn´ t work very well. The tension in the connection-edges to the axle-tube gets to high, when Laserhull gets on to the dolly. „In my distress" I screwed „L"-metal-sheeds to all sides of the connectonparts... You must be shure that laserhull lies on the center of the axle, so that there is not too much tension on the vertical „T"-parts. Next problem ist to construct the connection of the Wheels to the axle. There is no good description for it. At homebuilding-store in Germany there are steelaxles and big air-pumped-wheels availabe but I have no good idea in the moment to build this steel-axle into the plastic-axle-tube so that nothing will break down. I did it with big wheels from a „pram" but in my experiance it is not the best solution because the wheels sometimes suddenly fall away from the dolly. My constuction to get them on the axle, is to to long to tell here. I will give some pictures of the dolly to drLaser in spring, when my Laser (where also the dolly now is) get out of wintersleep. Maybe he will show them to all... :D
Greetings to all of you little „Al Borland´s" , your „Tim Taylor´ed"-LooserLu
 
Hi,
there is a little mistake in my descriptions, you will please be so kind to keep in mind while reading my words before:

>"For the main-tubes I used 75mm-HT-tube, because ..."

Correct is: "For the main-tubes I used 50mm-HT-tube, because..."

The axle-tube has a diameter of 75mm.
Sorry.

Bye-bye
LooserLu
 
Hi friends,
as I promised, now you can see 3 pictures (on the TLF-Photo-Gallery) of my version of a (PP-) plastic-tube- home-made-Laser-dolly "a la" (it´s basical designer) Mr. "John D-E" from Canada.
Unfortunately I have not enough space there for all the photos, but I also sent the photos to drLaser. Maybe he gives you the other photos if you ask him.
 
The black piping is not PVC, it is ABS.
Also Mackenzie, I was never able to find our modified designs. The designs on the net don't take into account the right amount of pipe. You will need to compensate.

I have alot going on, in two days I will post a summary of things you should take into account.
 
i think they dont use black ABS anymore because it was harmful to the environment
or something like that
thats probably why u couldn't find it @ home depot, macaws16

anyways thanks for starting this thread -now i am planning to make my own dolly :D

but 1 question: will ABS cemnt hold up in water, i mean to say is it water proof?

Joe S. :cool:
 
Quote from 1silverlaser:"but 1 question: will ABS cemnt hold up in water, i mean to say is it water proof?"

Although I don´t know until today what ABS cement (ist a kind of epoxy-glue?) is, it seems to be logical, that this type of cement is water proof, because on the otherside, wy should the designer from Canada (Mr. John D-E) advice it? I think, he uses his dolly until today (I hope) and this means, he uses it of course also in the water while sliping the Laser.
The gluer for the PP-tubes is not water-resistant. So screwing the (bad smoth) PP-tubes is a must!
But don´t for get to make some wholes in the PP-Tubes, for that the water can go in and out of the tubes. The PP-plastik-tube-Laserdolly is very light - it swims on the surface, this is bad when you want to get the boat out of the water...

Bye-bye
LooserLu
 
"But don´t for get to make some wholes in the PP-Tubes, for that the water can go in and out of the tubes. The PP-plastik-tube-Laserdolly is very light - it swims on the surface, this is bad when you want to get the boat out of the water..."

oh yea i didnt think about that
 
And I have another thing, you must avoid, 1 silverlaser: When you look to the pic "2", then you see, that the hull of my Laser does not stay directly on the axle. This is bad. Because the carpet gets to much tension and the pins on the side of the dolly, they bend a lot in the moment. The designer said that this carpet is only to hold the hull in the right position - not to ´hold the compleete hull (its to heavy). This, I also have to correct at this dolly. I must buy another, longer, carpet, this one I use now, is too short... :-(

For the tubes, to save the hull of the Laser, I use a kind of smoth isolation tubes for heating-tubes, you also can get at the home store. That tubes are not! made of neoprene because neoprene dosen´t "live long". (Sorry, I have not the right English word for the smoth "over"-tubes I use, but they are from marley.com). The long tubes are both one piece from the front to the axle (I connect then with long "A2"-scews with nuts to the connectionpoint at the axle) . They fit exaclty to the inner lenght of my car :)
Bye-bye
LooserLu
 
Ludwing, would you please post a link to the pictures of your dolly. Have you seen mine?
 
Somebody at my club made me a pretty good trolley out of stainless steel. It's almost identical to the propper Laser brand trolleys, but it was a lot cheaper in price ovcourse, I think the wheels were the most expensive parts, and that's all he asked me to pay for. I'm going to make a similar trolley for my Dad, as a project in my tech class at school.
It's really easy to make a Laser Trolley out of steel, all you have to do is cut all of the pieces to size and weld it together, and oxy torches are extremely simple to use. To make it even cheaper you can just use standard steel, and coat it in a galvinising paint.
 
@ Goonie

Yes, of course, I did! "It looks really great - much better "and faster" than my." (Ich weiss, Goonie, du sprichst ein wenig Deutsch ;-) :"Dein Slipwagen sieht wirklich prima aus - sehr viel besser "und schneller" als meiner.").

You can find my pictures here at TLF. Bradley (much thanks to him) has given us a Photogallery. Go upon the TLF - "task-headline" and "klick" to "NEW! Photo Gallery" and there to "member albums"; there you can find two areas of my gallery: the one with the photos of the waterbottle-task and the other one is about my home made dolly.
Ask Shevy, I have posted him an email with all photos of my dolly (I don´t know if this email has reached him, he didn´t answered - I think, he is very busy now with the discussion of the Draft of the ByLaws of ILCA-NA at the email-list of ILCA-NA).

[Hey, Goonie and yesterday the Germans (of course) lost the game against Canada at icehockey-WC - Canada is great - unbeatable ;-) ]

Regards
LooserLu
 
For all the reader that not understand that funny language above, JacksonAUS tells in German, that his dolly is faster and has more power than goonie´s and my dolly.

Well, wait and see... ;-)

Maybe I see "Harald" (you know that guy, born not far a way from the river Rhine, with the fast red Ferrari from Maranello/Italy....) and then I ask him to borrogh me a couple his new Brigestone-slicks... + then we see us at Melbourne..., JacksonAUS ;-)

Maybe if, Mr. Kirpatrick is kind enough to give us some used new Laser-carbon-uppermastsections (for 0 $ of course), Goonie, we constuct some 1-desigen-Formular-1-Laser-dollies of it and we built a "Laser-eps-rigg" upon-it... :)) and visit Jackson, ok? ;-)
 
I recently built a laser dolly out of aluminum tubing. It cost us about 125$ Canadian to build but it works just like a seitech or a spootride. We measured the seitech dolly and cut the 1 1/2 tubing to the right legnths. Second we had some plate aluminum cut and all we did is bolt it together. The sling is a crane sling that we bought at an industrial supplies store. we bought a motorboat front mount and it grabs the bow just fine. If you did want to spend the extra 30-40 $ than you could buy the seitech front peice and it would fit on. I wouldnt bother making one out of PVC piping. You cannot trailer the PVC ones well, and they do not hold up. I have seen them flex and just no. not good. It is definately worth the extra money and time to build a solid dolly. Dont cheap yorself out on a PVC Dolly. Once again, it is very similar and works just as well as the brand name ones. please feel free to contact me if you have questions. [email protected] :)
 
I wish I had known about that! My suggestion Mac, is go with aluminum!
 
I made a dolly with aluminum also and it worked out rather cheap and it is holding up great! I reccomend the aluminum also it is much stronger than the pvc dollys.
 
Eric, Brady (and other Aluminum dolly builders out there)

Any chance you can post some pics and/or share in more detail how you made the joints.

What grade aluminum and wall thickness would be helpful too.
 
i have no idea what grade it was built out of

i do know it was 1.5 inch thick (same as seitech) i belive the walls were around 1/8 th thick. I dont think that getting it any bigger or smaller would make a difference. I just tried my hardest to make it as close to the seitech ones as possible

I am out at the yacht club on the weekend i will try to take some pics now that i know there is interest on others building it.
 
The joints that i used were very simple. we had the people at the metal works plates that would fit to connect the aluminum to the pipe. than we drilled holes and bolted them together. when i put out some pictures you will ahve a better understanding. I belive that our design is similar to the spootrides as their joints are only bolted together. to attach the wheels we jammed a piece of wood into the tubing. From there we drilled a hole and put in some threaded rod to bolt the wheels onto. I have yet to find some plastic wheels. The bearings in the wheels are rusted pretty bad, although it dosent seem to affect the performance.

Oh and Brady, you stupid edmontonian, i thought you had a seitech dolly! :D
 
Finding wheels was the biggest challenge when I made my PVC dolly - I needed ones for salt water (eliminates all steel hubs) and soft sand (no lawnmower skinny wheels)

I found something that worked for me at Northern Tool
Plastic rim w/tire

It's not a tall tire, but the footprint is wide enough that it the dolly didn't sink in the sand with the boat on it.

Inexpensive too.
 
Umm i got some pictures of the dolly, however they are all like 20 kb larger than the maximum that the site will allow. Is there any way that i can shrink them?
 
Photoshop? Or a program like it. Look for a resive option, and decreases the amount of pixels which will in turn lower the size of the file.
 
Hi,
now I´ve found what "ABS" means:"acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene"
PVC is "poly-vinyl-chlorid".

For all the Laserites that not found this "ABS-cement", that I askeed for above, here I have now found one (but not used now, just found it via web):

Look at www.uhu.de . At the English version of this website goto "our adhesives" and then to "2-component-adhesives", there you will find a gluer called "UHU-acrylit".
This gluer is for ABS and PVC they explain (unfortunately only at German version of this website) - and there they also explain definitly, that is impossible to contact "PE" or "PP" surfaces "a la" "home improvement way" simply with a gluer. This types of tubes could only permanent-contacted together by industial-production-ways - I can not explain here, it´s to difficult for me to translate this, sorry).
So my advice with "screwing" this "PP"-tubes seemes to be correct and the only way to do it as home-improver. Better you build your dolly not with PP-tubes, take metal (as already explained good above), it seems to be easier.
bye-bye
LooserLu
 
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