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How To Make A Sprayer Boom
"The original boom on my sprayer was built light and bounced around a lot. I couldn't justify buying a new boom, so I found a way to build my own for less than $100," says John Rathjen, Fort Calhoun, Neb.
The 32-ft. boom is made from two parallel 4 3/4-in. dia. black water pipes spaced 6 in. apart, with vertica
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How To Make A Sprayer Boom SPRAYING Miscellaneous 30-4-4 "The original boom on my sprayer was built light and bounced around a lot. I couldn't justify buying a new boom, so I found a way to build my own for less than $100," says John Rathjen, Fort Calhoun, Neb.
The 32-ft. boom is made from two parallel 4 3/4-in. dia. black water pipes spaced 6 in. apart, with vertical braces welded on between them at 19-in. intervals. The sprayer still has its original 6-ft. center section - all Rathjen did was build new manual-fold wings to replace the original wings.
"It's built strong and is far sturdier than the original boom, so it doesn't bounce up and down nearly as much," says Rathjen, who used the boom for the first time last spring to spray about 250 acres of Roundup Ready corn and soybeans. "I used black iron pipe because it's easier to weld on, and because it holds paint better."
Each boom wing is made from two 10-ft. lengths of pipe, with an 18-in. extension screwed onto each end of the bottom pipe. The outside end of each extension has a pipe cap on it to keep dirt and moisture out.
The 6-ft. center section of the original boom had two spring-loaded folding mechanisms, one on each side. Rathjen sawed off both ends of the center section, leaving a 6-in. stub just outside each folding mechanism.
To weld the boom, he laid wooden 2 by 6s parallel to each other on his shop floor and then laid the pipes on top of them, spacing the two pipes 6 in. apart and then tach welding the metal braces in place between them. The next step was to weld the wings rigidly to the ends of the center section. He drilled two 1/4-in. dia. holes into each stub and then inserted a round metal "plug" about 2 in. inside the stub. Then he drilled two corresponding holes into the lower pipe on the boom and butted it up against the stub, allowing him to make a rosette weld through the holes and butt weld the two pipes together.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, John Rathjen, 6077 U.S. Hwy. 75, Fort Calhoun, Neb. 68023 (ph 402 468-5629).
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