Welding Tips and Tricks

First time posting. A couple months into teaching myself on welds. Just bought 50 ac in Ga and would like to outfit it with 3-4 tree stands. Of course I want to weld something for them. I'd like to make them so they could mount on single hardwood trunk and be removable. I was thinking of fabbing 3-4 brackets per tree that could be anchored at 90 degree separation. Then drop decking on top in prefabbed sections. I have some PVC 1"x4" decking that would be perfect.
Question: If there were 4 brackets and each extended 4ft out from tree trunk, what material would you use? Figure there would be 400lbs in humans up there maximum at a time.

Tuck'd wrote:First time posting. A couple months into teaching myself on welds. Just bought 50 ac in Ga and would like to outfit it with 3-4 tree stands. Of course I want to weld something for them. I'd like to make them so they could mount on single hardwood trunk and be removable. I was thinking of fabbing 3-4 brackets per tree that could be anchored at 90 degree separation. Then drop decking on top in prefabbed sections. I have some PVC 1"x4" decking that would be perfect.
Question: If there were 4 brackets and each extended 4ft out from tree trunk, what material would you use? Figure there would be 400lbs in humans up there maximum at a time.

Firstly, welcome aboard Tuck'd.

Secondly, while I hate to sound like someone's grandma...be careful. I've been welding for awhile now and though I don't know much about tree stands, I also don't know much about metallurgy or material stress/fatigue. Maybe you do. I'd think very carefully before putting myself or anyone else on a stand that hadn't had all sorts of stress analysis figures run on it.

One decent fall is all it takes.

Again, sorry to nag.




Kym

Never weld up tree stands or ladders...especially aluminum. There are many affordable and safe tree stands on the market. If you build a stand and there is an accident, you could get sued into the stone age. Let the commercial tree stand builders get sued. I refuse any and all tree stand repairs and refuse to build any ladder of any material.

Your own property......build a couple platforms out of wood.