Mr AR15L posted a handtruck as a PIF awhile back. It had two broken pieces on it, looked fixable.
I didn't respond because i live in BFE.
Eventually (2 weeks?) Mr Rick posted "Anyone?" so I PMd him saying that but for the distance, I'd love to give that handtruck a little bit of love out in the workshop, and that if he could wait until I made a trip up north, I'd take it. "Please don't throw that beauty in the recycle bin" I says.
So on a recent trip up north in which I completely forgot to pick up a reloading press that was waiting for me at the NorthEnd Clean-n-Shoot (Sorry Dan, I owe you even more) I met up with Rick to get an ASCO (Ammo Spam Can Opener) to him and he brought along that handtruck.
It's a beauty of a handtruck... A Magliner. The Magliners are pretty high end trucks- designed around specific cargos. This one looks like it is designed for propane cylinders or something long those lines... maybe kegs.
It is nice, but it had a design flaw. The lower attachment point for the cargo platform had broken on both sides.

Honestly, not too surprising for a part made out of aluminum and bolted to a spring steel piece being used in an industrial/delivery manner. Aluminum is an amazing metal... But it has its limitations.
The red circles are the two bolts that were currently tasked with only holding a small piece of jagged aluminum tight to the platform.

Options are
1. Buy the proper replacement parts from Magliner.
2. Weld the two broken brackets back together and bolt her home.
3. Fabricate new parts out of steel or stainless and bolt her home.

Welding is the easiest and quickest of the three options... But it has the disadvantage of putting a weak design back into working order.
Three options on the aluminum: Stick, TIG or MIG. I simply won't sink to stick welding aluminum. I hate doing that. MIG is nice for heavy welds, like in structural size pieces, not (in my experience) good for smaller/finer pieces like this. So it would have to be TIG for me.
(I don't even consider the aluminum brazing method... Those are a -very- low strength alloy suitable for patching holes in soda cans.)

I am going to go for the fabricating new steel brackets... It's not the easiest choice, but I think that when I get done that handtruck will be ready to pass down a few generations before it breaks somewhere again.

After Mr Rick and I transferred our PIF items, he said "I brought a little bonus for you"...

That is my daughter doing a joyful thankful dance for you Rick.
In this one, she is asking "Papa, do you want these chains drug all around the driveway?"

"Well no, no I do not."
"That's too bad" she replies.

We seriously need to do a reality show about you! Good writer, funny, can fix anything. Oh and average moderator skills.

Thank you Kelley. As long as we keep it to still photos it would be PG. If it was a realistic video you guys would get to see me cutting into a partial propane tank with a hacksaw, rolling a tractor down homemade ramps and slipping off halfway down, welding next to an open gas can for the "POOF no eyebrows" effect, and my very favorite - cussing up a blue cloud of fury, and then hearing it repeated back in the sweetest little voice by my 3 year old daughter.
The Missus doesn't seem as amused by that as I am.
(Actually only 2 of those incidents occurred with me as a participant. One was courtesy of one of my sons, and one was fictitious.)

This is not going to be too tough of a build... This photo shows how that fancy extrusion functions- nothing to it.

But yeah, I agree . . . PMB's posts are full of win!

That's just more proof that it would be solid gold, I would watch that for hours.

The title- "PMB unleashed"

I'm trying to work here. Fucking hecklers.

As I was measuring the parts for welding up a replacement I thought about extending the broken parts' replacements ... But that would require drilling new holes on the handtruck frame. That would surely weaken it somewhat.
So I went back out to the handtruck frame and tried figuring out what to do about my desire for more strength. (Cork it, you weight lifters.)
And saw this :

It already had a bunch more holes drilled in the frame! Then I realized why... 'Member how I mentioned that Magliner makes many different models of handtruck for different applications? I'm guessing that the frames are able to be sent to any one of the specialized orders, so lotsa holes to play with.
So I pull out a few pieces of steel to check for fit...

I think they were made for each other.
Steel flat bar is never flat, especially if it has been used for one or two projects before the current one. Here are two pieces tacked at the ends and lightly held in a vise:

Experienced fabricators have a clever trick to handle warped and twisted steel, and I am about to share it with you.
We beat the hell out of it and squeeze it with a vise or two. Don't tell anyone else- that's just for my WaGunner brethren.
With very carefully controlled crushing blows applied at scientifically determined points and a good old pinch with a USA vise, you get to here:

So you can do this:

Then this:

The fillet weld was just in between a big fat pass and 3 small passes... I said screw it, and did a single medium sized pass just because. You need to do stitch welds on something like this or you end up with a warpy banana looking thing.
I have vises bolted to my welding benches, but sometimes I need to pick a vise up and work outside, or need to easily spin it 360 degrees, or... basically need one more mobile than a bench mount.
I built this on a lark this winter... So far it has worked very well for me, although my son was irritated about his brake rotor.
"Don't leave a handy chunk of steel unattended in my shop."

And now my wife has taken the silly notion that having milk and bread in the kitchen is more important than my projects in the workshop.
Silly woman. I indulge her shamefully, so I will finish this later.

Let your princess drag those chains all over the driveway!
Accomplishes two items at a time; gets rust off and builds muscles so the phone call you do get, is "hey Dad, I need help burying something".
Hell, she can drag my chains around! Would beat the looks and remarks from the wife when we're camping and asking why do we have to keep doing this.....

Entertaining. I'll drop in for the next episode.

Plus she will sleep better tonight.

After pushing a grocery cart around like a reluctant Hoke Colburn for far too long, I made it back home, kissed the little Balrog goodnight and went back into the shop.
The first thing that I did was change my plans. That's the best part about these homebrew jobs.
I cut that 12" platform support in half thinking I could still grab the 3rd hole in the frame.

I was wrong. The only way to catch the 3rd hole for added strength would be to weld another 3/4 inch on each piece. I'll consider it in the morning.
Now it is time to line up and tack on the section that the platform bolts on to. I lay out the holes first because it is generally easier to drill holes on a piece of flat bar than it is to line up and drill on a double-angle. See all those high end alignment spacers? Very precise. In the trade we call them "washers".

Tough to have too many clamps on a piece, pretty easy to find out that you didn't have enough. Steel takes up a LOT of stress when it cools from molten to room temp, so clamping the pieces well generally saves a lot of time tweaking later on.

Because I changed my plan in the middle of the job, I now have mismatched lengths and half a hole on the top of each support. Kind of gives it a solid farm boy look, eh?

There are a couple of things left to do, the most important of which is to cut and weld in the substitute for the twin extrusions that locked the support in the frame. That's 10 minutes after I decide on the pieces to use.
Also, I will clean up the ragged lengths and round off the edges.
Then I'll scabble it good and hard, spray paint it, attach it with carriage bolts and be solid for 20 years or so, which should far outlast me.

I discovered that the hand truck was pretty much at the end of its regular service life also. When I was taking it apart the other day I saw some cracks on the cargo platform, and that heat treated steel is very difficult to return to factory specs after drilling/welding.

Other side too.

I will lightly score the crack with a die grinder carbide bit so that it is easier to see where I need to weld. Cracks are tough to see when welding sometimes. Before I weld, I'll drill a hole at the ends to stop the cracks from growing. Bonus to scoring with the carbide bit- more confident in the weld penetration.
This could be a good time to learn how to heat treat these fancy pieces. So far in life I have only done the simplest types of heat treating- those that don't require "soak" times. Basically, oil and water quenching.
I have a pottery kiln that would work for it- just that fear factor of doing something rather complicated and new.
Magliner has all these parts and priced pretty reasonably.
https://www.magliner.com/product/hand-t ... g-brackets

https://www.magliner.com/product/hand-t ... lush-mount

But where's the fun in that?

That's a good point.. I had a different plan for cleaning up the chains which is why the subject of this thread was "Couple"... I didn't mention the chain plan.
I have a cement mixer with a 120vac motor on it... one of the solid kinds. The paddles are way too big though, so I either need to rotate the bucket up to vertical or chip away 20 years of old hard concrete and remove the paddles.
My plan was to shovel 50 pounds of coarse sand in there, then possibly a bit of new oil. Not enough oil to slurry, just enough to leave the chain with a very light oil coating at the end of its spin cycle.

Matt, my Balrog doesn't get tired very easy... She's allowed to mess with just about anything around here. If she wants to drag these chains around, she sure will do it.
I've got some questions for you in the trailer thread now. See you there.

Note to self: Never buy a welder. I fear it could be worse than my gun hobby.