DIY Hi-lift Jack Pad/Base

[Geobloke]

Right well this is dedicated to our mate DaveD who I got the wood from. Cheers fella!

Wonder how many of you have or use a jack pad/base, is a very useful thing to have when jacking in soft sand or mud. You can also use a waffle board, sand ladder or shovel, although with your shovel under the jack what are you going to dig with?!?!?

Anyway this if anything is just to show that you do not have to fall for and buy the official merchandise and loose a wad of notes from your pocket!

• I am not sure where the wood came from but I have a feeling that Dave said they were offcuts from something or other. The hole in the middle is 6x8" and one sheet of ply deep. The boards are 3/4" thick, give or take.

• Cutting the hole is easy if you can get your hands on a jigsaw, however the same effect could be made by cutting 4 stripes of ply and then fixing them seperately down on to the next board down.

• The boards are fixed together using wood glue and screws. I only had access to these hex-head screws but countersunk ones would work just as well. I choose a length of screw to go through 2 of the boards only and then screwed the top and bottom boards to the centre one, this way there are now sharp screw points sticking out anywhere. I know I have gone a bit OTT with the screws but because these pertrude from the surface of the wood I decided to put more in to provides a stable footing when jacking on hard ground.

• The jack pad was then varnished to protect it a bit from water and mud ingress.

• The pad took 30 minutes to construct and a bit longer for the varnish to go off. All the parts (apart from the wood) were just things I had lying around the garage left over from other jobs.

So don't necessarily go and buy something you can make for less and better too!

I have been using this for about 2 months now and have to say it works a treat, the jack is a hell of a lot more stable and doesn't sink in to the mud. Well worth the effort IMHO!

[pickuprover]

I use 2 lengths of 4' 4x4, pressure treated... also works well to jam under the tires when you need that 3.5" lift to get the diff over something. The 2 of them strapped together with a bit of webbing gives an amazingly solid jacking point that is easy to level out with a few little rocks. The uses for the 4x4's off road are still being found each time out...
Nice job on the jacking plate...

[TerryS]

That thing is too pretty to put down in the mud. Very nice indeed.
I have spent ALOT of time in the UK, and much of it in pattern and woodworking shops. I long ago made the observation that your plywood is a far higher grade than our usual lot, though we can get cabinet grade for quite abit tmore than standard CDX. Your have many more plys of a thinner veneer, and there aren't alot of these golf coarse sized holes like we see.

[Geobloke]

Originally Posted by TerryS

That thing is too pretty to put down in the mud. Very nice indeed.
I have spent ALOT of time in the UK, and much of it in pattern and woodworking shops. I long ago made the observation that your plywood is a far higher grade than our usual lot, though we can get cabinet grade for quite abit tmore than standard CDX. Your have many more plys of a thinner veneer, and there aren't alot of these golf coarse sized holes like we see.

IIRC Dave said it was marine grade ply, besides you don't have to use the stuff this was just to give you all inspiration to make stuff yourself instead of relying on some pre-fab'd plastic item.