Thankyou Roy, that is what I meant. It will end up so heavy it
will be a bear to load and/or be so flexible that it will be
scary.

(top posted for your convenience)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Keep the whole world singing . . . .
DanG (remove the sevens)




"RoyJ" wrote in message
ink.net...
I take it to mean that 8' is a LONG span for 3" material. One way
to look at things is to take the ratio of the length divided by
the channel depth. In this case it would be 32:1 That is pretty
skinny and flexible.

Grant Erwin wrote:

What do you mean by "The 8' is gonna kill you dimension wise"?

Do you mean if I build this I won't be able to lift it? Or it
will be
somehow difficult to build? Or I won't be able to buy steel
that long?
Or what?

GWE

DanG wrote:

Grant,
The 8' is gonna kill you dimension wise, and crawling a skid
steer that far in reverse is liable to kill someone else. Is
there no way to dovetail the back end of the rig and get down
to some conventional triangle shaped ramps?


(top posted for your convenience)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Keep the whole world singing . . . .
DanG (remove the sevens)




"Grant Erwin" wrote in message
...

My buddy wants to build some ramps to load a skid steer onto
the back
of a flatbed. He plans to build 2 ramps, each of which is
built like a
ladder. The side rails will be steel channel and the cross
pieces will
be steel angle, all hot rolled, welded. He has asked my help
in figuring
how light he can build it. I figure his Bobcat weighs around
4000 pounds.
I own a Ryerson Steel data book which has allowable uniform
loads for
steel channels but it doesn't go down to the 4" or 3" channel
he's
considering. I can't find any useful specs online, not
because I haven't
googled, but because I get way too much wrong information or
because I
can't think of the smart way to limit or phrase the search
string.

In particular, I want to know the allowable uniform load in
ksi of 4" and
3" channel, each the lightest channel made (approximately
3/16") with a
span of eight feet.

Anyone?

Grant Erwin
Kirkland, Washington