Our old wheelbarrow had been sitting long enough that the handles had more-or-less turned into mulch. Ironic, as mulch is primarily what we’ve carried around the yard in the wheelbarrow. I had considered making some new handles out of pressure-treated pine, but replacement hardwood handles weren’t terribly expensive. So I ventured out to the big-box hardware store to get some (where I was in the vast minority by wearing a face mask!).
This project would have been just about impossible if I didn’t have some Liquid Wrench to loosen up the rusted nuts. It took about 5 minutes for it to work into the bolts and almost everyone came right off.
Once I got the entire wheelbarrow apart, I traced over the bolt hole locations to the replacement handles. My assistant was there to ensure that all measurements were accurate and well-sniffed.
I used the drill press and a 3/8″ forstner bit drill the holes. I have a fairly cheap set of Ryobi bits (which pair nicely with my trusty Ryobi drill press!). I can definitely see purchasing a much nicer set of forstner bits as they are fast and clean.
I did spend a few minutes cleaning off some surface rust from some metal parts with a wire brush and some mineral spirits. I hit all of them with a coat of black spray paint to hopefully reduce some future rust. I didn’t spend a lot of time and didn’t even wait for the paint to dry before I re-assembled everything.
I re-assembled the wheelbarrow minus a couple of wooden shim pieces. They had almost literally turned to dirt at this point and would have been a pain to re-cut. I also need to get some zinc-coated bolts and washers at some point since the existing bolts are now too long with out that shim in place. But it’s a 100% functioning wheelbarrow again and looks pretty great actually, as far as wheelbarrows go.
