Welding Made Easy

Colin Monner

I think of my dad as a fairly accomplished welder, he’s made several of his own farm implements, tools, panels and gates for livestock, making your own equipment has it’s advantages. Over the last 50+ years every once in a while we stumble upon a project where my dad feels it’s best to get a professional to do the welding. Craig Stokes takes what we consider a difficult project and completes it with ease.

Example #1

It’s certainly not our preference to put wear on tear on other peoples hard earned equipment, if we borrow something we like to return it in equal or better condition. We consider ourselves very fortunate that our neighbours allowed us to borrow their earth mover for this development of A Stones Throw RV Campground. Before we use any equipment we first conduct a full service ensuring all joints are well greased, tire pressure, hydraulic this and that to name a few…

Each seasonal site at A Stones Throw RV Campground has received between three and a dozen loads of clay to ensure every site is well drained of any rain or runoff. When life hands you some lemons it’s best to make some lemonade. When the bearings seized on the earth mover axle that we were using we were a bit worried to say the least. Creating perfect alignment of an earth mover axle was a very complicated project and Craig Stokes welded it with ease.
Earth Mover receives new wheel bearings.
Pictured above are a few photos of both front wheels off of the earth mover along with Craig Stokes at work.
The Good and The Bad
When one wheel bearing seized we had to check the rest and Murphy’s Law the other front bearing was near toast as well! We sourced new bearings and the next step was to weld a newly machined axle into perfect alignment with the other axle. The left axle was so badly damaged from the seized bearings we decided to cut it off and got a new one made thanks to KalRob Machining out of Picture Butte, Alberta.

Example #2
Developing a secondary emergency overflow system for the reservoir may sound easy, but it is not. With the help of Marks Oilfield Services Inc out of Milo and my cousin Chad we managed to get a 52’ long Floc Tank out of the farm yard and into place down to the reservoir. Long story short we got everything into place and the last touch was to weld a steel “skirt” around the open face of the tank to ensure water flows in and not under or around. We had no idea how this was going to be accomplished and Craig Stokes managed to turn it into a straight forward project that turned out better than we would have ever expected.
Pictured above shows some of the steps taken to get the floc tank into place. My cousin Chad first dragged the beast into place followed by Marks Oilfield Services Inc out of Milo who massaged the tank into perfect placement, we could not have moved the floc tank into place without them! After getting the tank in place Craig Stokes made quick work of cutting and welding a skirt into place.

Example #3

A Stones Throw RV Campground now has 3-Phase Power and Fortis is done their work, the poles are standing straight and the vault is in place. Within the campground there are five Kiosk/Transformer locations and typically they would be situated on top of a concrete pad. Issues can arise from concrete due to settling earth or needing future access to underground cables. Rather than contend with these issues we created metal bases that will sit upon screw piles, no concrete required! Welding the bases was not without skill and effort!

Needless to say we’re left feeling pretty humble when you see what a professional can do. We’ve got a few more future projects with Craig Stokes in mind but first thing is first, we have to get this place open. With the help of professionals like Craig Stokes we have no doubt this dream will become a reality.

We made five metal bases with skirts for five kiosk/transformers for A Stones Throw RV Campground. Making them had it’s challenges, getting them into place was not too bad, but do you think we could weld upside down out in the field? Nope! Thanks to Craig Stokes we have very secure bases for this major electrical infrastructure!

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