Building Recovery Lugs (Bumper?)

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As I mentioned a couple of weeks back on the Jeep Talk Call In Show, I've been slowly fabricobbling some recovery lugs together. I thought maybe you guys would wanna see my mess. Perhaps it will inspire those who feel less handy to give it a shot themselves.

There's no question that those beautiful aftermarket bumpers you can buy are often worth the very high price tags. However, being a simple man of basic means, I'd prefer to try and save some bucks and do it myself.

I started off with 4 basic lugs a friend of mine cut on a plasma table out of scrap. The only downside was that the lugs were 8mm thick steel and I felt that was just a little too thin.

So I cut down two of them. Then sandwiched a full lug, an 8mm "spacer" and then a short lug together. I opened up the holes a bit so I could slip a 1.25" pipe through them both.

After much welding and grinding, they're actually not TOO terrible. I'm a very novice welder, so I've been grinding in to the materials, filling them, and then grinding my weld flat. This is painstaking but it also lets me examine my welds as I go. Holes and cracks become quite obvious.

Anyway, I'm the slowest fabricator ever, so it might be awhile before I have any progress updates. The last picture was taken yesterday.

I also made a couple of videos of me making these things, so if you're at all interested in watching someone drill holes and weld, here is a link to the first one:
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fbPlInEU3w[/ame]

It's about as exciting to watch as you'd expect. Don't click unless you're so bored that watching paint dry actually seems interesting.