# Dock post ideas



## DirtySteve (Apr 9, 2006)

I have a dock that I got for pretty much nothing but it is the dock only....no posts. They dock sections are incredibly over built. 10 ft sections with 2x6 sides. 2x4 sections on the inside offset so the deck boards sit flush to the 2x6's. They have steel plates on the end to bolt them together. I have 110ft of dock all together. This dock is extremely heavy to deal with....but it is long and almost free.

When I first acquired this dock I built some posts from some used round fence post material that I picked up cheap from a fence company. Paid scrap price for the posts. We made some H style posts by welding some muffler clamps to the ends of a 3 ft section. Then for the uprights I welded a longer post to a 14" discs from an old disc a friend wanted to discard. The discs worked fairly well but I didn't have enough to build enough posts to put the entire dock out. After about 3 yrs the welds on the 3' cross members started breaking. There wasn't alot if surface on the ends of the round 3 ft cross members to get a decent weld to the flat piece on the muffler clamp...I also have 0 welding skills.

I am looking for creative ideas that people have used to create solid dock posts. I am in relatively shallow water. The end of the dock will only be waist deep even at 100ft from shore. The bottom is relative hard sand with the first 20' having gravel mixed in. It isnt a mucky bottom where I need to worry about settling. The disks only get about 2" of sand over them per summer.


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## feedinggrounds (Jul 21, 2009)

Some car rims and axle shafts, shaft bolted to the rim with three lugnuts, slide pipe over the shaft. You could leave like that or tack weld. I would just slide pipe over axles for easy take out if you do take dock out. Smaller lakes not a big deal but if the ice shoves on a big lake nothing will stop it.


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## MossyHorns (Apr 14, 2011)

feedinggrounds said:


> Some car rims and axle shafts, shaft bolted to the rim with three lugnuts, slide pipe over the shaft. You could leave like that or tack weld. I would just slide pipe over axles for easy take out if you do take dock out. Smaller lakes not a big deal but if the ice shoves on a big lake nothing will stop it.


We did something similar. We welded 3.5"x3.5" square tubing onto rims with tires and then insert a 4x4 post. Our dock area is marl down to at least 12' and after 20 years our dock hasn't moved. The neighbors have the lightweight aluminum dock that has the plates on the poles and they are constantly having to raise it. If I were to do it all over again, I would just put in a floating dock.


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## DirtySteve (Apr 9, 2006)

I definitely have to take out yearly. Big lake with big shoves. ...also it isn't legal to leave a dock in without proper permits so I wouldn't do that anyway.


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## DirtySteve (Apr 9, 2006)

MossyHorns said:


> We did something similar. We welded 3.5"x3.5" square tubing onto rims with tires and then insert a 4x4 post. Our dock area is marl down to at least 12' and after 20 years our dock hasn't moved. The neighbors have the lightweight aluminum dock that has the plates on the poles and they are constantly having to raise it. If I were to do it all over again, I would just put in a floating dock.



I like the idea. So did you build an H style brace by connecting two posts with a 2x4 or something? I am thinking I could weld the tubing to disks too. I sit pretty solid in the sand with the disks and they are light to take out.


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## feedinggrounds (Jul 21, 2009)

The ones we built, used H braces of 2 1/2 exhaust pipe. The H has a connector across the bottom, bolted either a treated 2x4 or pipe ad the top was a treated 2x6 bolted the dock sat on top. The pipe just slides over the axle stubs for easy take down. X braces stop side to side sway. The heavy dock sections are more work than the supports 10 to 12 foot sections made from 2x6 lumber are about as much as one wants to handle. Every spring and fall we have a few groups of High school kids making rounds to put them in and take them out to earn some bucks. I live on a smaller lake with about 50 permanent docks.


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## MossyHorns (Apr 14, 2011)

DirtySteve said:


> I like the idea. So did you build an H style brace by connecting two posts with a 2x4 or something?


Yes we did, but we never take it out of the water. Our lake bottom is too soft to stand on. If we had to take it out each year, we would just go to a floating dock.


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## sparky18181 (Apr 17, 2012)

Tommy dock parts. Work great.


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