[AT] Homemade tractors.

[Skip Cleveland]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Larry D Goss" <rlgoss at evansville.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2007 8:54 AM
Subject: Re: [AT] Homemade tractors.


>A single horse drill is one of those things that never was a "recognized"
> attachment available for the Economy/Power King/Jim Dandy line of 
> tractors,
> Farmer.  I don't know that I've ever seen one.  Our neighbor had a Van 
> Brunt
> (I think that's the name)
It's Van Grunt. Ava Gabor used to sau that a lot on Green Acres, at night.

Skip

when I was growing up, and I spent a number of
> hours behind that thing sowing wheat, but I didn't know there was a
> one-horse drill available.  I do remember "checking" corn while planting 
> so
> it could be cultivated in both directions with a horse.  Oscar Fahlsing
> owned the farm to our east and he always checked his corn.  He would still
> be cultivating it when it was over his head.  I don't know why Dad had 
> ours
> checked.  We didn't own horses!  I guess he just liked the way the field
> looked when the corn started growing.  There's a famous American artist 
> who
> memorialized checked corn in one of his paintings.  I can't remember his
> name this morning, but he turned out a lot of pastoral scenes that were
> purchased wholesale by school boards to decorate the hallways of school
> buildings.
>
> The early PK's were made from surplus items from WWII.  The early drive
> train consisted of the same clutch and transmission as the WWII Jeep (and
> post-WWII Crosley).  The early rear end was a Model A Ford.  I'm not sure
> who made the final drives, but I'm pretty sure they were also purchased.
> Some of the front wheels on the early tractors were surplus tail wheels 
> for
> airplanes.
>
> I knew a professor at Purdue who made a number of tractors from scratch.
> Every one of them was unique and different from the previous ones.  They
> were all powered by single cylinder engines, and most of them used
> automotive steering and had direct drives like a Gibson rather than having 
> a
> gear reducing final drive.
>
> My grandfather and uncle in Colorado had a buck rake that was originally a
> 20's vintage Buick.
>
> Got to go.
>
> Larry
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Francis Robinson" <robinson at svs.net>
> To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" 
> <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2007 11:28 PM
> Subject: [AT] Homemade tractors.
>
>
>>    Has anyone here ever owned or used a homemade tractor? I never have 
>> but
>> have always been fascinated by them. I used to see a bunch of them 
>> setting
>> around parked for good during the early 1950's. Most were made out of an
>> old
>> car or truck chopped down. A lot were made out of Model A Fords. Many 
>> were
>> built during the war (WW II 1941 to 1945) or just after when tractors 
>> were
>> really hard to come by. When I was at BSU in the early 1960's they were
>> still using cut down Model A Fords to pull ganged golf course reel mowers
>> to
>> mow much of the campus. The only other thing I saw used for mowing there
>> was
>> Farmall Cubs with rear mounted flail mowers used on rougher grounds. Did 
>> I
>> just say "grounds"?   ;-)
>>    A lot of homemade tractors were small and narrow made just to pull a
>> one
>> horse wheat drill down rows of standing corn. I also remember a lot of
>> CUB's
>> and Pony's being narrowed up for wheat drills. A lot of them ended up
>> turning over...
>>    Larry, I believe I once read of a lot of Economy tractors being set up
>> to pull one horse wheat drills.
>>    I have two one horse wheat drills that  are strictly "yard art". One 
>> of
>> them has a few good sized bullet holes in the sheet metal guard panels.
>> While I always fess up eventually I do enjoy giving the grand kids a line
>> of
>> crap as they come along about my having been attacked by Indians while
>> working in the fields...   ;-)   I bought these at sales, we never 
>> planted
>> any wheat like that during my lifetime. We always had one field of early
>> corn that we could get picked in time to plant wheat. We only grew about
>> 20
>> to 30 acres of wheat.
>>    The grandkids usually half believe the Indian stories since they think
>> I
>> am old enough to have been attacked by dinosaurs.   ;-)   A couple of
>> other
>> tales I like to work in on them involve how I used to play the grand 
>> piano
>> in the marching band and that I was once in the Olympics. My event? Why
>> javelin catching of course...   ;-)
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "farmer"
>>
>> Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the
>> well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are
>> showing a new road.  ~Voltaire
>>
>> Francis Robinson
>> Central Indiana, USA
>> robinson at svs.net
>>
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>
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