[AT] Oil dry / Rural King / And even more O.T. stuff

Herb Metz metz-h.b at comcast.net
Sat Feb 28 10:54:19 PST 2015


John,
We had a bachelor neighbor (Casey Meggar{sp}) who owned and operated a steam 
engine and a threshing machine.  His life was there in a big metal shed with 
concrete floor with his shop, a couple steam engines, half dozen old, never 
used, cars (1920's, Star, three seat National {driver seat up front and two 
sat in back, just two doors but the lack of passengers seat up front made it 
easy to enter/exit}, etc); his heat was large logs in an old steam engine 
firebox, he slept on a cot somewhere back in the corner, couple cats around 
to handle the little critter problem.  His folks lived approx 500' away in a 
very nice home.  He always had several dozen calves in his feedlot; hay was 
the only crop because the ground was flat but not tillable (hardpan?).  Dad 
would stop in several times each year; I was all eyes and ears.  Couple 
times, mid 40's, Casey entered the local town after harvest parade, had a 
good looking team pulling a nice farm wagon with couple hay bales, etc. and 
his farm clothes on, and signs on the wagon "40 cents for eggs, 70 cents for 
meat, how in the h*** can a poor fellow eat".  Casey toured the neighborhood 
doing after harvest threshing of loose/bundled wheat/oat straw.  Approx 
1946, Dad and I swapped help with several neighbors a couple summers.  The 
first day I pulled a wagon alongside the extra long conveyor Casey had 
attached to the threshing machine, then started tossing bundles onto this 
conveyor. We used four tine regular pitchforks with considerable curvature 
of each tine, whereas a tine fork is two or three tines with reduced 
curvature of each tine.  A neighbor Dads age was pitching bundles off 
another wagon on other side of the conveyor. I pitched several bundles onto 
the conveyor, great. Then about the sixth bundle I piptched onto the 
conveyor took the fork out of my hands; there was the bundle on the conveyor 
going up toward the threshing machine, with my pitchfork still in the 
bundle.  Before I could even think of what to do, the experienced guy across 
from me stepped toward the conveyor and extended his pitchfork to retrieve 
my pitchfork from that bundle.  I could breath again.  I will never forget 
that.  Looking back, he was probably expecting something like this might 
happen.   After that I did not sink the pitchfork into the bundles any 
further than necessary, and gripped the fork more firmly when releasing the 
pitched bundle.  Foreign metal, etc was a nightmare for the threshing 
machines metal teeth that shredded the straw and the wheat/oat kernel from 
its hull. There were several other threshing machines in our area (central 
KS), but the closest was fifteen miles away. Tell your Dad that 1930 was a 
good year.  Herb(GA)


-Original Message----- 
From: jtchall at nc.rr.com
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2015 7:02 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Oil dry / Rural King / And even more O.T. stuff

I also observed many folks had a much more keen interest in watching saws
run compared to other equipment we were demonstrating.  Some because they
were just so darn loud, but most because sawing wood was something they
could relate to. About even in interest was running a stationary baler,
there's tons of non-farm guys that helped load hay at some point in time and
can therefore relate.
Threshers, silage cutters, grist mills, corn shredders---the pool of
interested folks grows much smaller. Partly because they have NO idea what
they are looking at and still don't even when you try to explain it. The
other reason, there just aren't many folks alive that ever saw this stuff
used when it was new. At 84 years old, my dad never helped run a thresher
until he was about 65. He saw a few folks do it when he was young. His dad
replaced a wooden hand fed Geiser thresherwith a Massey pull type combine
right around the start of WWII.

I will say it is easy to spot a good Southern cook, she's the lady who
inspects the final product coming out of a grist mill and gives you her $.02
as to the quality of the grits or corn meal you are grinding.

John


-----Original Message----- 
From: Dave Rotigel
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2015 9:14 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Oil dry / Rural King / And even more O.T. stuff

Hi John,
The 16' live oak log was about 24 inches at the butt when I started on Wed.
I'm down to about 7' now and my guess on the dia. now is about 20". That
live oak is the hardest "stuff" I've ever cut. It takes about 18 minutes to
make one cut. I go through a poplar log of that size in about 7 minutes at
home in PA. On the other hand, 18 minutes is about the time it takes to down
a 16 oz Old Mil, so it's not all bad!
Dave
PS, Like you, I find that everything I cut is hauled away. (Tables, Clocks,
Cutting Boards or whatever.) I had one woman ask me if I could speed up the
saw because she didn't have the time to wait around. I smiled and asked her
if she would like a cup of coffee. I think she must have been from Naples!

On Feb 27, 2015, at 8:34 PM, jtchall at nc.rr.com wrote:

> Running your drag saw I assume? How big of a log were you cutting? Years
> ago
> when my dad was able, we used to demonstrate our 2 man chainsaws. A nice
> 24-30" Poplar log made for one heck of a display. A lot of folks wanted
> those cuts for crafts. One fellow in particular was going to make clocks
> out
> of them.
>
> John Hall
>
>
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Dave Rotigel
> Sent: Friday, February 27, 2015 7:59 PM
> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
> Subject: Re: [AT] Oil dry / Rural King / And even more O.T. stuff
>
> I have been at the Zolfo show (FL) for three days now cutting up a 18' log
> into 2" pieces. Lots of sawdust there for anyone who wants to use it for
> "oil dry"!
> Dave
> PS, GREAT Show and ONLY a little rain!
>
>

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