[AT] HayWagon build up.

Wed Nov 1 19:28:27 PDT 2017

This thread got me thinking... I have a light wagon gear my father made out
of Model A Ford axles, radius rods torque-tube etc. shortly after WW-II.
More modern (for the time) farm equipment was hard to come by here in the
corn belt right after the war. Retooling for peace time production went
slower than the switch to war production had gone. Lots and lots of the old
stuff, mostly horse drawn had gone to scrap during the war. Those factors
along with lingering war shortages and a half zillion veterans coming back
home and wanting to start up farming or to build up the family farm
operation to support their new families all meant that good used stuff
usually sold pretty high dollar if it was good. It did ease in a few
years... I've talked here before about my father needing a second tractor
and not being able to find anything good that he could afford. He bought
two McCormick 10-20's and made one on rubber out of them. He also built a
fair amount of other stuff. He and a neighbor had built an elevator out of
scrap which they shared. He later bought an elevator "kit" of sorts from
Sears that included the upper part and a hopper along with the chain and
flights. He built a frame for it using largely Ford Model T parts including
several frame rails and a front axle. He fabricated a wide winch to raise
and lower it from bits and pieces and a worm gear drive with a crank off of
"something". He fabricated a lift up drag chain dump to carry ear corn or
small grain from the wagon to the main elevator. It ran with a  small B&S
engine but in its later years he had wired the place and it ran from a
largish electric motor about 1 HP. The drive was to a large pulley from a
combine and to a jack-shaft made from a piece of line-shaft and bearings
from an old piece of shoe repair machinery that he had saved from the
depression days of the 1930's. It had a lever on it saved from "something"
that steered the axle so you could line the upper end up with the hole as
you backed up to set up at the crib.
Kind of surprisingly as I think back in those days most of our close
neighbors were still pulling the wagon up by the crib and shoveling over
the side of the wagon into the upper part of the crib, sometimes a bit over
their head. Our closest neighbor didn't get his first tractor until 1946.
Lots of changes happened during those war and post war years.
My father-in-law was working on a 640 acre farm in Fayette County IN and in
the very early 1950's they were still farming it with a barn full of draft
horses.
My father had made that wagon gear in the later 1940's that I mentioned,
actually he made two but later sold one as we got some other stuff. The
beds on those wagons were all metal flare wagon beds. One had the name
"Horn" painted on it and the other said "David Bradley" but they both
looked alike. He kept the David Bradley one because it had a false endgate
in it he had designed and built. It was operated by a wide small diameter
winch across the back with a long handle attached to a ratchet gear from an
old manure spreader apron feeder chain.
I kept the whole thing for some time but it eventually just started
disappearing into rust.I do still have that one wagon gear. I was planning
on a special purpose use for it but I have several other wagon gears I can
use for that. I think maybe next summer I'll go over that Model A gear
(minor repairs, paint and a half decent set of tires) and buy or build a
flare bed for it and use it for show. People need to know how needs were
often met with self reliance in those times... With proper signage it
should be able to tell a good historic story.

.

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On Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 7:47 PM, John Hall <jtchall at nc.rr.com> wrote:

> Grant, if you have never seen those, then you may well be surprised to
> see hay wagons with tandem rear axles and even tandem front axles. I've
> been around lots of wagons, but only in the last few years did I ever
> see a tandem rear axle setup and it was on Craigslist. Just this summer
> I saw an ad for a new wagon with tandem front and rear (I assume it is a
> 5th wheel style). You would be hard pressed to use anything that big
> here as our fields are so "twisty" you would have a hard time keeping
> the load on. I have to be careful as it is if I fill a wagon full (125
> bales) so I can get to the shed without losing some as the 2 ways to the
> shed are both downhill and a pretty serious twist.
>
> John Hall
>
>
> On 11/1/2017 11:00 AM, Grant Brians wrote:
> > That looks like a nice solid trailer. Here in California I have never
> > seen a John Deere or Oliver or IH Hay Wagon. Lots of shopmade and trucks
> > were and are used, though.
> >              Grant Brians  - Hollister,California farmer
> >
> > On 10/30/2017 5:39 PM, John Hall wrote:
> >> Deere wagon, mid to late 70's model.
> >>
> >> John Hall
> >>
> >>
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-- 
-- 

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com