Our family dynamics being what they are (mostly male), I will leave it to your imagine what sort of topics dominate our conversations. I will spare you the grosser details. However, there is one topic I will share with you. Vintage cars and trucks, and vintage farm equipment. CW and the family are always looking for new ways to use our ox team. Over the past year friends have dropped off an old plow and an old disk. CW was ecstatic. And we've been looking into what it might take to get them up and running again.
However, before we found the time to work on the plow and disk, another piece of vintage farm equipment showed up.
Kit mentioned within CW's hearing that it was in such great shape he would sure like to preserve its condition, either by painting, or building a shed to park it under. Of course CW, with his mechanical bent, lost no time in getting permission to tackle the project himself.
Any guesses yet as to what it is?
An old 1940-something John Deer Series 47 Model H Wheel-Driven Manure Spreader. We are all excited about the possibility of having our own manure spreader. We have wished for a way to distribute the accumulating fertilizer onto our grazing and hay fields. There are plans afoot to build a fore cart the oxen can pull it!
CW obtained permission to tackle the project himself if he was willing to put forth the capital, effort, and time. With the stipulation that chores, work, and schoolwork, must all be completed daily before any work was done on the spreader. I didn’t know schoolwork and chores could be finished so fast! What he doesn't know, is that we've made a mental note on how fast it "can" be done! CW cleaned, sanded, and finally painted, the first section. He came in the house walking on cloud nine, and the entire family turned out "en masse" to ooh and awe over it.
The spreader is in remarkable condition. There is rust but nothing is rusted through. The floor is completely solid, along with the bottom of the sides.
CW sanded and scrubbed and disassembled everything.
Even all the wheel pieces came off – okay, understandable. I suppose you don't want yellow paint on green.
Then little, tiny pieces started turning up to be painted, and my heart was a bit nervous hoping my then 12-year-old son did indeed know how to put it all together again, as he assured me he did.
I had to admit he was doing an excellent job with what he had to work with.
The master and the apprentice?, servant?, slave? Not sure what category JW2 falls into! The bribery of the use of power tools goes a long way towards gaining compliance peaceably.
He ran into a bit of a problem when he took these poop throwers off. The bolts and square nuts had rusted into one piece, some rusted through. The majority ended up getting broken off. We had quite a time locating the right size bolts and square nuts.
Most everything that could be taken off easily, was, and all were sanded, painted and reassembled.
The poop throwing rakes were taken off as mentioned above to make painting them easier. It was amusing to watch the contortions he went through to spray each side without touching something he had already sprayed!
Some assembly took ingenuity, especially when he dealt with a spring stronger than he was.
Finally reassembled, and tire back on.
VAR decided to come and inspect her brother’s handiwork. She demanded a closer inspection and was obligingly lifted into the newly painted bed and allowed to do her inspection. However, her majesty would not look at the camera to tell us what she thought of the paint job. The boys got a kick out of her “Beauty Queen shirt” gracing the manure spreader!