Well last week's video I ended up mentioning that I've become a student of
the wagons themselves as far as how I learned how to do what I do. Now it
doesn't mean that I've become a student of the history of the wagons, but my
intention and goal has been over these past 40 years to study the style and
craftsmanship that went into building these wagons, and that varies from wagon
manufacturer to wagon manufacturer, and so because I work on such a wide variety of
wagons, this style of craftsmanship has become very important for me to focus on,
and then learning the skills to duplicate or replicate what was done. So
the wagon I'm working on today, through these videos, is a home made
wagon. So my goal and intention is to stay true to the integrity of that wagon
just as much as I would have an old 1800s traditional wagon. Now if it
becomes necessary that I make adaptations or changes because of safety
sake, that's what I will do, but even on this wagon I'll stay true to the
character of this wagon. So this is the wagon that we've been working on. These
are a couple of wagons that are over at the range riders museum in Miles City.
A nice old army military wagon, they have a nice Bain wagon there also to look at. This is
a Buckeye wagon that I have here, also this is an old Mitchel wagon. This is a
picture of a Winona style wagon, and not all wagons are identifiable. This one
is a John Deere wagon running gear. This one is a Studebaker, you watched us fix
this one. This is also another Studebaker. This running gear here is an
International. So you begin to see, when you become accustomed to looking at
traditional style wagons, that when you see a wagon like this, it's not really
quite traditional. The tongue is not traditional. When we start to recognize
traditional bolsters and standards, when we see this,
it's not quite traditional. The rear axle with the reach hounds, and all that, there's
a traditional style to putting these together, and this is not a traditional
style. It's functional and it'll work, but it's not really traditional. This is a
traditional brake clutch and block. We look at this and go yeah, it's not
traditional, but it'll function. This wagon will function, we just need to make
it to where it is safe. Now the tongue that the owner brought for me to
transfer over has a sliding style neck yoke. This is more for implements, where
the old one was more ring style, so I'm gonna disassemble this sliding rail from
the tongue and we'll put on just a bolt center neck yoke to make this work. Well
the tongue of this style generally is found on farm equipment more than it is
on wagons. It's been off of some implement, perhaps a cultivator or a
rake, but it's a little wide so I'm gonna narrow it down, and since it's been
mounted on some other form of equipment it has some extra holes in it, so
consequently I'm going to take and dowel and fill this big hole. And I don't
really understand why this old tongue was notched. I don't quite understand the
reason for it so I'm not gonna notch the second tongue. I'm gonna actually adapt
the iron and leave the tongue full thickness.
So with the Doubletree transferred from the old tongue to the newer tongue
we had to transfer the bottom wear plate and this top iron called the
hammer strap. So I'm not going to put the ring style neck yoke on this newer
tongue, I want a bolt center neck yoke, but this old neck yoke is too narrow so
I have a wider neck yoke that's going to match the doubletree evener in the old
doubletree. Now there is kind of a message of the madness. You see the
direction of the grain? Well I want the pull to be in line with the grain when
it's hooked up to the horses and this will give the neck yoke its greatest
strength, so when the wagon is being held back when it's going downhill by the
team or when the teamster asks the team to stop the wagon, all the pressure
through the harness is transferred forward to this neck yoke.
And the center bolt which will actually attach this new yoke to the tongue
itself also needs to be in line with these neck yoke eyes.
Well this customer wanted an additional six inches in length from the doubletree
to the neck yoke. We've got just right at six, six and a
half inches. Well this should make a good transfer for the tongue. Well one of my
observations when working on this wagon was the inefficiency of the brakes that
were on this wagon. A straight faced brake with a round curved wheel gives a very
limited contact surface so I talked the owner into allowing me to put a
different set of brakes on them, one that will actually fit the wheels, and I'm
going to increase the size of contact on these brake blocks and since the irons
don't line up well with the tires I'm gonna have to modify these blocks just a
little bit.
So while you watch me put these new blocks in you can probably see why a
tapered break clutch has its advantage on this little straight homemade piece
of iron. You can see all the downward pressure is being held only by two
quarter inch bolts. Now the best braking coefficients when you're working with
mechanical brakes is rubber against steel, so since these wheels have steel
tires I'm going to put a rubber pad on the blocks. In the other case of using
wagons with rubber tires, I would put a steel face on the block.
Well this is as far as I'm going to take this wagon. We've made sure that the
wheels aren't going to come off, we've increased the tongue length by six
inches and we've increased the braking ability with better fitting brake blocks.
Well I've been asked by a number of you what I do in my spare time, what do I do
for fun? One of the things I enjoy doing is going to the mountains. We are about
25, 26 miles from the face of the Beartooth Mountains so when I can I
enjoy going up to see the mountain scenery, and you can tell that by the
number of scenery shots that I like to include on the front of my videos. Well
here a while back I loaded up my four-wheeler and I went to the mouth of
the Clarks Fork Canyon in northern Wyoming by the little town of Clark. So
I've included a few shots of that afternoon hoping you might enjoy some of
the scenery that I get to enjoy.
As always, thanks for watching!
you