Well I've got two projects that I've had kind of slated for this winter's
project. One is, I introduced earlier, the 10 foot tall Holt Manufacturing Company
logging arch wheels. The second is a mud wagon, which is the true American
West stagecoach. These I need to get jockeyed into the shop for the winter.
One thing interesting about this type of work is I get to learn a lot of things about our history
of this country. Now the Holt Manufacturing Company, from what I looked up on Wikipedia,
started in 1883. Well if you remember, 1883 rings a bell in relation to the borax wagons. They began
running the borax route out of Death Valley in 1883, and they ran for five years to 1888. Well
this is the same era that the Holt Manufacturing Company began operations in Stockton California.
So this Holt company, that began operations in 1883, was founded by the man Benjamin Holt.
Well there was another man that began operating in 1910, CL Best, that became the Best Tractor Company.
Well these two companies merged in 1925 and is the foundation of what is today known as Caterpillar.
Well the tires, and these hubs, and the outside protective rings that are on
the spokes that protect the logs from catching on the spokes of the wheels,
these were brought up, I think early last summer, late spring, in there somewhere. So
I've had the lumber for the spokes and the felloes that were provided for these wheels
on hand and in storage all summer. So I need to get these back out from the back of the shop,
where they've been stored on pallets, and just see what I have to work with.
Well this pallet is where all the spokes will be made from. They're kind of a unique spoke,
kind of plain. They're two and seven eighths square and they fit into a very unique hub,
a style of hub that I'm not familiar with, and this is called a dodged hub.
Well this hub weighs in at 235 pounds. But we're not complete yet.
On each side that encompasses these spoke is a flange
that will mount up about like so,
and the spokes will fit in each one of these
locations here. So I've got to add two of these.
So this is what the total hub weight is going to be. Better add another,
I'll try 50 pounds. That's not enough.
So these hubs are going to be a total of 320 pounds even before we start.
So if you remember back when I was doing the borax wheels, those hubs weighed in at 187 pounds.
We're at 320 pounds here. Well I have another project that got put on the back burner because of the
borax wagon project. I had a mud wagon, which is the true traditional American West stagecoach, brought
in just prior to the borax project. I did have time to rebuild that undercarriage, and I'll show you
some brief glimpses of that process. I didn't video it at the time, but when borax showed up that
project got put on the back burner. Well it needs to be brought back to the front burner. So that's
going to be my other project for this winter, is to rebuild, or finish rebuilding, this mud wagon. Like
I say, the undercarriage is done, but I have the body to build from a pile of rubble.
When I had to reset the tires on the borax wagons early this spring I had to do some jockeying because
I set these tires in a big bonfire behind the shop. So I had things kind of jostled around and
so I need to kind of unpack some of my mess in the back. These 55 gallon barrels actually have
stoker coal in them for my steamer. I need to move those. I have another project underneath this tarp.
That's an afterward project. We'll let you see that in time. I think many
of you probably know what that is, but I'll bring that in and set it
back where the pallets of lumber for these Holt Wheels have been stored.
And I'm going to get this mud wagon body out where I can get to it.
I'm not going to bring it into the shop quite yet. If I spread out these 10 foot
wheels, they're going to take up the predominate amount of space, so I might be overcrowding it.
But I want to get it out to where I can get to it in case the snow flies, and I can get to it then.
Well, after sorting through some of this lumber, you know it's, I hate to hurt anybody's feelings, but this
is not suitable. I'm going to reject a good part of this. We've got to do something different. I'm
going to contact the owners and kind of give them a heads up and see what we can do. If I
build this wheel with some of this material and then something breaks, and a lot of these spokes
are going to break when underneath the pressure setting that tire, then I'm in a spot of tearing
all things back apart and redoing it again. And I, it's just not the quality that this wheel deserves.
So we're going to do something different here. I'm going to kind of maybe set this aside and I'll
go ahead and bring this mud wagon body in and I think that might be the next project until
we get this kind of figured out.
So once again, thanks for following along. Thanks for watching!