Well I made some more headway on this wagon undercarriage this week.
Last week we worked on the rear bolster.
The week I'm going to complete the front bolster.
Now most wagons have a fifth wheel.
Well that fifth wheel is literally the fifth wheel.
These all have four wheels that they run on,
but the front axle spins on another pivot point referred to as the fifth wheel.
Now this brings up an interesting point.
As you are probably well aware,
that we are in the process of trying to translate all of my videos in to multiple languages.
Well we are not bilingual, or multilingual,
in our abilities to do that, so we are relying upon Google translate.
And many of you have made comments that sometimes it is fairly accurate.
Sometimes it is almost humorous.
Well, you know, that is something about the brilliance of the human brain.
When you are a native speaker in your own language,
and something is translated, from Google translate say for instance,
not everything is translated correctly.
And that's just the fallacy of relying upon a computer.
And we know that, and you know that.
When we sometimes get comments
from others, in your language, and we translate through Google translate,
we realize that you are not a native speaker to the English language, and visa versa.
So, we kind of chuckle, and I hope you do too,
in this process that, yes, everything is not perfect,
but our desire is to communicate,
a little better perhaps than what we have,
so that you can understand a little more clearly what we're doing.
One of these cases is in the term "chuck wagon".
Well, chuck, is kind of one of those terms that
makes us wonder. Is it somebodies name?
Is it up-chuck, as if you would vomit?
Or, out here in the west, chuck is sometimes referred to as a meal.
Well, a chuck wagon could be called a dinner wagon, or a meal wagon.
Sometimes it's called a round-up wagon.
So just for clarities sake,
the chuck wagon is the wagon that supples the meals to the working cowboys
when they are out on the range following the cattle along the trail.
So anyway, we're gong to continue on in this fifth wheel repair this week.
And I've got a little fixing to do.
Sometimes it's one step backwards to make another step forward.
And that's the case this week.
Last week I rebuilt the bolster stake irons
that were pretty rotted out.
Well I built all four of them the same,
putting these extended threaded ends on the bottom of these bolster stakes.
Well, it was correct for the rear bolster,
but it was not correct for the front bolster.
And it wasn't until I went to put the fifth wheel plate on to the front bolster
that I realized my mistake.
Now if I had taken the time to look at the front bolster
I would have noticed this from the beginning, but I didn't.
I made an assumption and assumptions are not always safe.
But it's fixable.
So after having gone through all the work to fabricate new ends for these,
I actually had to cut them off,
and just weld flat straps on the bottom of these bolster stake irons.
On the top of these bolsters, both front and rear,
is a thin metal plate that's used to take the wear, as the body sets on these bolsters.
The rear bolster still had that metal plate,
but the front one was gone.
The rear one is actually a two and a half inch iron on a three inch wide bolster,
but I couldn't find another old one that was also two and a half.
But I did have one off of a front bolster, off and old bolster,
that was a three inch that will match also the three inch bolster
that we're using on this new wagon.
But, the center hole
was pretty hammered out and destroyed from the old original kingpin
of whatever wagon it was on in it's day.
So the question was, do I just replace it with a new piece of iron,
which would be probably eighth inch thick,
or is it possible that I can repair this old top front bolster iron,
and have an original iron,
and try to keep as much original, even though it's not original to this wagon,
on this old gear.
I think I can repair this. Its a pretty big hole,
but I'm going to go through a couple of options and I think you'll see, I think we can fix it.
Well you can see it was kind of a lot of tinkering around to get this big hole repaired.
It has a one inch kingpin, and I think this work.
I personally prefer to repair old original irons, if at all possible, to keep as much original.
Like I say, this wasn't original to this wagon,
but it is an original wagon front bolster top iron.
So I think it will be acceptable in this case.
Anyway, from here we can go and finish the front bolster
and I'll also finish attaching the rear bolster.
Well from the pile of irons that I had on the shop floor here when we first disassembled this whole undercarriage,
I have the hubs, the hub bands and the boxings,
and there's a set of irons that goes to the front tongue.
Other than that, we have all the this iron work reassembled back on this undercarriage with all new wood.
Anyway, I appreciate you following along as always.
Thanks for watching!