Well, last week's video I showed you finishing up this two-seat buggy. Well this buggy is still
here. The owner did come in and see it through the week, but they've yet to come pick it up.
We'll see how that goes here, maybe by the end of the week.
So I've been kind of reluctant to stir up too much dust with too many wood projects. I did get conned
into setting a set of tires on some three inch wheels. I finished that up here this morning,
and I've got some double trees to make, but really just work wise it's been kind of quiet,
so I thought what I would do is introduce what this winter's projects are going to look like.
Now I do have this old wagon gear that's been here for actually a couple years and I finally got it
drug in. And it might just look like a pile of junk. Maybe some people would haul this off and
melt 'er down for scrap iron, but this is one of those wagons that has a little history behind it
that I'd like to kind of reveal to you about this wagon. There was a ranch in south central Montana,
down by Busby, close to the reservation, and it was known as the Spear O Ranch. This ranch
has been operating for about 120 years. Well this ranch just recently sold back in 2017
and it has over 6,700 deeded acres to this ranch, but total, with lease and what they operated on,
total over 21 000 acres. It was operated by the Spear and Johnson family. Well when this sold
a descendant of the Johnson family was helping remove some items from the ranch and there were
some items, like this wagon and some bobsleds, that have a personal attachment to the Johnson
family. So this wagon here is going to go back and become a chuck wagon, so that the Johnson
relatives can have a remembrance of this ranch and their life on this ranch. Well one of the benefits
of doing this type of work, working on old horse-drawn vehicles, especially in this western
area that I live in, is I get to touch a little bit of the American west history, kind of first
hand through some of the vehicles, and some of the shared stories of the owners of the vehicles,
just like the two-seat buggy that we finished. I got to learn about four generations having a
touch on this buggy. Well similarly, on the Spear O Ranch, operated by the Spear and Johnson family,
now a descendant of the Johnson family is having this wagon rebuilt. And part of the benefit
is that he shared some of some old original photos of the ranching life back in the day.
So the desire is of the owner of this wagon, its descendant in the Johnson family,
is to put this wagon gear back into a chuck wagon, so we will completely rebuild this undercarriage.
It'll be all brand new wood, so we're going to go through some aspects of the undercarriage
that I have been asked about, such as how do we rebuild axles.
Anyway, and go through and rebuild this whole undercarriage with the new, the box
chuck box has already been built, is waiting for the wagon to be finished.
We'll put a cover top on it and this will all be a natural finish, with black iron. So this
is for historical purposes for the Johnson family of the Spear O Ranch. Well back on March 1st 1872,
president Ulysses S Grant signed into law that the Yellowstone Park would become the first
in the world national park. Now we we are residents just outside of Yellowstone Park
and over the years I've had a number of chances to work on different vehicles that worked or operated
in Yellowstone Park. There were three main operators, the most well-known operators, that
worked in Yellowstone Park. Through the east gate was the Wiley Camp Company and generally they had
wagons that hauled camping gear into Yellowstone Park. Well the the second, probably the most
well-known, came in out of the north, through Gardner, and was first known as Yellowstone
National Park Transportation. And then it changed hands, and went through some financial struggles,
and became what is known today as the YPT Company or the Yellowstone Park Transportation Company.
Well there was another stage line that came in out of the west that traveled from Monida
into West Yellowstone and this was operated by an entrepreneur and also a photographer and historian
of the national park, Frank J Haynes, often times going by F J Haynes, or as Wikipedia tells us,
he was nicknamed the professor. Well Frank Haynes ran a stage line that was known as this as the red
line and it came in through the Centennial Valley. Well some of these coaches that I've worked in
the past are distinctly the Frank Haynes, or the red line, coaches. They show this red body, with
a yellow undercarriage, whereas the Yellowstone Park Transportation, or the YPT Company, came in
through the north, and they were all yellow coaches, both the bodies and the undercarriages.
Well most of these Yellowstone coaches built by Abbot & Downing were slung on thorough braces
and they're fairly well known and fairly sought after today. But there were some other coaches,
lighter vehicles passenger vehicles, that perhaps weren't on the stage line, but they did operate,
carrying tourists through the park, from motel to motel, and I have a coach here behind me
that is one of those coaches. We have the old original sideboard that says Yellowstone Western,
which was an insignia of the western stage line, and it also has this deep burgundy
maroon body to it, and also another signature of the Frank Haynes line,
or the red line. So this also is going to be a project that I'm going to pick away at
through the winter, hopefully get it back up on wheels, put back together to go home next spring.
Now over the past few years you have watched me build a number of wagon wheels and buggy
wheels. You've also seen me build some fairly large wheels on the borax wagons. Those wheels
stood 80 inches tall, just shy of seven feet, and weighed over a thousand pounds. Well I also have
another wheel here that is going to compete with the borax wagons. These wheels have six
inch wide tires and stand 10 feet tall. Where the tire on the borax wagon weighed 550 pounds,
these tires weigh in at 490 pounds. The hubs are cast steel. They're quite a heavy hub,
and these were designed and built by what was known as the Holt Company.
Well the Holt Company is a predecessor to the present day Caterpillar Company. Now the owners
of this Holt wheel also sent some old original pictures of what these wheels looked like.
And it's a little tough to tell their perspective until you put somebody up against them, and this
was a condition that these wheels were found in that we're going to put back to like new.
So this is what I'm anticipating is going to fill this winter's projects. Now when the snow
gets to blowing, and the weather starts to get cold, I kind of like being in the shop,
next to the stove, so if you're interested in these kind of projects we ask you to follow
along and I appreciate your interest and as always, thanks for watching