Well, how many of you remember the cartoon character Yosemite Sam?
Notorious for riding that camel, calling it a mule, and saying,
"Whoa mule! Whoa mule! When I say whoa, I mean whoa!"
Well that's kind of what we need to do on this wagon, we need a little whoa,
so I'm going to hook up the brakes this week.
Well last week we did get the wagon seat built for this 'camp cookie' who's going to
drive this wagon that feeds the cowboys on the trail. Well he needs a place to put his feet, so
when he leans back on those set of lines he's got something to brace himself against. So we're going
to start with doing that. Then we need to make a break handle and just what all makes this work.
Now I've been able to scrounge a lot of old original irons for this wagon box.
You can remember, the undercarriage is all original iron. There was no box, but I have been able to put
together a bunch of old original irons, but I didn't find a brake handle, or this pivot
point that mounts to the side of the box for that, so I've got to fabricate something there
and try to make it look like it's old.
You know, our new iron is pretty square edged, and it just doesn't look like the
old original round edge iron so, when I'm making this brake handle i'm going to take
and round these corners off to give it kind of that old look of the old original irons.
Now these brake handles need a little dog drawn out on one side that catches
into this ratchet teeth, and there's a couple different ways you can do that.
Back in my playlist of blacksmithing videos I do show how this can be drawn out, but I'm going
to do this similar to what I did on the borax wagons, and it'll have a removable little clip
that can, as it wears out, it can be replaced. That's the style I'm going to put on this wagon.
So when we're dealing with mechanical brakes, like what is on this wagon, we are dealing with a ratio
aspect of mechanical advantage. Now the overall length of this handle is 40 inches, and from the
attachment point of the rod that goes back to the rear brake roller, to the point that attaches to
the wagon, is eight inches. So above this point we have 32 inches. So we have a four to one mechanical
advantage in the brake handle alone. Well this rod then just goes back to the brake roller,
which is 20 inches tall, which goes down to the metal tab that attaches to the brake
beam, which is only five inches long. So there, once again, we have a four to one advantage.
So we have a four to one, on top of a four to one, which gives us a 16 to one advantage
from the brake handle to the brake blocks that rub up against the tires on the wheels. So if we put
10 pounds of pressure on the brake handle we are actually exerting 160 pounds pressure against the
face of the tire.
Well we're gaining ground on this chuck wagon. I've got a couple tool boxes to make.
I might make a platform for a water barrel, if he wants to add one down the road, and I've got to
sew a canvas top for this. So we might be winding this up pretty soon.
Once again, thanks for watching!