Square bolts revisited
Responding to my letter about fabricating square bolts (Farm Collector Letters to the Editor, August 2002), square bolts are available from some national industrial suppliers such as McMaster-Carr, as well as some local sources. I have used McMaster-Carr myself, and they are indeed the answer if you need a large quantity of square bolts of the same size. My challenge, for example, was rebuilding a 28- by 46-foot McCormick threshing machine, which had been sitting outside for 30 years, and it really needed a lot of bolts.
However, due to minimum order requirements, the national and local distributors are not always a good solution when it comes to needing a few bolts of various sizes for a typical restoration. Besides, we're always in a hurry to finish a project and can't wait for a delivery. That's when my technique of brazing up a few bolts to fill a specific need comes in handy. I encourage everyone to give it a try.
- Kirk Unzelman, 4635 130th Ave. S.E., Bellevue, WA 98006; (425) 746-6520
Atkinson Hay Days
A couple of years ago, I attended Hay Days at Atkinson and saw a baler that was fed by hand, using a pitchfork. The haywas pitched onto a hayrack pulled by a team of horses and hauled to the baler, where it was pitched by hand into that machine. The bales were blocked, tied and stacked by hand. Those boys didn't need a weight room to stay in shape; they were in shape.
The hay baler was a 1910 Dain, powered by another team of horses. The horses went round and round in one place, which powered a long, spring-loaded shaft, which powered the plunger for pressing the hay. Even today, ruts can be seen in Holt County were the horses went round and round in one place, even though by about 1940, balers began to be powered by tractors instead of horses. The newer balers were belt driven, which made them more portable.
The rig at Hay Days sat on four wagon wheels, and every time they put it down, they have to pull the wheels off. When I first saw it, the wheels were on it, and I couldn't figure out how it worked.
The old way of stacking small, square bales may be ending, just like threshing and corn shelling did. I think some people should show the old ways to our younger people before it's all gone.
-James Wagner, 52341 875th Road, Winnetoon, NE 68789
Buried treasure
I want to identify an implement that I discovered in my lawn, buried up to the axles in dirt. It had been there quite a long time, and when I found it, I not only had to cut a bunch of brush away from it, I also had to kill a Copperhead snake in excess of 3 feet to get to it. I got it out of the ground with the help of my four-wheel drive Toyota pickup by pulling it with chains. I have seen one other implement like this on a Web site, but the implement was listed as a hay mower. I wrote to the person on the Web site, but apparently he did not know what it was but knew that it had "blades" on it at one time. Once I told him what I had found, he changed his Web site to reflect that the implement was a corn stalk cutter and had a price of $1,500.