The Project Gutenberg eBook of Farm Mechanics: Machinery and Its Use to Save Hand Labor on the Farm.
Title: Farm Mechanics: Machinery and Its Use to Save Hand Labor on the Farm.
Author: Herbert A. Shearer
Release date: May 25, 2012 [eBook #39791]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Harry Lamé and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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Please see Transcriber's Notes at the end of this document.
Farm Mechanics
MACHINERY AND ITS USE TO SAVE
HAND LABOR ON THE FARM
Including
Tools, Shop Work, Driving and Driven
Machines, Farm Waterworks, Care
and Repair of Farm Implements
By
HERBERT A. SHEARER
AGRICULTURIST
Author of “Farm Buildings with Plans and Descriptions”
ILLUSTRATED WITH THREE
HUNDRED ORIGINAL DRAWINGS
CHICAGO
FREDERICK J. DRAKE & CO.
Publishers
Copyright 1918
By Frederick J. Drake & Co.
Chicago
PREFACE
More mechanical knowledge is required on the farm than in any other line of business. If a farmer is not mechanically inclined, he is under the necessity of employing someone who is.
Some farms are supplied with a great many handy contrivances to save labor. Farmers differ a great deal in this respect. Some are natural mechanics, some learn how to buy and how to operate the best farm machinery, while others are still living in the past.
Some farmers who make the least pretensions have the best machinery and implements. They may not be good mechanics, but they have an eye to the value of labor saving tools.
The object of this book is to emphasize the importance of mechanics in modern farming; to fit scores of quick-acting machines into the daily routine of farm work and thereby lift heavy loads from the shoulders of men and women; to increase the output at less cost of hand labor and to improve the soil while producing more abundantly than ever before; to suggest the use of suitable machines to manufacture high-priced nutritious human foods from cheap farm by-products.
Illustrations are used to explain principles rather than to recommend any particular type or pattern of machine.
The old is contrasted with the new and the merits of both are expressed.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER I | |
| PAGE | |
| The Farm Shop with Tools for Working Wood and Iron | 9 |
| CHAPTER II | |
| Farm Shop Work | 50 |
| CHAPTER III | |
| Generating Mechanical Power to Drive Modern Farm Machinery | 74 |
| CHAPTER IV | |
| Driven Machines | 100 |
| CHAPTER V | |
| Working the Soil | 137 |
| CHAPTER VI | |
| Handling the Hay Crop | 163 |
| CHAPTER VII | |
| Farm Conveyances | 179 |
| CHAPTER VIII | |
| Miscellaneous Farm Conveniences | 197 |
| Index | 241 |
FARM MECHANICS
CHAPTER I
THE FARM SHOP WITH TOOLS FOR WORKING WOOD AND IRON
FARM SHOP AND IMPLEMENT HOUSE
The workshop and shed to hold farm implements should look as neat and attractive as the larger buildings. Farm implements are expensive. Farm machinery is even more so. When such machinery is all properly housed and kept in repair the depreciation is estimated at ten per cent a year. When the machines are left to rust and weather in the rain and wind the loss is simply ruinous.
More machinery is required on farms than formerly and it costs more. Still it is not a question whether a farmer can afford a machine. If he has sufficient work for it he knows he cannot afford to get along without it and he must have a shed to protect it from the weather when not in use.
In the first place the implement shed should be large enough to accommodate all of the farm implements and machinery without crowding and it should be well built and tight enough to keep out the wind and small animals, including chickens and sparrows.
The perspective and plan shown herewith is twenty-four feet in width and sixty feet in length.
Figure 1.—Perspective View of the Farm Shop, Garage and Implement Shed. The doors to the right are nearly 12 feet high to let in a grain separator over night, or during the winter, or a load of hay in case of a sudden storm.
Figure 2.—Floor Plan of Shop, Garage and Storage. The building is 60 feet wide and 24 feet from front to back. The doors of the garage and tool shed are made to open full width, but 8 feet is wide enough for the shop door. All doors open out against posts and are fastened to prevent blowing shut. The work shop is well lighted and the stationary tools are carefully placed for convenience in doing repair work of all kinds. The pipe vise is at the doorway between the shop and garage so the handles of the pipe tools may swing through the doorway and the pipe may lie full length along the narrow pipe bench.
The doorways provide headroom sufficient for the highest machines, and the width when the double doors are opened and the center post removed is nearly twenty feet, which is sufficient for a binder in field condition or a two-horse spring-tooth rake.
One end of the building looking toward the house is intended for a machine shop to be partitioned off by enclosing the first bent. This gives a room twenty feet wide by twenty-four feet deep for a blacksmith shop and general repair work. The next twenty feet is the garage. The machine shop part of the building will be arranged according to the mechanical inclination of the farmer.
A real farm repair shop is a rather elaborate mechanical proposition. There is a good brick chimney with a hood to carry off the smoke and gases from the blacksmith fire and the chimney should have a separate flue for a heating stove. Farm repair work is done mostly during the winter months when a fire in the shop is necessary for comfort and efficiency. A person cannot work to advantage with cold fingers. Paint requires moderate heat to work to advantage. Painting farm implements is a very important part of repair work.
A good shop arrangement is to have an iron workbench across the shop window in the front or entrance end of the building. In the far corner against the back wall is a good place for a woodworking bench. It is too mussy to have the blacksmith work and the carpenter work mixed up.
Figure 4.—Floor Plan of Farm Implement Shed, showing the workshop in one end of the building, handy to the implement storage room.
Sometimes it is necessary to bring in a pair of horses for shoeing, or to pull the shoes off. For this reason, a tie rail bolted to the studding on the side of the shop near the entrance is an extra convenience.
In a hot climate a sliding door is preferable because the wind will not slam it shut. In cold climates, hinge doors are better with a good sill and threshold to shut against to keep out the cold. Sometimes the large door contains a small door big enough to step through, but not large enough to admit much cold, when it is being opened and shut. Likewise a ceiling is needed in a cold country, while in warmer sections, a roof is sufficient. Farm shops, like other farm buildings, should conform to the climate, as well as convenience in doing the work. A solid concrete floor is a great comfort. And it is easily kept clean.
The perspective and floor plan show the arrangement of the doors, windows and chimney and the placing of the work benches, forge, anvil, toolbench and drill press.
Figures 3 and 4 show the perspective and floor plan of a farm shop and implement house 40 x 16 feet in size, which is large enough for some farms.
SHOP TOOLS
Good tools are more important on a farm than in a city workshop for the reason that a greater variety of work is required.
Measuring Mechanical Work.—In using tools on the farm the first rule should be accuracy. It is just as easy to work to one-sixteenth of an inch as to carelessly lay off a piece of work so that the pieces won’t go together right.
Figure 5.—Caliper Rule. A handy slide caliper shop rule is made with a slide marked in fractions of inches as shown in the drawing. The diameter of a rivet, bolt or other round object may be taken instantly. It is not so accurate as calipers for close measurements, but it is a practical tool for farm use.
The handiest measuring tool ever invented is the old-fashioned two-foot rule that folds up to six inches in length to be carried in the pocket. Such rules to be serviceable should be brass bound. The interior marking should be notched to sixteenths. The outside marking may be laid out in eighths. The finer marking on the inside is protected by keeping the rule folded together when not in use. The coarser marking outside does not suffer so much from wear. Figure 5 shows a 12-inch rule with a slide caliper jaw.
Figure 6.—Small Pocket Oilstone. Shop oilstone in a box. 100-foot measuring tapeline marked in inches, feet and rods.
In using a two-foot rule to lay off work the forward end should contain the small figures so that the workman is counting back on the rule but forward on the work, and he has the end of the rule to scribe from. In laying off a 16-foot pole the stick is first marked with a knife point, or sharp scratchawl, and try square to square one end. The work is then laid off from left to right, starting from the left hand edge of the square mark or first mark. The two-foot rule is laid flat on top of the piece of wood. At the front end of the rule the wood is marked with a sharp scratchawl or the point of a knife blade by pressing the point against the end of the rule at the time of marking. In moving the rule forward the left end is placed exactly over the left edge of the mark, so the new measurement begins at the exact point where the other left off, and so on the whole length of the stick. The final mark is then made exactly sixteen feet from the first mark.
In sawing the ends the saw kerf is cut from the waste ends of the stick. The saw cuts to the mark but does not cut it out.
In using a rule carelessly a workman may gain one-sixteenth of an inch every time he moves the rule, which would mean half of an inch in laying off a 16-foot pole, which would ruin it for carpenter work. If the pole is afterwards used for staking fence posts, he would gain one-half inch at each post, or a foot for every twenty-four posts, a distance to bother considerably in estimating acres. It is just as easy to measure exactly as it is to measure a little more or a little less, and it marks the difference between right and wrong.
WOODWORKING BENCH
In a farm workshop it is better to separate the woodworking department as far as possible from the blacksmith shop. Working wood accumulates a great deal of litter, shavings, blocks, and kindling wood, which are in the way in the blacksmith shop, and a spark from the anvil might set the shavings afire.
A woodworking bench, Figure 7, carpenter’s bench, it is usually called, needs a short leg vise with wide jaws. The top of the vise should be flush with the top of the bench, so the boards may be worked when lying flat on the top of the bench. For the same reason the bench dog should lower down flush when not needed to hold the end of the board.
It is customary to make carpenter’s benches separate from the shop, and large enough to stand alone, so they may be moved out doors or into other buildings.
Figure 7.—Carpenter’s Bench. A woodworking bench is 16′ long, 3′ 6″ wide and 32″ high. The height, to be particular, should be the length of the leg of the man who uses it. Lincoln, when joking with Stanton, gave it as his opinion that “a man’s legs should be just long enough to reach the ground.” But that rule is not sufficiently definite to satisfy carpenters, so they adopted the inside leg measurement. They claim that the average carpenter is 5′ 10″ tall and he wears a 32″ leg.
Figure 8.—Carpenter’s Trestle, or Saw-Bench. The top piece is 4 x 6 and the legs are 2 x 4. There is sufficient spread of leg to prevent it from toppling over, but the legs are not greatly in the way. It is heavy enough to stand still while you slide a board along. It is 2 feet high.
Figure 9.—Shave Horse. For shaping pieces of hardwood for repair work. A good shave horse is about 8′ long and the seat end is the height of a chair. The head is carved on a hardwood stick with three projections to grip different sized pieces to be worked.
Carpenter benches may be well made, or they may be constructed in a hurry. So long as the top is true it makes but little difference how the legs are attached, so long as they are strong and enough of them. A carpenter bench that is used for all kinds of work must be solid enough to permit hammering, driving nails, etc. Usually the top of the bench is straight, true and level and it should be kept free from litter and extra tools.
Good carpenters prefer a tool rack separate from the bench. It may stand on the floor or be attached to the wall. Carpenter tools on a farm are not numerous, but they should have a regular place, and laborers on the farms should be encouraged to keep the tools where they belong.
Figure 11.—Monkey-Wrenches are the handiest of all farm wrenches, but they were never intended to hammer with. Two sizes are needed—an eight-inch for small nuts and a much larger wrench, to open two inches or more, to use when taking the disks off the shafts of a disk harrow. A large pipe-wrench to hold the round shaft makes a good companion tool for this work.
WOODWORKING TOOLS
Every farmer has an axe or two, some sort of a handsaw and a nail hammer. It is astonishing what jobs of repair work a handy farmer will do with such a dearth of tools. But it is not necessary to worry along without a good repair kit. Tools are cheap enough.
Such woodworking tools as coarse and fine toothed hand saws, a good square, a splendid assortment of hammers and the different kinds of wrenches, screw clamps, boring tools—in fact a complete assortment of handy woodworking tools is an absolute necessity on a well-managed farm.
The farm kit should contain two sizes of nail hammers, see Figure 15, one suitable to drive small nails, say up to eight penny, and the other for large nails and spikes; a long thin-bladed handsaw, having nine teeth to the inch, for sawing boards and planks; a shorter handsaw, having ten teeth to the inch, for small work and for pruning trees. A pruning saw should cut a fine, smooth kerf, so the wound will not collect and hold moisture.
Figure 12.—Hand Saw. This pattern, both for cross cut and rip saw, has been adopted by all makers of fine saws. Nine teeth to the inch is fine enough for most jobs on the farm.
Figure 14.—Bramble Hook for trimming berry bushes and cleaning out fence corners. It has a knife-edge with hooked sawteeth.
Farmers’ handsaws are required to do a great many different kinds of work. For this reason, it is difficult to keep them in good working condition, but if both saws are jointed, set and filed by a good mechanic once or twice a year, they may be kept in usable condition the rest of the time by a handy farm workman, unless extra building or special work is required.
Figure 15.—Nail Hammers. Two styles. The upper hammer is made with a ball peen and a round face. It is tempered to drive small nails without slipping and shaped to avoid dinging the wood. This hammer should weigh 18 or 19 ounces, including the handle. The lower hammer is heavier, has a flat face and is intended for heavy work such as driving spikes and fence staples.
A long-bladed ripsaw is also very useful, and what is commonly termed a keyhole saw finds more use on the farm than in a carpenter’s shop in town. It is necessary frequently to cut holes through partitions, floors, etc., and at such times a keyhole saw works in just right.
Handaxes are necessary for roughing certain pieces of wood for repair jobs. Two sizes of handaxes for different kinds of work are very useful, also a wide blade draw shave, Figure 16, and shave horse, Figure 9. A steel square having one 24-inch blade and one 18-inch is the best size. Such squares usually are heavy enough to remain square after falling off the bench forty or fifty times. A good deal depends upon the quality of the steel.
Figure 17.—Try-Square With Six-Inch Blade. Wood, brass and steel are the proper materials for a try-square. A double marking gauge for scribing mortises is also shown.
Steel squares differ in the measuring marks, but the kind to buy has one side spaced to sixteenths and the other side to tenths or twelfths. The sixteenth interest farmers generally, so that special attention should be given this side of the square. The lumber rule on some squares is useful, but the brace rules and mitre calculations are not likely to interest farmers.
Screw-drivers should be mostly strong and heavy for farm work. Three sizes of handled screw-drivers of different lengths and sizes, also two or three brace bit screw-drivers are needed. One or two bits may be broken or twisted so the assortment is sometimes exhausted before the screw is started.
Figure 19.—Heavy Screwdriver. The strongest and cheapest screwdriver is made from a single bar of steel. The wooden handle is made in two parts and riveted as shown.
Pinch bars and claw bars are very useful in a farm tool kit. Farm mechanical work consists principally in repairing implements, machinery, fences and buildings. Always a worn or broken part must be removed before the repair can be made. A pinch bar twenty-four inches long, Figure 21, with a cold chisel end, and another bar eighteen inches long with a crooked claw end, Figure 22, for pulling nails and spikes comes in very handy. These two bars should be made of the best octagon steel, seven-eighths of an inch in diameter.
Figure 20.—(1) Ratchet Screwdriver. It does rapid work and will last a generation if carefully used. (2) Auger-Bit of the Side Cutter Type. A full set is needed. They are not for boring into old wood. Running once against a nail ruins one of these bits.
Figure 21.—Handspike. A wooden handspike or pry is about seven feet long by 3 inches thick at the prying end. In the North it is usually made from a hickory or an ironwood or a dogwood sapling. The bark is removed and the handle is worked round and smooth on the shave horse. It is better to cut the poles in the winter when the sap is in the roots. After the handspikes are finished they should be covered deep with straw so they will season slowly to prevent checking.
Figure 23.—Carpenter’s Level. For practical farm work the level should be 24″ or 30″ long. Wood is the most satisfactory material. The best levels are made up of different layers of wood glued together to prevent warping or twisting. For this reason a good level should be carefully laid away in a dry place immediately after using.
Figure 25.—Wood-Boring Twist Drill Bit. Twist drills for wood have longer points than drills for boring iron.
Figure 26.—Pod-Bit. The fastest boring gimlet bits are of this pattern. They are made in sizes from to 1⁄8″ to 3⁄8″ and are intended for boring softwood.
Figure 27.—Auger-Bits. For smooth boring the lip bits are best. The side cutters project beyond the cutting lips to cut the circle ahead of the chips. For boring green wood the single-worm clears better than the double-worm bit.
Figure 28.—Extension Boring Bits. The cutting lips may be set to bore holes from 1⁄2″ to 3″ in diameter. They are used mostly in softwood.
Figure 29.—Ship Auger. This shape auger is made with or without a screw point. It will bore straighter in cross-grained wood without a point.
Figure 31.—Bridge Auger. The long handle permits the workman to stand erect while boring. The home made handle is welded onto the shank of a ship auger.
A wooden carpenter’s level, Figure 23, two feet long, with a plumb glass near one end, is the most satisfactory farm level, an instrument that is needed a great many times during the year.
Good brace bits are scarce on farms. They are not expensive, but farmers are careless about bits and braces. Two sizes of braces are needed, a small brace for small pod bits and twist drills, and a large ratchet brace with a 6-inch crank radius for turning larger bits.
Twist drill bits will bore both wood and iron, and they are not expensive up to three-eighths inch or one-half inch. But for larger sizes from one-half inch to one inch the finest lip wood boring bits will give the best satisfaction. Extension bits are used for boring holes larger than one inch. Two extension bits are better than one bit with two lip cutters. They will bore holes in soft wood in sizes from one inch to three inches.
Other cutting tools such as jack plane jointer and smoothing plane, also an assortment of chisels, belong to the farm equipment.
Figure 34.—Tool Box of Socket Chisels and Gouges. The chisels are sized from 1⁄2″ to 2″ in width. The two chisels to the right show different patterns.
All cutting tools should be of the best design and the best steel. If they are properly used and taken care of, the different jobs of repair work can be handled quickly and to great advantage.
FARM GRINDSTONE
A grindstone may be gritty without being coarse so it will bite the steel easily and cut it away quickly. A good stone is a very satisfactory farm implement, but a greasy stone is a perpetual nuisance.
There are grindstones with frames too light. The competition to manufacture and sell a grindstone for farm use at the cheapest possible price has resulted in turning out thousands of grindstone frames that possess very little stability.
Figure 35.—Grindstone. The speed of a grindstone varies with the diameter of the stone. It should turn just fast enough to keep a flow of water on the upper face surface. If the stone turns too slow the water will run down; if too fast, it will fly off.
Grindstones should be kept under cover; the best stone will be injured by leaving it in the hot sun. The sun draws the moisture out of the upper side and leaves the lower side damp and soft so that in use the stone soon becomes flat sided. The wet side freezes in winter, which is a disintegrating process.
The best stones, with good care, will become uneven in time. The remedy is to true them with a quarter-inch soft iron round rod used like a lathe tool over an iron rest placed close to the stone on a level with the center of the stone. The rod is held against the stone in such a way as to cut away the high bumps and make the stone truly round. The stone cuts away best when it is dry. A small rod is better than a large rod. It digs into the stone better and takes out a deeper bite. Large power stones in machine shops are trued up in this way frequently. Farm stones often are neglected until they wabble so badly that it is difficult to grind any tool to an edge. If the grindstone is turned by a belt from an engine the work of truing may be done in a few minutes. If the stone is turned by hand the work of making it round takes longer and requires some muscle, but it pays.
The face of a grindstone should be rounded slightly, and it should be kept so by grinding the tools first on one side of edge of the stone, then on the other, with the cutting edge of the tool crosswise to the face of the stone.
For safety and to prevent a sloppy waste of water the stone should turn away from the operator.
The best way to keep a stone moist is by a trickle of water from an overhead supply. Troughs of water suspended under the stone are unsatisfactory, because the water soon gets thick and unfit for use. Such troughs are forgotten when the job is done, so that one side of the stone hangs in the water. An overhead supply of water leaks away and no damage is done.
Grindstone frames are best made of wood 3″ x 4″ thoroughly mortised together and well braced with wooden braces and tied across with plenty of iron rods. A good grindstone frame could be made of angle iron, but manufacturers generally fail in the attempt.
There are good ball-bearing grindstone hangers on the market, both for hand crank stones and for belt use.
The belt is less in the way if it is brought up from below. This is not difficult to do. A grindstone turns slower than any other farm machine so a speed reducing jack may be bolted to the floor at the back of the grindstone a little to one side to escape the drip. This arrangement requires a short belt but it may have the full face width of the pulley as the tight and loose pulleys are on the jack shaft.
Emery Grinders.—There are small emery wheels made for grinding disks that work quickly and cut an even bevel all around. They are made in pairs and are attached to the ends of a mandrel supported by a metal stand which is bolted to a bench. The same rig is used for sickle grinding and other farm jobs.
Figure 36.—Emery Grinder. The illustrations show two kinds of grinding that double emery wheels are especially adapted to. To grind a mowing-machine knife it is necessary to reverse. By placing the rest opposite the center between the two wheels the bevel will be the same on both sides, or edges, of the section.
BLACKSMITH SHOP
The furniture in a blacksmith shop consists of forge, anvil, half barrel, vise bench, drill press and tool rack. A farm shop also has a heating stove, shave horse, a woodworking bench, a good power driven grindstone and a double emery grinder.
Forge.—The old-fashioned forge laid up with brick in connection with an old-fashioned chimney is just as popular as ever. The same old tuyer iron receives the air blast from the same old style leather bellows, and there is nothing more satisfactory. But there are modern portable forges, Figure 37, made of iron, that are less artistic, cheaper, take up less room and answer the purpose just about as well. The portable iron forge has a small blower attached to the frame which feeds oxygen into the fire. There are a good many different sizes of portable forges. Most of them work well up to their advertised capacity.
Figure 37.—Portable Forges. The smaller forge is for light work such as heating rivets for iron bridge construction. The larger forge to the right is meant for blacksmith work.
Generally, farm forges are not required to develop a great amount of heat. Farmers do but little welding, most of the forge work on the farm being confined to repair work such as heating brace irons, so they may be easily bent into the proper shape, or to soften metal so that holes may be punched through it easily.
Sharpening harrow teeth, drawing out plow points and horseshoeing are about the heaviest forge jobs required in a farm blacksmith shop, so that a medium size forge will answer the purpose.
Figure 38.—Anvil. The only satisfactory anvil is forged out of ingot steel with a power trip-hammer. It should weigh 140 pounds.
Anvil.—An anvil should weigh at least 120 pounds; 140 is better. It should be set six feet from the center of the fire to the center of the anvil. It should be placed on a timber the size of the base of the anvil set three feet in the ground. The top of the anvil should be about thirty inches high. Holmstrom’s rule is: “Close the fist, stand erect with the arm hanging down. The knuckles should just clear the face of the anvil.”
Bench and Vise.—The vise bench should be made solid and it should face a good light. The bench window should look to the east or north if possible. It should be about four feet high and eight feet long, with the window sill about six inches above the bench.
Figure 39.—(1) Shoeing Tool Box. The four small compartments are for horseshoe nails of different sizes. There may be a leather loop for the paring knife. The low box end is for the shoeing hammer, rasp, nippers and hoof knife. (2) Blacksmith Tool Rack. Tongs, handled punches and cutters are hung on the iron rails. Hammers are thrown on top. The lower platform is the shop catch-all.
Figure 40.—Shoeing Knife. Good temper is the main qualification. All shoeing knives are practically the same shape, although they may vary in size.
Two and one-half feet is the usual height for a workbench above the floor. The best workbench tops are made by bolting together 2 x 4s with the edges up. Hardwood makes the best bench, but good pine will last for years. The top surface should be planed true and smooth after the nuts are drawn tight.
Figure 42.—Iron Work Bench. Solid is the first specification for an iron shop bench. It should be three feet wide, not less than eight feet long and about 32 inches high. The top is made of 2 x 4s placed on edge and bolted together. The supports are 2 x 6 bolted to the shop studding and braced back to the studding at the sill. The front part of the bench is supported by iron legs made of gas-pipe with threaded flanges at top and bottom. Heavy right angle wrought iron lugs are used to fasten the top of the bench to the studding. The foot of the vise leg is let into the floor of the shop or into a solid wooden block sunk in the ground.
Figure 43.—Assortment of Files and Rasps needed in a farm shop. (1) Slim three-cornered handsaw-file. (2) Common three-cornered file suitable for filing a buck-saw. (3) Double-cut, or bastard, 10-inch flat file. (4) Single-cut, or mill file, either 10 or 12 inches. (5) Half-round 10-inch wood rasp. (6) Horseshoer’s rasp.
Figure 44.—File Handle. Basswood makes the most satisfactory file handles. They are fitted by carefully turning them onto the file shank to take the right taper. There should be a handle for each file. The handle should be the right size and fitted straight with the file so the file will take the same angle to the work when turned over.