another hobby.

[MercuryMac]

The story on the truck is that it came from North Carolina, went to Texas, was flipped to Detroit, and then put for sale again. So, Tripper it was near you for a while, and now it's near me.

 

[Old Iron]

On the John Deere's that are green and yellow and the one that is green and white, is that because of a year/series difference in the machines or just an owners choice?

 

[MercuryMac]

No OI, The third one is mine and I painted it in the late '70s, the second one looks about the same so it probably was repainted around then too. The first one is the original paint which was yellow from the factory, but now has faded to white.
My tractor is an early 1959 model and the second one is the second last 730 sold in North America, in 1961.

 

[Old Iron]

Thanks for the explanation

 

[MercuryMac]

There is a part of our old tractor club that stars combines. We had a old time harvest day and here are some pics.
The picture of looking down into the header watching the standing wheat go into the machine is me on an 'A' Allis-Chalmers, Gleaner combine. The Massey-Harris 21-A is quite famous, as it ran in the Harvest Brigade for some years. They started harvesting in Oklahoma and ended up in Saskatchewan or Alberta. Each combine had promised to do 2000 acres in the early '40's, and they did it. There is a picture of the back of the cab of the '41 International grain truck, with dents in it. Those are from the framework of the header of the combine, because the fellow that ran this combine hauled it from here to Oklahoma each year on that truck and then trucked the grain away with the truck. The painted up Massey-Harris is one of the smallest self-propelled combines they ever made in the fifties. It was very underpowered, with a 24 horse power motor.

 

[dutch]

cool shots Mac. I just love that old equipment.
My neightbour owns an old JD combine...I think around 1970? He bought it 100 mls away and drove it home...lol

 

[smallfoot]

Love the old machinery Mac! I was lucky to be a part of seeing the results of improved methods when I was a kid. The first time I participated in tobacco harvesting we used mule pulled sleds on wooden runners. The next year it was a tractor pulled combine which allowed more pickers, stringers and stackers. The different methods highly improved overall harvest and required less human actions. Maybe not good for the workers but more efficient. Where we might be working on a single field for a several days, it wasn't uncommon to be able to finish two up in a day with the combine. It was a whole different world back then. Up and eat. Drive the truck to the crossroads of the only two roads that crossed in the area. People that wanted to work gathered there and all jumped in trucks to go back to whatever fields were being harvested. It was a community thing much like your group and a much simpler time.

 

[earthman]

"The first time I participated in tobacco harvesting we used mule pulled sleds on wooden runners." WAIT....WHAT!!

 

[smallfoot]

Yeah, I'm old...

 

[smallfoot]

The mule only had 2 jobs that I knew of. He pulled the sled for tobacco and he also was the power for the cane mill. When he worked the mill, when he got done milling the cane into juice, he got to feed on the piles of cane husks. Usually the piles had started to ferment. Quite funny to watch a drunk mule...

 

[MercuryMac]

Thank you guys, and Dutch here's the John Deere combine in our group.

 

[MercuryMac]

I've been volunteering at a local museum for quite a few years, so I've become the tractor guy there. We had our fall festival on Saturday and I have a few pictures to share. There was a tractor parade, a tractor rodeo, and many demo's, like shingle mill, sawmill, planer-mill and threshing. Two of us shared pulling the binder.

 

[smallfoot]

Cool shots Mac! Was the Massey-Harris originally equipped with the rubber treads like the last pic? And did you get any shots of the old sawmill stuff?

 

[MercuryMac]

No, the little Massey-Harris had steel cleats on it, although I've seen some of them with rubber tires, [maybe farmer installed though]. Cleats are no good in parades.
I didn't take very many pictures of anything and none of the sawmill. It was run by our biggest Steam engine.

 

[MercuryMac]

My brother Rob is a builder of things. He always wanted to rebuild Dad's old sawmill. Dad must have built it in the early forties, because when I first remember it in the mid fifties the wood in the mill was getting rotten. So Dad moved it and rebuilt it. Again, the wood rotted in about 15 to 20 years. Nobody did anything with the mill for a long time. This spring, Rob piled all of the pieces of the mill that he could find, on his wagon and pulled up to his shop to start working on it. He called the other day to say he was going to try it out. Would I like to join in?
We sawed up some dried spruce logs. The high point for me was when a customer came to get a load of round bales from Rob, so he had to go and take the log grappel off his front end loader and put on the bale forks and load a big truck. He waved me over to take on the sawyers position. I sawed the rest of the time, [on Dad's mill]. I had been promoted from tailing the saw to sawyer
on my first day, Whoaooo. We didn't saw a lot of logs, but some.
I have some pictures of the day but I can't find them in my computer tonight.

 

[MercuryMac]

My brother Rob phoned again to say he was going to plow a small field right by his house. Would I be interested in helping? Heck Yes! I was a pleasant fall day when he phoned and I got psyched up. On Saturday we tore into the field. It had turned cold, [around the freezing mark with a bit of a breeze].
I took my 730 over there, Rob had his Cockshutt 570 Super, and a friend showed up with an 'R' John Deere, all with four bottom plows. The soil was excellent to plow so we had a good time.
It was the last day of fall, and did I mention it was cold. Well, this morning when I went to put everything away in the big shed, I realized that I had cut the nice fall time a little too much slack.
Do you think I was pushing my luck?
The second last picture is me backing the 730 into the big shed after putting the plow away. And the last picture is the '56 still sitting out where I left it the day before. It has to go in after the John Deere to make the puzzle complete in the machine shed.

 

[Old Iron]

That field looks great

 

[bob w]

Nice work. Not too happy about the white stuff. Coming my way.

 

[MercuryMac]

I guess I build weird stuff ---- as a hobby. Can you guess what this gismo is going to do? See picture one.

A big tree had died and was leaning east toward my shop and I couldn't think of a way to get rid of that menace until I hatched a plan. I would hook a long pole into my front-end-loader bucket and make some arms that would keep the far end of the pole clamped to the bad tree, and then push the tree away, or put pressure on it so I could saw it and fall it back and away. The first pic is the guide arms that hold the pole to the tree.
The second picture is me pushing another tree over. I didn't get a picture of the worst tree, because as I was putting a little pressure on the tree to see it the whole thing would work right, the tree broke off and fell away. I never even got to saw it at all.

 

[Old Iron]

So you're saying the idea worked well [cl[cl[cl