Sleigh bells ring…….

So, into our paint shop it went. Kate tackled stripping all that red paint from the running gear and then headed to the seats. I concentrated on the wood of the body, and trying to get things somewhat symetrical. (that drives me nuts when things aren’t built correctly… must be something about all the years of aircraft maintenance ) A couple weeks and some long nights of me painting later…..out it comes, just in time for the annual Wedding and Event Expo in Kalispell, where we got lots of compliments and not even one person said “Santa” when they looked at it… I guess that maybe my job was a success….

Now, to get the new shafts built big enough to fit a “draft” horse.
John

Thanks again! It wasn’t really a “restoration” as the sleigh is only a few years old….but we were just trying to “undo” as much of what Roberts did when they built it, as we could without tearing it all apart and starting over. The welds were fine, but the wood work looked like it had 2nd graders doing it…. no 2 pieces were the same dimension (as was alot of the steel tubing..but at least they did a pretty good job on fastening it, which I had been worried about), and a fairly large amount of “bondo” had been used to make up the difference in places, so there was alot of matching up to be done. The paint that they had on there was horrible… very thin in spots and all the way to more than 1/8″ thick and running away in others… there was even a run in some of the pinstriping (I’m not sure just HOW that happens), and it was very very “orange peeled” everywhere it wasn’t running……. it drove us nuts! It also really needed another color to keep the red under control… but we think it looks better in more “traditional” livery.
Our experience with Roberts equipment has come from seeing alot of friends have problems with them over the years. We’ve had more than a couple friends that had a Roberts Vis a Vis that broke in the neck area. From what I can tell they’ve improved that in the last few years, and have a pretty stoutly built neck now. I know of a couple of the “limo” vis a vis that are really sagging bad, and they haven’t been overloaded or abused in their past…just not quite strong enough. I’ve seen an express wagon in a 4up hitch class that had the entire back axel assembly come out from underneath of it when the driver put on the brakes. Luckily, he had some good minded horses and it was mostly a “non event”, but could’ve been a bad deal with some of the “show” horses I’ve watched. When we got back home, we looked at a few other friends that had that same model wagon and they were all showing signs of problems back there as well as at the attach points for the front gear. I know of one guy that was “spinning the top” with a Roberts cart, when the inside wheel collapsed, and then the outside wheel followed….( his quote, ” I saw that the spokes were attached to the fells with dowell pins and not mortised into the fells. over half of the spokes were rotten on the inside”) …he’ll never sit in another one. In talking to lots of owners, many say they’ve had wheel problems in the past. From what I can tell, the later vehicles have most of the problems worked out, but the fit and finish are still quite lacking in my opinion. On our sleigh, there isn’t a truly square corner anywhere. It’s nothing that most would notice, but to me that just shows a lack of attention to building, and makes me wonder what else is wrong. There are alot of very happy owners out there, and I’ve talked to many, so not all their equipment has problems. They’ve produced a whole bunch of items, and made them affordable to the average person, and that’s a good thing in my opinion. All this of course, is my opinion and worth all of what you’ve paid for it.:rolleyes: Like I said, our sleigh looks like a fairly stoutly built rig, but the finish and fit left alot to be desired…. but for the money, it was ok.
I do a little bit of restoration work on carriages (mostly our own) on the side, but mostly restoration on antique aircraft. I still do some custom paint work on occasion, but used to do alot of Harley’s and stuff years ago. I’ve got a real good friend that restores wooden yachts, and he’s a valuable resource when it comes to fine woodworking. Like I said before, I’ve got a real itch to build a couple sleighs, with one being an Albany style (or maybe even Hudson) and scale it up to draft horse size, and maybe a vis a vis all out of wood….. but first I have a few of our wagons here to take care of. My Dad sent our old wagonette to an outfit about 20 years ago to be “restored” and it’s showing the lack of quality and authenticity of their work now, so that’s going to be one of the next projects on the schedule, along with an airplane that’s here from NH, and raising the roof on our horse trailer, not to mention a bunch of work that needs to get done on the crusher and it’s support equipment, before we head back out in the Spring, so I’ve got plenty of irons in the fire.
JH