[jrward]

Wisconsin hist. society used to have a page that showed paint chips

[jrward]

@Russel 19209 wrote:

When you say that you must spin the flywheel counter clockwise, is that looking at the flywheel from the front of the mower?

Yes. standing with the flywheel near you and the gearbox away you will take the top of the flywheel towards the sickle to loosen it and the pitman shaft will thread out of the little gear on the end. If it sticks in the bearing you can tap the back of the flywheel gently with a hammer and it should come loose and slide right out. Before you pull it out you can wiggle the flywheel to see if there is any play in the pitman bushing. If you can see/feel much play at all you might want to have your local machine shop build you a new bushing. Spin the ball bearing on the other end and unless it is pretty rough you should be able to just reuse it. Also, be careful taking out the old seal because the part no. on the original seals still cross to new numbers and it saves your parts man some digging.

[jrward]

The pitman shaft is right hand or standard thread meaning you spin the flywheel counter-clockwise to remove it. All full sized horse equipment is designed for 31 inch tongue height except John Deere which I believe is 32. The reason is the same as the standard 3-point hitches on modern equipment. If you make everything standard it’s more likely the people buying your equipment will set it up right and be satisfied with the results.

[jrward]

It only takes a couple hours to replace every seal on a #9 and they are all available at your local parts store. I would recommend staying away from anything thicker than 90wt. because it cant travel down the tube to the pitman bearing and that is the part of a mower that needs the most lube.

[jrward]

Lynn Miller has a picture of a woods mower in one of his books. He could probably tell you something about it. Also if you would post a picture of the questionable pieces I might be able to help you out.

[jrward]

Get some muffler clamps from the parts store and throw the U-bolts away.

[jrward]

I have been hearing about how heavy a mower is on the tongue my whole life and this thread brought back the question. How heavy is heavy? So I set up a pole out the back end of my pickup to hook my traces to so I could simulate the correct angle of draft and I also hung a load cell in the appropriate place to attach the tongue to. This way I could see how heavy the tongue is when the mower is in operation the results raised more questions than answers.

Static weight, Blade up no operator- 66Lbs.
Static weight, Blade up with operator- 40Lbs.
Static weight, Blade down with operator- 30Lbs.
Running on level ground in average hay- 5-10Lbs.
running with blade lifted with foot lift. 50-60Lbs.

This mower was a #7 high gear with 14 ft. wooden tongue and setup nearly perfect. I tried changing the tongue height and also the angle of draft and it seemed to make very little difference also found the heavier the hay, the lighter the tongue. The angle of draft seems to counteract all forces acting downward. I know mowers do sore horses because I have seen it but why?

[jrward]

@Deborah DeLuca 6274 wrote:

that information is awesome, thank you! we have compact flourescents in the barn right now, and they are on for about 3 or 4 hours each day. do you use your draft horses to pull a crankshaft, or do you use a different method to find their kilowatt output?

Deb,

The way to figure killowatt output is:
2 -2000 lb. draft horses can draw 400 lbs. (10% of their body weight) continuously.
on a 20 ft. beam this would be 8000 ft. lbs. of torque.
A normal team of horses can walk 2.5 mph, this works out to 1.75159 RPM.
to find horsepower you multiply torque by RPM, then divide by 5252
this gives you 2.668 horsepower.
1 horsepower = .745699872 killowatts
If I did my math right this means a team should produce 1.98958212 kw. continuously or considerably more for a short time. Hope this is helpful.

[jrward]

@Deborah DeLuca 6197 wrote:

hello all,
i go to school at green mountain college in VT and i am working on a project to use our team of oxen to power the lights in our barn. our current idea is to use a crank system to wind rope to a reel on the ceiling, which is also pulling a up a weight. the weight would then release and drop slowly, turining an alternator or a generator to produce electricity, which we could sue directly or store in car batteries (there is a junkyard nearby). if any of you have any ideas that could help, that would be awesome!

-deb

Deb,

I Don’t normally post on these things because I believe there is more to be learned from listening than talking but I did some figuring and thought you might find my info useful. I don’t know anything about oxen but a large team of draft horses can generate just under 2 killowatts of electricity continuosly for a normal work day. This works out to 167 amps at 12 volts. These numbers do not figure in mechanical inefficiencies but it looks like if you go with L.E.D.’s or other high efficiency lights a team should be able to generate enough juice in a couple hours to light a decent size barn all night. Also, the rope and weight is a good idea but the mechanical losses will be huge. I would stick with a 12 volt system and car batteries

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