Any idea what these are? Marked "cockshult plow co. ltd " and "6B upper el" and "6B lower" there are 8 of them. Found in barn rafters. I thought removable roof for a tractor cab, but not sure how 8 would be needed.
Does it look to be made of canvas, with reinforcing slats or ribs?
SRH
I can almost remember a steam powered grain winnower at a fair that had something like those on it.
Can’t exactly recall, but they reminded me of an umbrella sorta.
But I took a good whack on the head today, and that memory might be mixed up.
How wide are these? Early grain binders, as well as combines, used canvas with slats to move the material from the cutter bar up to the tyer on a binder or the threshing cylinder on a combine. Sure looks like that may be what these are.
Okay, here's my guess. Somewhere in the dim recesses of what's left of my memory I think I saw a binder/harvester that had those sheets on it. The harvester was used to cut wheat, oats, etc. and tied bundles, or sheaves, of the entire stalks of cereal grain, which were then dropped off the machine on the ground to be picked up by hand labor and hauled in to the barn.
Cockshult made such a binder, as did most of their competition. All such harvesters fell out of favor quickly when the threshing function was added. They were the forerunners of our modern day grain combines.
They might be quite valuable to old farm equipment restorers and collectors. You can go to YouTube and watch them in action. I just did so.
Best, SRH
It appears Miller beat me to the draw. Maybe we are both right.
Definitely binder canvas. Repaired, installed, and used similar for years. Even into the 1960's on swathers.
The name is actually spelled Cockshutt.
You guys never disappoint, l’d love to come hang out with you for a few days and learn about things.
My uncle found them in a barn on his new property.
maybe after social distancing is not such as hot item.....
right now you might learn a bit too much....
Just a bit more history here. Both the reaper & the binder were used to bundle grain with the stalks intact. Sometimes they were carried to the barn as Sta said while at other times they were stacked upright in the field. Many old-time threshings were done directly n the field. The thresher would be brought in & set up & the sheaves of grain hauled up to the thresher where they were pitched into the feeder.
The difference in a reaper & a binder was the binder had the knotter for tying the bundles. n a reaper the grain was either pulled to the end with a rake or had a pusher for the purpose. It was then hand-tied into the bundle & several bundles stacked into the sheaf.
When I was very young my Dad still had an old McCormick-Deering binder. I have n idea what became of it but think he sold it at some point. I recall being at one old-time threshing which was set up in the field. My Dad & his younger brother were working there helping load the sheaves o the wagons to haul up to the thresher & I went with them. I don't recall the exact point in time, but I had to be less than 8 yrs old.
Incidentally, in spite of your history books, Cyrus McCormick did "NOT" invent the reaper. He invented A reaper, but not "The" reaper. He in fact had to wait 13 years after his reaper was ready for another man's patent to expire before he could place his on the market.
You guys never disappoint, l’d love to come hang out with you for a few days and learn about things.
My uncle found them in a barn on his new property.
They look to be on remarkably good condition to be that old. I am amazed that mice and rats have not turned them into dust.
You guys never disappoint, l’d love to come hang out with you for a few days and learn about things.
Would enjoy that, too. Things have changed so much on the farm in my tenure here. I started out driving a Farmall Super C, an H, a M, and a 350, all Farmalls. No cab, no power steering, no remote hydraulics. Now, I drive a JD 8270 with total climate control, an onboard computer, Bluetooth capability, and RTK guidance which drives the tractor from.one end of the field to the other, holding it with sub-inch accuracy to the previous pass. It's mind boggling.
SRH
Here ya go, grain binder in action!
https://youtu.be/4ZEWtVRvAP8
that museum where the Youtube video was filmed would probably be really interested in those canvas parts.
Neat video for sure.
thanks!
Have any Amish in he area? They may still use that equipment and need them.
bill
IA has one of the best Threshing shows in the mid west. Very interesting to see how it was done "back then". I am humbled to admit that I am very familiar with grain binders and threshing. There was some of that still going on when I was a kid. Most, including us, had moved on to combines(JD 55), meaning combination reaper/thresher. Some of the old timers still used what they had. Lots of small family farms and dairies then. Usually neighbors pooled their resources to get the job done. We had a New Holland baler so guess what, we baled a lot of neighbor's hay.
As a kid I had the “privilege” of gathering up the bundles and stacking them in the field. About 10 or 12 bundles would form a shock that looked like a tepee. Then later we loaded them on a wagon and hauled them to the barn where an old International tractor ran a hammer mill. We would feed one bundle at a time into the mill and out came chopped feed. That’s where I lost much of my hearing—hammer mills were LOUD!
The stacked bundles often appear in period sporting photos and paintings. I'm a septuagenarian and I can't remember ever seeing that in my lifetime...Geo
The Amish communities do it that way around here.
Sometimes the fields take you right back to an A B Frost scene.
Minus the birds of course.
not to be argumentative, but did a google search looking for frost prints with crop stacks...could not find any...maybe cause much of frost's upland scenes depict fall and winter...after the harvest?
following is link to what i did find...enjoy...
https://www.google.com/search?q=ab+frost&rlz=1CAYBVP_enUS705US705&sxsrf=ALeKk02UUyc9FU9NP118BbUqxPC-L57s4A:1585149836066&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiiv5On97XoAhXIVN8KHUFSAzkQ_AUoAXoECBcQAw&biw=1536&bih=706
Stooks (sheaves stood on end) of barley in West Somerset UK
wow, can just image pheasants and varmints hyden in der...
could also be origin of phrase "kick erm up"?
I still use a Cockshutt Blackhawk tractor and buy my parts from Phil
Heisey. He might like to know about your find. 215 256-8651
That would be a cool top for my cj3a
Here's a short of the same type of baler. Think OSHA!!
https://youtu.be/B_9tiQ6G9AE
Think OSHA? Every notice how many old farmers are missing fingers or other interesting parts? Life on a farm was hard work and sometimes dangerous. I had a distant cousin killed by a saw mill he was operating, that used a tractor for power. A chunk of wood kicked back while he was squaring up a cant and it hit the saw blade then shot back into his face. It fractured his skull and killed him.
The ironic thing was he had borrowed the portable saw mill to cut up some pine timber for a neighbor as a way to help that neighbor build hot frames to start sweet potatoes. He did not need the lumber but the owner of the saw mill did and had hurt his back so he could not operate the mill himself. Seeing his neighbors need, he did what killed him in his attempt to help his neighbor. This still is the family example of the old saying "that no good deed goes unpunished sometimes". Those old saw mills were dangerous as heck even in the best of times.
Here is an A B Frost painting from his Sporting Prints. The feed is shocked (Bundled and stacked). I think the sport is shooting prairie chickens.
PS: building a shock of feed was similar to soldiers stacking arms. You’d drag or carry three bundles to where you wanted the shock. Then you’d build a tripod of the three and finish by adding more bundles all around. Whew! That was a LONG time ago. I think Dad paid we two boys 10 cents per shock to stack it. Not bad pay for the time.
One of my earliest memories is of going with Grandaddy to a field here on our Home Place and seeing stacks of peanuts on poles. Must have been about '54-'55. Looked like this .......
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_DKlmt_S0GNg/TMYe07...acks1004103.jpg SRH
Stan- is that tractor a Farmall B..???
50 years ago if you sat down to drink coffee and looked around the table you could tell who farmed by who was missing fingers. Even met one guy who had been run over by a rotary hoe. LOTS of scars. Thankfully now it's way safer, hydraulic systems made a big difference.
We run a discbine for haying. When the sudan is really tall I have mowed deer, coyotes and many skunks. Quite a mess! I sure would not want to get my fingers in there!!
remember back in the fifties, in the summertime, used to go up to visit my moms relatives, some of whom were small farmers living in south east alabama...most everybody in the family, young and old, would go out early before it got too hot an work in the fields, with hoe and rake...came in about noon an had dinner...most of what we ate was grown right there on the farm. it was all wonderful food...then in the mid afternoon, we would go back out in the fields and hoe and rake some more, until evening...when it was time to feed the animals...my favorite part...
loved to go out in the scrub with my cousin, each of us carrying a burlap sack of dried, unshelled corn...we would dump out the sacks an sit down at the base of a big pine tree.. each of us would start a plug of chewing tobacco...an then we would call up the hogs...sooy, sooy, sooy...soooo wee!...an they would come a runnin...
now lemme tell ya, hit takes ah strong stomach, to sit der in da summer evenin heat, an chewin tobacco, while them hogs were awl around, stirin up dust, an eatin dat corn...an crappin, an fartin...awl at duh same time...but den, does were sum o de best days o my life!
right up der wid learnin how to cat fish in da altamaha ribber, above jesup, georgia, in the summer o 1953...anybody wanna hear bout dat?