Eagles Scavenge: Affordable Calf Carts

Particularly this time of year, it's a bad week if I don't see three or four bald eagles.  Once you know what to look for, (a "golf ball" in a tree) they seem to be ubiquitous.  In the right spots.  Water helps. A tall tree away from other trees or along the edge of a woods helps. But find a roadkill in a spot like that and your odds go way up. We think of eagles as majestic killing machines -and they are- but more often, they let a Toyota Corolla do the hunting and simply scavenge. It's a more reliable source of food. 

So it goes with calf carts. When you need one, you need one. By the time you build one, you no longer need one. The solution is simple: build a cart well in advance of the need. While you're at it, tell the eagle: "You're a hunter. Spend your time hunting. you might succeed. Eschew that fresh meat on the roadside."

Yeah, right.

A good calf cart is one you've got access to. With some scavenged parts. Those small, metal garden carts are quite common in the aftermarket for just a small price. Or borrow one, like I did (I think I hauled one away, lent it to my dad, then borrowed it back).  Then make a tongue. 

Or scavenge one. In this case, the tongue had been up in the rafters of the corn crib for years before I bought my farm, then years since. Lying face down, the bottom had rotted badly, but 2 inches of good material remained on top.  A couple of minutes with the bandsaw and a jack plane narrowed it to fit in the existing U-shaped tongue of the cart.  A 1/2" bolt through the hitch and the wood makes a sturdy rear hitch point and one more 1/2" bolt will keep things secure.

Will keep things secure. For the maiden voyages, a wood-clamp holds things tight while we prototype the fit. So far, so good.

Next time: How to keep the cart in the same county when introducing it to a team.

St. Peter's and the Crowbar: A Trailer Tale

 Part 1: The "Old Trailer

Justice Collins in front of St.
Peter's.  About a half mile away

St. Peters Cathedral in Rome boggles the senses. It appears to be on a scale comparable to "regular buildings," until you get close. It's proportional in such a way that, inside and out, you don't get a feel for its immensity.

Oxen aren't like that. For an appreciation of that fact, get one inside something. Barn, stocks, or trailer.  See what happens? They grow.  

So it is with Brutus. He's big for an ox, but not huge for an ox. Same with Cassius. For a couple of years, they have been pushing the limits of my first trailer. It's a 1999 model draft horse-size horse trailer.  A little too short for the bodies of the big boys (although Zeus fits quite well), a little too narrow. But we got by.  Brutus and Cassius were too wide to ride together, but Zeus and Cassius would. So we got by. Zeus and Cassius were too wide to let me safely pass between them, so I used the escape door. We got by.  The floorboards were still solid, but with 3/4 inch plywood on them the load would be distributed. And we got by. Until we didn't.

Brutus outside: Sorta big

In August I taught Oxen Basics at Tillers, taking the three boys along. Two trips, one afternoon. Zeus and Cassius went first. No issues (ignoring the necessity to use the escape door to get in and out).  

Brutus was reluctant to load up for trip number two.  That's not unusual, but a few minutes of coaxing and up he went.  I tied him short in the manger and was shutting the back door when he stepped back out onto the ground with his back feet.  Remember, the trailer is just a wee too short. Stepping back up, head still tied, he slipped and went down. Not a second later, he was up and in place with a lurch.  I shut the door and got him some hay for the manger.  

Opening the front manger door, I slid in the hay. He took a nibble, but only just. Then I noticed that his head wasn't moving. At all. 

Brutus inside: very big.

When he lurched back into the manger, his horns had gotten ahead of the frame and one side was stuck against the steel divider, the other horn was wedged against the roof.  

I pushed and prodded from through the front opening to no avail.  

I got in next to him and asked him to sidestep. He did. Both ways. No effect.  At that point, I was in a real state, as was he. I could just see him shelling the horn and what that would look like. 

Call someone to help? Not a chance. Once he saw a stranger, he'd be more likely to panic and make things worse.  

Back in the trailer. More sidestepping. Same results. The only difference was that I could see that being in there with him would be dangerous if he did get free. St. Peter's the trailer is not, in terms of size.

Finally, after about a half an hour of this, I got a crowbar and pried from the outside of the trailer against the roof and the horn. Out he came.  

I released him and we walked around the yard for about another half hour.  Then we loaded and made the trip. After four days of class, he loaded, but not well.  It was time for a new trailer.  

A foot wide, a few feet longer.  All aluminum.  

None of the big boys have been inside the new trailer yet. That will have to be a tale for another day.

Hockey Pucks

Andrew VanOrd commented the other day that you could make spacers from a hockey
puck.  I don’t have access to any pucks and can’t imagine what they are made from,
but I liked the idea of a round spacer.  Mine are all squares and “almost squares.”
(Yes, I know those are probably called “rectangles,” and some of them are, except some
are trapezoids and parallelograms caused by inaccurate cutting. So there, my 10th grade
geometry teacher.)

Here’s how I fashioned my puck-like objects.  

-Cut a four and a half inch square of hardwood.  (I tried 4, but it ends up just a little
small)

-Cut the corners off.  Anything close to an octagon is what you’re going for here.  A bandsaw i
s my weapon of choice if I’m outside in the shop. If I’m in the basement shop, a handsaw is
faster than the walk up the stairs and out.  Let prudence and your need for “getting your steps
in” dictate.

-Draw diagonals on one face to find the center of the square.

-Drill a tiny through-hole through the center.

-Chuck the octagon between centers on a lathe.  I use a roughing gouge to round it and
ease the corners a bit. 

-Sand the edges with 80, then 120 grit sandpaper.  Add some linseed oil if you must.  

-Feel free to run up the grits to 1500 and add a mirror-smooth finish of some expensive

oil/varnish/polyurethane/wax mix you’ve purchased online, but know that I will mock you. It’s
a spacer and we’ve already invested 15 minutes in the thing.  It’s a spacer.

-Hold the puck in a handscrew and drill a  2 ⅛-inch hole through the center- using the tiny hole
as a guide.  If you drill 95% of the way through and flip it, the cut is much cleaner.

-Use it.

-Lose it.

-Make another.

Send me a hockey puck and I’ll compare the two.  

Just Like They Said

Ox equipment suppliers may have us over a barrel.  Admittedly, the market for equipment
and supplies - yokes, bows, pins, etc. - has always been small due to the fact that teamsters
can usually fashion their own.  That keeps competition from jumping into a pretty small
pool. Nobody with solely a profit motive would ever seek their fortunes in the world of oxen.  

So what we’re left with is an oligopoly of sorts by default.  Just a few manufacturers and
retailers, which could leave the customer without any leverage, if this were Economics 101.  

The good thing is this is not Economics 101.  

I ordered a few items from New England Ox Supply about a month ago.  A halter, some
hardware for a yoke I plan to build for the MODA raffle (Don’t hold me to it just yet.  My
hatred of yoke making is well-documented here and here), a pair of antique bow pins.  

They arrived on time.  Packed well. Just like they were described.  Quality items at fair
prices.  

We might get lower prices if Amazon suddenly discovered the vast, untapped oxen market,
but we wouldn’t be better off.  

Full disclosure:  My standard rule is to never make recommendations of any free item.  No
kickbacks, no discounts, no swag. If I like it, I’ll say so. If I don’t, I won't.  I ordered the items
since they were sending me a T-shirt for winning the “what’s the historically accurate name for
a pair of oxen since a team refers to several pairs together?” contest on Facebook.  The T-shirt
was free. No review of that. I paid the shipping and full retail on the other items. They are fair
game.

Scroll down for the answer to the trivia question. . .

“what’s the historically accurate name for a pair of oxen since a team refers to several
pairs together?”

A Span

The Economics of Bowbending: A study in hand-tool processes for the data driven.

A little splitting, but plenty serviceable.

Psst.  Here's the secret.  The title of this post may be the longest one in the whole MODA blog, but it's intended as a gate keeper of sorts, to keep out all but the most nerdy.

Congrats, by the way.  C'mon in and join the nerdy fun.

When we bend bows for a class at Tillers, they get bent as square stock.  Since they take a while to set in the form after steam bending, the class is often using the bows bent at the previous class.  Students get a pair of "square" bows and then set about rounding them.  Most of this is pretty straightforward work with a spokeshave.  Except the inside of the curve.

Particularly on smaller (5" and 6" bows) the inside of the curve is a bear to round out.  Compounding this is the usual rules for reading the grain the students have been learning while carving the beam no longer apply.  Since the bow started life as a stick, the grain runs whichever way it runs, regardless of the direction of the bend.  In short, it's frustrating.  I love working spokeshaves and it's still frustrating.

Maybe we need an economist to set us straight.

A chair in need of a new crest rail.

I spent yesterday getting the steambox going to make a new crest rail for a chair I just finished.  Since
the box pumps the same amount of moisture into the shop whether it is mostly empty or mostly full, I decided to bend several things.  Chair rails, hay rake bows, and a set of 5 inch bows.

The bows gave a chance to experiment with a streamlined process.

Starting with square stock, I marked each bow blank with my "octaganizer."  From there, I used my trusty No. 5 Stanley plane to make the squares into octagons.   This is simple work as long as you grind a nice 8" to 10" radius on the plane iron.  Plane down to the lines and stop when you get close.  (I've taught high school students to make tapered octagonal chair legs this way and they can do it with zero hand tool experience.  See Christopher Schwarz for more on the subject.)

Then, I use one of my beloved spokeshaves to round out the middle 12 inches or so of the blank, particularly the side that will form the inside of the curve.  Here's why:

1.  Once that stick is a bow, the inside of the curve is hard to round out, but as a stick it's child's play.

2.  By taking off a little more material on the inside, the bending is easier.  For instance, I was able to bend these 5" bows just by hand pressure.  For the last one, I didn't even clamp the form down the the workbench.

So why not make the entire stick round?  Economics.

The "Octagonizer"

The whole process of marking, octagoning (yeah, it's a new verb) and shaping the center took me seven and a half minutes.

I bent three bows.  Two were fine and one split.  That's about average.  So I had 22 minutes and 30 seconds in the shaping and two bows to show for it.  That means that each bow cost me 11 extra minutes and change before it was bent.  I know I will save more time than that after the bending takes place.  If I was to fully round each one, the time / effort equation would more than likely get out of balance.

Plus, the stick work is fun.  The bow work isn't fun.  So I trade a few minutes of fun work for more minutes of drudgery.  Makes sense to me.

Hay rake bows as well.  Easy Peasy.

Economics.