Well I'm thinking the next step in this manure spreader is to deal with this live apron. It has chains that go down each side. I've got to put the rollers in. Then it has these cross slats that are fir, 3 and 1/4 inches wide, 7/8 thick. So I haven't made it to town yet. Town, in our reference, is Billings. It's about 35 miles away, to see what options are
available, if I can get it in fir, or do I use it in poplar, do I do it in Ash. I've got to go to this hardwood supply store and see what my options are. So Bryce is going to come in this morning. Remember Bryce? he's a senior in high school up here and he's coming down. when he can fit it in his schedule for a senior project. Well, he needs to spend about 16 hours He's got about half of that in, so he's going to come in this morning and catch another 4 hours and he's got 4 hours hours left and then his time here as a mentorship will be over. So anyway, he was kind of bummed when I put these bolts in for these cross frames, that he wanted to take the hex, and turn them into squares. So I've been leaving that for him. So that's on my agenda for him when he shows up this morning. For me, I think I'm going to tackle the tongue since I'm not ready to get onto this apron yet till I find out my materials. I think I'll deal with this tongue.. So this spreader was horse-drawn and this is the tongue that came on it, it looks like it had been replaced by some old fence post, corral pole, something, and I'm going to put in whatever I can find out of my scrap pile as well, I think. We've got some pretty good bends in it. These are pretty hefty cross brace irons. They're an inch thick, so I've got to straighten those out. I don't have horses anymore. I used to do this, and I think I'm going to do this in probably a five or 6 ft length. It'll depend on what I find in my wood pile, cuz I'm going to pull this with my old Farmall M. So evidently this broke at one time and it looks like they just took a 2x6 and said hey, that's what we've got. That'll work. Yeah, we're about that 5 1/2 inch area. and it's only an inch and a half thick, so it's kind of interesting that I think these U-bolts were original, but with this replacement board only being an inch and a half thick when it should have been probably closer to two, they had to put some shim nuts in there to take up the extra space. And this is a u-bolt on the other side and you see what they stuck
on here for shims also. What ever's handy. And then when they went to the scrap pile to see what they could put in for this tongue, they did the same thing. Yeah, our bolts are too long. Let's just put an extra nut in there and shim it out. If I could hit it flat. Slow down. make sure you're square and won't have to fix it. Square that up again quick. Well this should give me the parts for my tongue. I'm sand blasted and cleaned up. I'll put a coat of paint on these irons. This blank here is portion of a stage coach tongue that I repaired some time ago, but this portion of it was good. I'm going to cut this down to, I think about 5 inches. I'm 2 inch thick there. That'll make my crossbar. It'll be just a simple lap joint into here. So the irons of the tongues mount to a u-bolt that goes through this casting underneath each side of the front axle, and then the top will bolt through the axle itself. And from the center bolt of the fifth wheel out to these mounting spots, is about 30 and a half, 31, so I want somewhere between 61 and 62 inches totally across, So the center of the eye-bolts clear across I'm at 61 and a half. Should be right in that ballpark And from the end of the old tongue, up to the first bolt on these braces, was 24 inches. So this should be pretty close to where these braces go. There's a couple U bolts that clamp these irons to this crossbar and there's two U bolts that mount this whole tongue assembly to the axle. Well this will make a functional tongue for my
tractor. I'm past the stage of having teams. If I have somebody that wants to bring a team down and use it, I can either put in a longer pole or make a duplicate tongue for the whole deal, but this is going to work for what I want to do. I did put the hammer strap on for
the double tree. Obviously I don't need one for my tractor, but this way I don't lose it. It'll stay there. So I think it's going to work well. I really do enjoy when Bryce has the opportunity to come down and spend some time in the mornings, usually on a Friday morning. That's kind of what his schedule works out. He's got one more time to come. So I'll kind of miss him after that, but I do appreciate him coming. And I do appreciate you all coming along as well. Thanks for watching.
