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Original Post:
Posted on July 31, 2016
I found your forum here after working on a barn teardown yesterday, gaining a couple good finds from it… and wanting to research what on earth I now had.
These photos are from yesterday…..
A friend and I were given a 1920’s (?) eight cow dairy barn to tear down. Initially it looks not too bad until you go to the south end of the barn and find that 1/4 of the roof is torn off and half the wall is missing — the bottom half— and 1/4 of the loft floor. It is located in the rainy Pacific NW after all. I don’t know about this location, but at my house we get 90-120″ of rain a year, and this barn has been opened to the elements for at least 20 years. My friend gets the barn to reassemble (with a few new parts) at his place, but my reward for this crazy wonderful endeavor is the hay trolley system, and the brick from the milkhouse to make my new root cellar at my place. and learning how to dissemble a building to put back up again.
This is what we were up against. This is the floor of the loft which was crashed down about 8 feet from where it ought to be.
This is what it looked like hours after jacking it back up into place. We have to restore this part of the floor in order to walk on it in the loft to start tearing down the roof, trusses, hay trolley track and ect. Yes, we have to rebuild part of the barn to take it apart. After this photo was taken we placed another huge beam under all of these timbers and braced everything.
This is looking up through one of the holes in the loft floor (it looks awesome in this photo, trust me, it is all rotten out) at the complete hay carrier complete on its rail. We took all of it down but the rail. It is 20ft above the loft floor. We had to haul 1″ plywood sheets up there for stability for the ladder (and us). When we went to go see this barn for the first time, I seem to be the only one who noted there was this beauty in the loft. The owners took everything out of the barn they wanted, so this is MINE!!!
After shoring up the barn in a few places (the photos above were not the only places which needed bracing), we decided to take the trolley down. I believe this is a Louden Adjustable Senior Hay Trolley Carrier (please correct me if I am wrong). The Barn Owls are not going to be happy that they are losing one of their perches, but then again, they are going to be losing their whole barn within the month. We are going after the track at the same time we are taking the roof off the barn.
It has numbers 1717 on it, as well as 1804. I saw another similar to it on this forum, but it had the number 1803. I am dubious as that is their year of make. Does anyone know what the numbers denote? Patent numbers? Does anyone have a potential year/s this was made?
And the Meyers-Ashland (?) 6-tined Hay Grapple.
My intent is to restore this to working order, if possible, as I have with a few other smaller scale heritage agriculture machines/mechanisms. One of the next barns to dismantle is for me to take home and reassemble, and I would love to have this in my loft for hauling up ~2 ton of hay, once a year.
The wheels are slightly frozen, thankfully the whole thing was under the part of the barn which did not lose it’s roof, and other than a bit of owl poop, it is not bad looking, is not pitted and with a good spray (or three) of WD-40 or some such thing I think it would move nicely. My partner in this teardown wants me to keep it in the patina it is in, but I think it is calling for me to sand blast it, and repaint it red (I think that is the original colour since it has a bit still on it).
I am trying to find more info on the Meyers Hay Grapple, and I have it in my mind what colours I would like for it, but I want to get other opinion from you experts. I see alot of topics on the carriers themselves, but little on the things they hefted. Can we start a thread on those too?
The next task is to take the roof tin off at the same time as taking the track down. I have not identified what kind of track it is, other than metal, not wood. It too, is in good shape.
This is my first Hay Trolley and I can feel the addiction (I am also addicted to fanning mills too)
Cedar
PS Thank you for having this awesome forum/site[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
– Responses:
I am back to working on the Hay Trolley and Grapple as of today. I got it back from the sandblaster today, where it has been sitting for a year, as due to kafuffles I was not able to go get it until now. It took more than wire brushing, so I sent it off.
I decided to not leave it with the patina I found it with, and I have inquires out to various museums to see if they can tell me what the original colours of these would have been. He hit it again to touch it up. I was AMAZED!! It looked brand new. The man who did the sandblasting for me, said that it did indeed pretty much look like that new. It took 300lbs of blasting material to make it feel refreshed.
The photos above as how and where I found it.
This photo below is how I saw them today, after they had been sandblasted
How it looked straight from the sandblasters
And after I started to primer it today. I have to go get more primer tomorrow. I did not get all of the hay grapple done. This photo was trying to show the color difference of the primer and the bare metal. It eventually got two coats today. It must be the sunlight, as it is much greyer than the white-ish it shows in the photo. When I was painting it, it was difficult to tell where I had already painted.
And after I started to primer it today. I have to go get more primer tomorrow. I did not get all of the hay grapple done. This photo was trying to show the color difference of the primer and the bare metal. It eventually got two coats today. It must be the sunlight, as it is much greyer than the white-ish it shows in the photo. When I was painting it, it was difficult to tell where I had already painted.
WHY did I want this? I actually did not know I wanted a hay trolley, but I looked up into the dark loft of the barn, saw it, and I wanted to give it a working home. Someday I will have a barn again (hopefully a salvaged elderly one), and I want it in my barn as a functional antique. Both my museum quality fanning mills were ruined due to the kafuffle, but I will start collecting mid-sized farm things again. But while some people collect tractors as antique farm stuff, I tend to collect the stuff which is still usable (or can be made so) and show the next generations. I have several messages and emails into different museums around the country to see what the original colours where on these items. But like painting the bee-hives, this is one of my ‘in-between’ the other projects. But I had to hurry and get primer on it, as it literally could start rusting again overnight.
It had been hanging in that barn 96 years.
Cedar
Got a little further along on my restoration. Eventually this will be restored to working condition. It is able to lift 1,200lbs (the complete trolley system, not just this part of it, and I have no intention of using it for that much weight). I want to get the lettering on, but in reality, I need to loosen the track wheels, retap them, white grease them, etc. before I get to do the artsy stuff, as paint is going to have to retouched after taking the stuck parts out I am sure. I had a machinist tell me a little secret about my track wheels today, which made them even cooler. But this section of the trolley is done (other than the bolt and nut which are in a bucket 70 miles away), so I did one side of the lettering, will wait for that to dry overnight, and letter the other side tomorrow or so.
I know it seems kinda weird, but little cheap projects like this, are what is keeping my ‘sanity’ for the last two years, since multiple other projects have been stymied for various reasons.
Antique Hay Trolley & Grapple, entire 100-some feet of track, trips, and blocks = Free Salvage
Sandblasting = $40
Primer – $6.99
Paint x3 = $14
Model Paint = negligible amount of money
Paintbrush = Already had.
around $60 project.. .
Cedar[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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