Stone Boat

[gemutlich]

For those of you not from New England or "Stone Central" lol:

Stone-boat - Wikipedia

So, many years ago an old-school retired farmer friend and tractor "mentor" of mine used to use an old Oliver OC-3 (man, I wish I had that old crawler)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe..._HG_tractors_at_Antique_Powerland_in_2016.jpg

and an even older (OK, a LOT older) stone boat to skid lengths out of the woods on the snow during the Winter. Kept 'em clean that way so the sawyer had no complaints when he showed up to mill 'em off.

Leading end of the log was up on the stone boat to keep it from digging in, the rest of the length just slid right along in the snow.

We used the heck out of that old sled year 'round for all sorts of stuff, and when he moved away I thought I'd never see one around here again - until yesterday...

Bored outa my head trying to think up things to look for on CL a few days ago I punched in stone boat - which I've done a few times over a lot of years with no luck.

Surprisingly, one popped up!

Spoke with the seller, John, who has a great piece of property up in Stillwater NY (just outside of Saratoga Springs, where the lake still freezes up enough to fish off of) and is selling off a bunch of stuff.

Took advantage of the freakin' beautiful weather yesterday to make the 3 hour drive up to meet him and after visiting and BS'ing with him for a couple hours, came Home with two new members to the family:







Stone boat is every bit of 7' long, and 30" wide. Didn't know about the skidding tongs until we went out to the barn to look at the sled, but being the sensitive guy I am I couldn't bear the thought of splitting them up... Lol

Looking forward to putting them to good use one day

John turned out to be one of those rare sellers you'd like to run into again. What a great guy, and a really interesting story.

So there you have it, Stone Boat.

PS, don't tell my lovely Bride Miss Cindy I crammed that thing inside her car...

 

[/pine]

in the south they are generally known as " upside down car hoods"...or if you went to GA Tech...they're "inverted car hoods"

 

[LouNY]

Seeing one of those is almost enough to make me break out an start sweating just from the thought of walking back and forth in a plowed and spring tooth dragged field loading the danged thing with stones pulling over into the corner of the field or a muddy bar way and unloading an starting over again an again n again, dang I'm tired and going to bed.

 

[AWSubie]

I love old farm equipment, mostly because in my mind it confirms there was time before "facebook" when most people understood what it was to "make an effort". Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the time I live in (especially modern dentistry) but these days when I go out into the city I just wonder if the majority of the population will survive the next 30+ minute power outage.

 

[jaxs]

From the title I thought you had discovered Fred Flintstone's fishing canoe.

 

[3930dave]

From Back When lifting weights was done outside the gym.

Spend the day loading one of those = no problem getting to sleep....

Rgds, D.

 

[bcp]

First one I've ever seen that wasn't fully home-built. Is that front end cast iron?

Bruce

Found a refeerence:

Farm Mechanics: Machinery and Its Use to Save Hand Labor on the Farm ... - Herbert A. Shearer - Google Books

 

[oldnslo]

First one I have seen made with wood. The one we had was solid steel plate. Been a lot of years but i would say at least 30" wide 5 foot long and 3/8" thick. You just rolled the big rocks on and off, no lifting required.

 

[bcp]

Modern version:



Bruce

 

[bcp]

One like the OP, from:

Good Roads Magazine - Google Books

Bruce