Stone Boat

[oldnslo]

Bruce,
Thanks for posting that info. Any idea on the time frame when this company was in business?

 

[bcp]

The first article with no picture is from a 1918 book.

The one with the drawing is from the March 1905 issue of Good Roads magazine.

Bruce

 

[Wagtail]

I've watched sledge competitions (single draft horse and matched team) at the Royal Easter Show (Homebush, Sydney).

It's a type of obstacle course. Fascinating to watch.

 

[Thomas]

I remember those well,load it up say ha and the pair oxen headed.

 

[oosik]

All the land out here where I live was "offered up" for homesteads in the 1880s. The government made the tracts (160 acres per person or 320 acres for husband and wife) available for oil exploration. Man, the only oil anybody ever found out here was when they changed oil on their model "T". There aren't even any oil derricks out here - never have been.

So the homestead immediately north of me was "proved up" by a family with five sons. They cleared many fields and built many rock walls. In my travels around this area I found an old farm implement that looks a lot like the pic that bcp posted. However, the "front attachment" shows that it was obviously pulled by farm animals. I don't know if all five sons ever went to school but I have seen the miles and miles of stone walls. They spent an awful lot of time clearing many, many 20 to 40 acre tracts within their homestead.

 

[Egon]

I can recall the stone boat made from two poplar logs cut slanted on the end with a spacer on each end to keep the logs apart. Ordinary planks were used for the top. Our area had horses pulling them.

They did see a lot of use hauling manure out of barns and of course the odd stone.

Each and every one would be custom built to the owners satisfaction.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

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

Hah. Me too. I though the OP might be referring to the old (unsuccessful) concrete cargo ships that we made during WWII. If I recall correctly, there is the hulk of one sticking up in Galveston Harbor.

 

[tcreeley]

In western Mass. on our farm we used this type of stone boat behind the baler. As the bales would be ready to drop we'd walk the planks up to get the bales and back, stacking them sideways. We'd drop off the bales in the same spot where the guys running the truck to the barn would pick them up.

But in the woods when we were cutting trees for the saw mill we used one of these boats we made and hauled over the snow with a crawler.

 

[fried1765]

I can recall the stone boat made from two poplar logs cut slanted on the end with a spacer on each end to keep the logs apart. Ordinary planks were used for the top. Our area had horses pulling them.

They did see a lot of use hauling manure out of barns and of course the odd stone.

Each and every one would be custom built to the owners satisfaction.

"and of course the odd stone"
"odd stone".... in Nova Scotia?
Are you in "the valley"?
Seems like most everywhere else in NS is ALL stone!

 

[GLyford]

I made one suitable for use with a garden tractor from a few scraps of deck planking and a section of pallet racking upright "unbent" to form a 45. It has been sitting in one spot in the dirt long enough that I need to replace the deck boards, but I find it very handy when relocating shrubs (why yes, my wife is a gardener, how could you tell). Dig around shrub, then tilt over to one side and jam sled under. Chain shrub to sled. Winch sled onto tilt flatbed garden cart with come-along. Drive to new location and reverse procedure. If it is a section of yard where ruts don't matter, the cart isn't needed.

I based mine (about 2'x3') on one my Dad had growing up, for use with his AC-B and Farmall Regular (30"x5' like most of the others mentioned here) but his had a front piece that was a semicircle of 1/4" steel with a 1" lip facing up. I suspect it may have been an old piece of boiler.