Farm Mechanics: Machinery and Its Use to Save Hand Labor on the Farm.

CHAPTER I. The Farm Shop With Tools for Working Wood and Iron

THE FARM SHOP WITH TOOLS FOR WORKING WOOD AND IRON

FARM SHOP AND IMPLEMENT HOUSE

The workshop and shed to hold farm implements should look as neat and attractive as the larger buildings. Farm implements are expensive. Farm machinery is even more so. When such machinery is all properly housed and kept in repair the depreciation is estimated at ten per cent a year. When the machines are left to rust and weather in the rain and wind the loss is simply ruinous.

More machinery is required on farms than formerly and it costs more. Still it is not a question whether a farmer can afford a machine. If he has sufficient work for it he knows he cannot afford to get along without it and he must have a shed to protect it from the weather when not in use.

In the first place the implement shed should be large enough to accommodate all of the farm implements and machinery without crowding and it should be well built and tight enough to keep out the wind and small animals, including chickens and sparrows.

The perspective and plan shown herewith is twenty-four feet in width and sixty feet in length.

The doorways provide headroom sufficient for the highest machines, and the width when the double doors are opened and the center post removed is nearly twenty feet, which is sufficient for a binder in field condition or a two-horse spring-tooth rake.

One end of the building looking toward the house is intended for a machine shop to be partitioned off by enclosing the first bent. This gives a room twenty feet wide by twenty-four feet deep for a blacksmith shop and general repair work. The next twenty feet is the garage. The machine shop part of the building will be arranged according to the mechanical inclination of the farmer.

A real farm repair shop is a rather elaborate mechanical proposition. There is a good brick chimney with a hood to carry off the smoke and gases from the blacksmith fire and the chimney should have a separate flue for a heating stove. Farm repair work is done mostly during the winter months when a fire in the shop is necessary for comfort and efficiency. A person cannot work to advantage with cold fingers. Paint requires moderate heat to work to advantage. Painting farm implements is a very important part of repair work.

A good shop arrangement is to have an iron workbench across the shop window in the front or entrance end of the building. In the far corner against the back wall is a good place for a woodworking bench. It is too mussy to have the blacksmith work and the carpenter work mixed up.

Sometimes it is necessary to bring in a pair of horses for shoeing, or to pull the shoes off. For this reason, a tie rail bolted to the studding on the side of the shop near the entrance is an extra convenience.

In a hot climate a sliding door is preferable because the wind will not slam it shut. In cold climates, hinge doors are better with a good sill and threshold to shut against to keep out the cold. Sometimes the large door contains a small door big enough to step through, but not large enough to admit much cold, when it is being opened and shut. Likewise a ceiling is needed in a cold country, while in warmer sections, a roof is sufficient. Farm shops, like other farm buildings, should conform to the climate, as well as convenience in doing the work. A solid concrete floor is a great comfort. And it is easily kept clean.

The perspective and floor plan show the arrangement of the doors, windows and chimney and the placing of the work benches, forge, anvil, toolbench and drill press.

Figures 3 and 4 show the perspective and floor plan of a farm shop and implement house 40 x 16 feet in size, which is large enough for some farms.

SHOP TOOLS

Good tools are more important on a farm than in a city workshop for the reason that a greater variety of work is required.

Measuring Mechanical Work.--In using tools on the farm the first rule should be accuracy. It is just as easy to work to one-sixteenth of an inch as to carelessly lay off a piece of work so that the pieces won't go together right.

The handiest measuring tool ever invented is the old-fashioned two-foot rule that folds up to six inches in length to be carried in the pocket. Such rules to be serviceable should be brass bound. The interior marking should be notched to sixteenths. The outside marking may be laid out in eighths. The finer marking on the inside is protected by keeping the rule folded together when not in use. The coarser marking outside does not suffer so much from wear. Figure 5 shows a 12-inch rule with a slide caliper jaw.

In using a two-foot rule to lay off work the forward end should contain the small figures so that the workman is counting back on the rule but forward on the work, and he has the end of the rule to scribe from. In laying off a 16-foot pole the stick is first marked with a knife point, or sharp scratchawl, and try square to square one end. The work is then laid off from left to right, starting from the left hand edge of the square mark or first mark. The two-foot rule is laid flat on top of the piece of wood. At the front end of the rule the wood is marked with a sharp scratchawl or the point of a knife blade by pressing the point against the end of the rule at the time of marking. In moving the rule forward the left end is placed exactly over the left edge of the mark, so the new measurement begins at the exact point where the other left off, and so on the whole length of the stick. The final mark is then made exactly sixteen feet from the first mark.

In sawing the ends the saw kerf is cut from the waste ends of the stick. The saw cuts to the mark but does not cut it out.

In using a rule carelessly a workman may gain one-sixteenth of an inch every time he moves the rule, which would mean half of an inch in laying off a 16-foot pole, which would ruin it for carpenter work. If the pole is afterwards used for staking fence posts, he would gain one-half inch at each post, or a foot for every twenty-four posts, a distance to bother considerably in estimating acres. It is just as easy to measure exactly as it is to measure a little more or a little less, and it marks the difference between right and wrong.

WOODWORKING BENCH

In a farm workshop it is better to separate the woodworking department as far as possible from the blacksmith shop. Working wood accumulates a great deal of litter, shavings, blocks, and kindling wood, which are in the way in the blacksmith shop, and a spark from the anvil might set the shavings afire.

A woodworking bench, Figure 7, carpenter's bench, it is usually called, needs a short leg vise with wide jaws. The top of the vise should be flush with the top of the bench, so the boards may be worked when lying flat on the top of the bench. For the same reason the bench dog should lower down flush when not needed to hold the end of the board.

It is customary to make carpenter's benches separate from the shop, and large enough to stand alone, so they may be moved out doors or into other buildings.

Carpenter benches may be well made, or they may be constructed in a hurry. So long as the top is true it makes but little difference how the legs are attached, so long as they are strong and enough of them. A carpenter bench that is used for all kinds of work must be solid enough to permit hammering, driving nails, etc. Usually the top of the bench is straight, true and level and it should be kept free from litter and extra tools.

Good carpenters prefer a tool rack separate from the bench. It may stand on the floor or be attached to the wall. Carpenter tools on a farm are not numerous, but they should have a regular place, and laborers on the farms should be encouraged to keep the tools where they belong.

WOODWORKING TOOLS

Every farmer has an axe or two, some sort of a handsaw and a nail hammer. It is astonishing what jobs of repair work a handy farmer will do with such a dearth of tools. But it is not necessary to worry along without a good repair kit. Tools are cheap enough.

Such woodworking tools as coarse and fine toothed hand saws, a good square, a splendid assortment of hammers and the different kinds of wrenches, screw clamps, boring tools--in fact a complete assortment of handy woodworking tools is an absolute necessity on a well-managed farm.

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