What my #9 mower paint will look like

I found a picture that is kinda close to what I am expecting my mower to look like.

This is kinda what I'm going for.  Blue sickle bar, red mower, blue seat stem.  My wheels will be all white though, no blue around them.  This mower is a McCormick Deering #7, but it is very close to my mower.

I am posting this next picture, because I'm pretty sure this is what my mower looked like before I got it.  If you look close, you can see that the earth has built up and buried many of the parts on this mower.  Rest assured, that the moisture in the dirt, is eating away at that metal, pitting it, and making it rust horribly.  This is why so many of my parts, especially the yoke, pitman, and such, were unusable.

This is a McCormick Deering #7.  See how many of the parts are buried in the dirt ... this will make someone's life very difficult if they were to ever want to restore it into usable shape.

IH #9 Mower Page

Got a horse drawn disc

I have slowly been sanding down and painting the parts of the IH #9 mower.  I currently have the pitman arm ready to go, many of the sickle bar parts ready, and one wheel sanded down and ready to be washed and painted.

Today I added another implement to my arsenal.   One of my neighbors who has quite a collection of old rusty stuff on his land, put an old horse drawn disc up in front of his field, right next to the fence.  I think he put it up there just for me.  I have ridden past on my wagon many times, and so I think he knew that if he put it up next to the fence, I'd come calling. 

My new disc.

Not too shabby!

I bought it from him for the price of 75 dollars.  Not too shabby.  It's not in bad shape.  It is missing the truck assembly and pole stuff, but I think I can get away without needing it.  I have a forecart, and I'm thinking that I'll just hook this up to the back of the forecart.

This disc is unlike the disc I borrowed from Pat.  It only has two levers, that adjust the horizontal angle of the disc (adjust the amount of drag the disc creates).  Pat's also had levers on the side that adjusted the vertical pitch of each side of the disc.  It has the newer grease zerts, instead of the old grease holders.

I'm pretty excited!  Can't believe this was sitting so close to me.

Working on the IH #9 Mower - Total breakdown

OK ... yesterday I got a wild hair ... and I did the unthinkable.  As I was looking at each individual part of this mower, I realized that many of the joints were stuck, and needed to be cleaned and properly lubricated.  This included the intricate lifting assembly.  I started by taking the sickle bar aparts as much as I could (still have the 3 bolts that hold the main yoke shoe that wouldn't budge).

Breakdown of the outer shoe.  Skid, shoe, grass board holder, and the bar

The other end of the sickle bar.  Yoke shoe still attached, wear plates and the skid plate.  Note the 3 bolts I could not get to budge.

I removed the ledger plate that was sticking up.  You can see the rivit sticking up.

The sickle bar

Then I moved over to the mower, and once I started taking off stuff, I couldn't stop.  Next thing you knew, I had a stack of parts, and a bare mower.

Who knew an old toolbox could make such a handy part holder.

You can see the Yoke and push bar here, as well as the tilt lever and part of the lever assembly.  Note that I still haven't been able to get that yoke pin out.  I'm going to have to drill it and find a press to push it out.

A pile of parts.  They are all important, and must go back together the same way.  Can I get them back together, without extra parts?  :)

Most the stuff was easy to take apart, and I always put bolts and pins right back where they were to make it easy to put back together.  I even drained the oil housing, which was mostly water thanks to me not bolting the lid on tight.

You can see lots of water, and a little oily sludge.  I bet this baby is ready for some good oil in her!

Once it was all apart, I laid it all out on a sheet of plywood.  I tried to lay the components that hooked together near each other to aid me in re-assembly.  Once again, I can't say enough about how awesome it is to have The Horsedrawn Mower Book by Lynn Miller.  I couldn't do this without it.

One special note that I learned myself.  HOW DO YOU TAKE THE YOKE OFF THE PUSH BAR???  Well ... it's threaded on.  You have to spin the yoke around the push bar (lefty loosey) and it will come off.  I couldn't find that anywhere, and figured it out.  Mine was stuck good.  What I did was to re-install the push bar to the mower (slide the end of the bar back in its socket, but from the top, so the push bar rested on the frame, and the yoke was at my chest level).  From there I stuck a piece of rebar through the yoke pin holes, applied some PB Blaster, and used all the muscle I had to rotate it.  It wasn't easy, but it slowly came.  WOO HOO!

a bare mower.  Wow ... looks so simple.  :)

In this pic are the seat, tilt lever, clutch assembly, stay bar, lead bar, push bar, sickle bar, end shoe and skit, and sickle blade.  (also on the top right, is the side draft bar, and the hitch assembly.

From L to R; Side draft bar, yoke lift part, yoke, lift assembly, s hook, tilt bar, and across the top you can see the lift lever.

From L to R; Lift lever (across the top), yoke, lift assembly, s-hook, tilt bar, main lift bolt, spring, main lift plate, spring, foot pad bar (used to drop the mower).

And here it is.  All the parts to my #9 broken down.  NOTE:  The Golden Retreiver pup in the background with the big cow leg bone is not part of the mower, but she does make good company while working.  :)

Now that it's broken out, I just have to take it piece by piece and wire brush, clean, and paint.  I also need to decide what I'm going to do about the sickle bar.  Really, I could just buy all new guards and be done with it.  Maybe I'll save my pennies and do that.


IH #9 Mower Page

Working on the IH #9 Mower - Paint!

I haven't done much with the horses since the tractor show, but I did start working more on the mower.

The first thing I needed was some parts.  I searched online, and found a place in Pennsylvania.  They are B.W. Macknair & Son.  Link Here  They were great.  They answered my emails and got me the stuff I needed.  I ordered the entire clamp end of the pitman bar (mine was almost all rotted away from sitting in dirt for years and years), I also ordered some springs for the wheel hubs, and two new bolts to hold on the sickle bar.  I would recommend the Macknairs to anyone.  They were great to deal with.  I also ordered a new pitman bar from Jeff at www.bigblackhorse.com.  He is also great to deal with.

New Pitman bar clamps on a new pitman.  60 dollars well spent!

I've reached a point in the restoration where you have to decide a) do I just get it back together in usable shape? or b) do I take the time to take it apart and paint it so it looks nice?  There are pro's and con's to both these choices.  On one side, you have a piece of working machinery faster, with less effort, but on the other hand, with a little more effort, you have more than a working machine, but a pretty piece of farm equipment.  Ultimately I decided that since the wheels are already off, I am going to paint it and make it look nice.

Now, the painting of a #9 mower is an odd thing.  It is VERY hard to find what the original's looked like.  All the ones I see are fence-row rust colored.  :)  On the back of the Lynn Miller horse drawn mower book, there is a color picture of one of the mowers.  I have never seen one in real life painted like this.  Most the ones I see are just all red, with white or yellow wheels.  After looking all over the internet, I found a forum that was discussing this, and a memo was listed with the original paint decision.  Link here.  After more reading, it just sounds like most people today just paint them whatever color they want.  I decided to try to stick to the memo linked above.

(I have tried very hard to find a picture to post of the back of the Lynn Miller book so you can see what I'm shooting for, but I cannot find one.  I will have to take a picture of the book with my camera and post the picture)

Found this paint at Tractor Supply.  Ford Blue, IH Red, and IH White.

What I plan to do is paint the wheel hubs, sickle bar, and seat spring Ford Blue,  paint the wheels and metal pitman parts IH White (team pole is already white as well),  paint the outer grassboard and sticks Caterpillar Yellow, and then paint the main body (including lifting assembly and everything) IH Red.  I should note that I'm also going to keep the pitman bar with the natural wood grain it has now.

So last night, I got started with some of the easier stuff.  I prepped and painted the wheel hubs and metal pitman parts (except the clamps which came from Macknair and sons with a nice powdercoated black paint job).

Wheel hubs and pitman parts painted with 1st coat.

To prep the parts, I'm just using a wire wheel on a drill and scrubbing the old parts really good down to the bare metal.  I am then scrubbing them with mineral spirits and letting them dry.  As soon as they dry, I apply the first coat of paint.  I'm gonna let that dry for a day, then add a second coat.  I'll then let this dry for a few days to make sure the paint is fully dried so I can bolt things back together without the damaging the paint.

After I prepped and painted these parts, I turned my attention to the sickle bar.  The pins holding it on the mower, were eaten away and stuck in place.  Since I got new pins from Macknair & Sons, I used a sawzall to cut the old pins and remove the sickle bar.  Those pins were stuck solid.  I tried tapping them out after it was cut free, and they wouldn't budge.  That's what happens when two metal pieces sit still in the dirt for 50 years.

With this view, you can see the 3 cuts necessary to free the bar.  2 on the right, and one on the left.

If you look close, you can see the pins still stuck in the mower.

After freeing the bar, It's now time to clean it up, paint it, and make it usable.  The blade itself looks pretty good.  There are a few ledger plates on the guards that I don't like though.  One is lifted, and another looks bent.  I'm going to have to fix these before I can get it back together.  The following pictures will show you exactly what I'm seeing.  I should note ... the Lynn Miller book pointed out that you shouldn't worry about guard tips that may be bent.  They do not need to be bent straight and should be used as is.  This does not affect the mower functionality.  Some of the guard tips on my bar are slightly bent.

Sickle Blade:  To my eyes, this looks pretty good.  Nice and straight, and teeth are not bent or chipped.

Sickle bar: looks alright, with a few exceptions

Lifted ledger plate.  If you look at the plate behind the first in the pic, you'll see how they should be seated.  This one plate is raised up.  A rivit is supposed to hold it down.

This ledger plate is slightly bent up.  I believe this would cause problems if I was trying to use the mower.  I'll need to replace this.

There is a part of me that thinks I should just replace all the ledger plates.  However, I currently don't have a sickle anvil which is used to remove them.  Also, I'd have to find and buy the legder plates.  This costs money.  I suppose if I really wanted to spend money, I could just buy all new guards and just bolt them on.  Decisions decisions!  :)

That's it for now.  Who thought a blog post about restoring parts of a mower could be so long.  :)  If anyone has any tips or tricks, or anything they would like to share on this topic, please comment on the blog!  I'd love to hear opinions!


IH #9 Mower Page

Terrell Tractor Show - 2012

Last Saturday was a great day.  I went down to Terrell Texas for the North Texas Antique Tractor & Engine Club's show.  I did this last year and had the girls pull a tractor pull sled for the first time.  This year was supposed to be the same, and I was just fine with that, because last year I had a blast.

I woke up, got the girls ready and then hit the road.  I was doing this event solo as my son was busy with some other stuff.  I have to say that I think the girls really enjoy this kind of thing.  They get brushed out good, then shined up with some show shine stuff.  After that their hair looks great, including a flowing mane and tail.  Then they get a dose of some really good fly spray.  They really look sharp.  They are left feeling totally comfortable, without any annoying Bugs.  Pam might even say this is how the good life was had back in California where she came from.

One of the best parts of this event, is the chance to hang out with my pals Mark and Bev McGowan of the Double M Warhorse Ranch in Terrell.  I really enjoy them and count their friendship as a major blessing in my life.  Mark and Bev are friends with the tractor club, and the club wanted to have draft horses at the event.  That is the sign of a great tractor club in my book!  :)

Mark and Bev were set up with 2 of their bay Clydesdale mares that they got from the Budweiser breeding program.  These horses, Baby and Star, are such pretty girls.  Mark and Bev had them set up in a pen made up out of panels that were donated by Tractor Supply.  There was another pen ready and waiting for my Belgians.  We got them moved in, gave them some fresh hay, and they began the lovely job of eating and looking pretty for the crowds of people.

Pam and Rachael living the good life

Here are the Clydesdales.  Aren't they pretty!

The tractor club folks came by, and were very gracious to us for bringing the horses out.  They asked me to head over to the tractor pull at 1:30 PM for a demonstration.  This was the same thing as last year, and I was excited for it.

I got the girls harnessed up, and had company while I did it.  It's really fun to have nice people chatting with me while I do this stuff.  There was a 3 year old who was infatuated with the horses.  She was a cute little girl and she ended up sitting on Pam the whole time I harnessed up Rachael.  She was in heaven, and it was all her momma could do to make her leave.  They were great company to have!

For the pull this year, I did something different.  Last year I ground drove the horses over, and we just hooked the double tree up to the sled and the girls pulled that.  It was a bit of an inconvenience to hook the tree up though, and it took them a bit of time to find someone who had a clevis that would fit the double tree.  I decided that this year I would solve the problem by using my forecart.  I hitched the girls up to the forecart, and then off we went.  Mark sat with me and Bev took the pictures.  Great company!

Mark McGowan and me riding over to the tractor pull

The girls were in great form, and responding perfectly to commands

Here we are, at the pull.  We stopped for a bit while they did some announcing about us.  The girls stood great and looked gorgeous.

Once over at the tractor pull, we did a few demo runs.  I will not use the forecart again.  It was very easy to hook up, but the cart ended up just getting in the way and making the horses not pull together as well as I liked.  Having a pole hooked up had the girls fighting each other a bit when the going got hard (Pam would stop and Rachael would pull, then Rachael would stop right as I got Pam going, and on and on).  So ... if you're gonna pull some weight, don't use a cart, just use a tree, like they do in the big weight pull competitions.

Here I am, moving the girls up in front of the sled.

I backed the girls up to get the forecart in front of the cart

I was smart enough to know that I didn't want to be on the cart when the pull started.

Here we are, ready to go.

We just started.  The girls aren't even pulling hard here.

Here's a shot capturing what I was talking about.  Pam stopped, Rachael kept going, and they kind of had an accordion effect after that.  Not ideal!

Once the pull was over, I headed back to our area.  This is where I had a little fun.  I was standing on the cart, and had a wide open field in front of me.  I ended up trotting the girls and doing some big circles.  It was a lot of fun.  It was almost as if I was in a chariot back in Rome.  The girls did perfect for me.  This was fun!

Here I am, racing in circles.  This was way fun!

As I was pulling up to the trailer, the adorable 3 year old and her mother came back.  I have 2 seats on the forecart, so I asked the little girl if she'd like a ride.  She lit up.  I had her mom sit in the seat, and hold the girl.  We did a nice walk and hopefully made her day.  After that I took another boy for a ride (he was standing there close, watching, just hoping he might get the chance.  How can I say no to that)

Going for a ride.  Bev caught me asking the girls to back up.

We hung out for a bit, and let people ogle over the horses.  Then we walked the horses out into an open field.  Someone in the tractor club had made a giant wagon that was a Radio Flyer wagon replica.  He wanted a photo op with some big horses next to it to add scale, so we walked the horses over for that.  This started a trend of crowds of people walking over and we gave kids rides on the horses.  Since I was solo, I was leading both Rachael and Pam together.  This was a bit rough, so I didn't last long like that.  I put the girls away, and then became the official "kid lifter" to put the kids on the back of the Clydesdales.  We were all smiling, and many kids had their dreams come true. 

This is the giant Radio Flyer wagon.  This thing was HUGE.

This is Baby, one of Mark and Bev's bay Clydesdales

This is Star.  She and Baby are full sisters

Another shot of Baby.  I'm a Belgian man, but I sure can appreciate these pretty horses!

Overall, I love these events.  I love meeting people who are interested in the horses.  I love interacting with the kids who are wide eye'd at the sight of such big horses.  Besides that, this event gave me the chance to spend the afternoon with some of my best friends.  Time like that is rare, and I cherish it.

Thanks Mark and Bev for having me.  Thanks for your friendship, and Bev ... thanks for the pictures in this blog!!!