High-quality black-and-white photographs of large old machines and tools

[mansworld]

So, after all, a mule is not stubborn and can works. From the common phrase ' stubborn as a mule'.

[schuylergrace]

I was imagining single-point threading that rod at the top.

[hemmjo]

If any tool needed eyes painted on it that's it...

HA, I just got that!!! Sometimes it takes me a while, depending on the day!!

[Toolmaker51]

Twenty mule team drawn combine. Walla Walla County, WA. 1941.

Fullsize image: https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net...6_fullsize.jpg

re post 836, the mule team and combine.
With no clue what's going on here, examining photo revealed some details. The hitch is just pulling the machine, and it's power plant to run the combine itself, plus what ever tasks of surprisingly large crew, including filling the sacks piled on left side.
Then wikipedia......The modern combine harvester, or simply combine, is a versatile machine designed to efficiently harvest a variety of grain crops. The name derives from its combining four separate harvesting operations—reaping, threshing, gathering, and winnowing— to a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, rice, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), sorghum, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers and rapeseed. The separated straw, left lying on the field, comprises the stems and any remaining leaves of the crop with limited nutrients left in it: the straw is then either chopped, spread on the field and plowed back in or baled for bedding and limited-feed for livestock.

Combine harvesters are one of the most economically important labor-saving inventions, significantly reducing the fraction of the population engaged in agriculture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester Article may have been written by an Englishman, as I Americanized spelling of ploughed and labour-saving.

This post demonstrated likelihood many are quite ignorant of goings-on 24/7/365 to keep us fed. Though a huge probability existed the mules were bred here in Missouri.

[Toolmaker51]

Imagine shearing 7" cold steel!

Ralph

Recalling what we've seen of MESTA equipment, could be their compact model........

Compared to shears that descend guided at each end, this is a variety known (perhaps colloquially) as an alligator/ aka high angle shear. Both use the inclined blade angle just like scissors do. The blade clearance on the MESTA was probably not good for sheetmetal, but smaller bench shears do it easily.
Never sheared 7" but can report a 6' wide 'gator nipped hot rolled stock for welding coupons 1-1/2" and 2" thick, hardly making a sound. 25-30 minutes or so, would supply a big pile of them. Then handful of guys would eat 50 pound boxes of electrodes running multi pass weld samples.
Neither one a bill I'd like to foot.

[Toolmaker51]

I was imagining single-point threading that rod at the top.

Must be referring to the tie-rod connecting the upper frame. While your doing that, I'm ordering 2 cuts of hex bar to single point the nuts. Definite opportunity to bore pitch and maximum diameter references.

[mr mikey]

You know you're getting old when you remember that black and white commercial for Twenty Mule Team Borax cleaner. Good stuff.

[hemmjo]

You know you're getting old when you remember that black and white commercial for Twenty Mule Team Borax cleaner. Good stuff.

I used to have a model of the Twenty Mule Team Borax team and wagons. Not sure what happened to it.

[12bolts]

Dave, from Engels Coach Shop, (Youtube) built a full size 20 mule team borax wagon, (x2) and a water cart from scratch.

The link is a brief rundown of the process but there is also a full series of videos on each step. Its a fantastic channel. I love his stuff.

[mr mikey]

Wow, the craftsmanship is awesome. Thank you for posting.