Horse Buggy Completed

[Sheilajeanne]

1 hour ago, EdJ said:

Cutting, welding, heating up in the forge and bending.

Did that mean some of the metal had to be completely replaced? How much of the original metal was re-usable?

I'm in awe of the craftmanship that went into the original, and also, therefore, into your restoration!

I'm sure most people would have cut some corners when it came to things like the angle of the seat back! 

[Chief Filipino]

Wow that's awesome! 

 

[scrapyarddog]

Uh un-uh-ing-uh-believable 

 

Amazing. Makes me want to restore that antique chair my cats insist is their second litter box.

[EdJ]

On 9/8/2020 at 10:55 AM, Sheilajeanne said:

Did that mean some of the metal had to be completely replaced? How much of the original metal was re-usable?

I'm in awe of the craftmanship that went into the original, and also, therefore, into your restoration!

I'm sure most people would have cut some corners when it came to things like the angle of the seat back! 

No replaced metal, just resizing generally just a 1/16th of an inch.

[EdJ]

Back safely from the motorcycle trip.  The next phase of the project was the running gear and single tree.  Dismantling the wood from the steel was pretty easy other than there were some seized bolts occasionally and I had to order some replacement axle straps (holds the wood cap on the steel axle).  Attached is a picture of the fifth wheel bolt that the front axle pivots on when turning.  The nut snapped the threads off and I had to re fabricate it.  The half moon fits in the spring perch (next pic) preventing the bolt from spinning. 

 

The next few weeks were spent scraping all the old paint and chalking off the axle caps, wheels and the single tree.  It took roughly 4 hours per wheel to scrap and sand.  The wood looks new but has some an checking in the grain.

 

Note in the above picture from the center moving out.  There is a sovern hub with a wood core, spokes, then fellows, then steel tire, and then rubber tire.  Most of the spokes were it pretty good shape other than some bowing.  There is a slight gap at the end of the spoke to the fellow and then a slight gap again to the steel tire.  Most of this is all due to 120 years of shrinkage.  It is possible to resize  the fellows ans steel tire on the spokes to tighten it up but it costs about the same as purchasing new wheels.  I decided to leave as is and see how much they would tighten up with some TLC. 

I mixed up a concoction of 1/3 each boiled linseed oil, turpentine, and spar varnish and heated it up to 160 degrees and foam brushed it on the wood.  The old wood sucked it up and it took 3 coats per wheel with the 4th coat eliminating the turpentine providing a slight top coat for uv protection.  After drying for 3 weeks the finish turned out with a nice rustic patina.

 

The wheels tightened up substantially but I would not go any faster than a walk with a horse.  If I sent them in for a full tire job I would probably end up with some new spokes and maybe a fellow or two.  Since I like the way they turned out I decided to keep them as is until a need arises.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by EdJ

[EdJ]

Next task was cleaning up all the metal pieces of the carriage spending hours at the blasting cabinet.  One problem I ran into is that there were a lot of pieces longer than my 4ft wide blast cabinet.

I sandwiched to pieces of OSBwith a hole to accommodate the longer pieces without making too big of mess.

 

No wit is time to setup a paint booth.  I selected an old fashioned marine paint and primer that will handle the expansion and contraction of the wood and sprayed everything with a pressure pot setup (handles thinker paint) on the spray gun.  

The downside to the old oil alk paint is that it takes forever to dry waiting 48 hours between coats.  As seen in the picture below, I was filling the grain that is not covered by the leather upholstery with the primer and sanding it out.  Very tedious job.

 

Every little piece had to be painted separately for later assembly.

Where I sanded the filled grain I was pretty close to obtaining a mirror finish.  Almost ready for assembly.

 

Edited September 21, 2020 by EdJ

[paloma]

great work! BRAVO!

[Retswerb]

This is awesome, @EdJ. Thanks for bringing us along through the process!

This obviously isn’t your first rodeo, with a project requiring a fairly diverse set of skills and knowledge. Once you’ve walked us through this one I’d love to see more of your work.

[JWheeler331]

That’s very very nice.