OT original Ford tractor

[Commander_Chaos]

I remember seeing someplace that there was a Ford tractor not made by Henry Ford. Very early and weird-looking. Two great big front wheels. Anyone know where I could find a picture?

[Dan_the_Chemist]

The article has a timeline from the first Ford tractor onwards. You can look up the earlier tractors mentioned in the article, such as the "automobile plow", which is shown below.

https://www.farmanddairy.com/columns/how-ford-developed-the-fordson-tractor/563204.html

[Commander_Chaos]

Actually, I found a video of the thing I was talking about:

https://youtu.be/XXclHeVqYIM

[brian Rupnow]

That is a nifty film. I liked the honky-tonk piano. I've never seen a tractor like that, but if you wanted to build a working model it would be fairly easy to work up a set of plans from the pictures shown on the film.---Brian

[Ohio Mike]

That was the "Ford Tractor Company" which was a notoriously awful tractor and not a product of Ford Motor Co. That tractor was purchased by an owner in Nebraska that was so disgruntled he lobbied for legislation which became the Nebraska Tractor Test Act of 1919. That law created the now famous Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory at the University of Nebraska. Any tractor sold in the state had to to be tested at the lab and the test quickly became the industry standard.

[PStechPaul]

That is a nifty film. I liked the honky-tonk piano. I've never seen a tractor like that, but if you wanted to build a working model it would be fairly easy to work up a set of plans from the pictures shown on the film.---Brian

Sounds like a cool change of pace for you to nibble on pre-op and while recuperating. It might be fun to make like a half-scale model that you can ride on.

[RB211]

Time and time again, I'm reminded that there's no such thing as the "good ol days".

[wierdscience]

Time and time again, I'm reminded that there's no such thing as the "good ol days".

Yep, granddad used to say thank god for the internal combustion engine. The first tractor on the farm was an old Fordson, it freed up about 20 hours a week by not having to tend to draft animals.

[Doc Nickel]

Time and time again, I'm reminded that there's no such thing as the "good ol days".

-My dad told me the story of when he was a kid in the midwest, some uncle gathered a bunch of sheet stel from various sources, and using a manual brest drill and a cold chisel, cut out a series of laminates, and using some salvaged copper wire, wound his own transformer, to make a rudimentary stick welder.

That and a 3/8" power hand drill, were literally the only power tools in the subset of farmers my dad grew up around. If he wanted to make something as simple as a shelf bracket, he had to use a (typically dull) hacksaw, a hand file that probably was none too sharp either, hand drill it, and then cold-rivet. Or leave the project until grandpop needed to do some shoeing or other repairs and lit off the primitive forge they had.

Today, I go out to my LED-lit shop full of power tools ranging from cordless drills up to CNC turning centers, and kind of whine a little bit when I chip a carbide insert and have to take two minutes to replace it.

Yeah, there was indeed a lot of good back in the good old days, but today? Even a hardcore "off the grid" prepper-type wouldn't want to go back to those conditions.

Doc.

[Captain K]

That tractor is also why Ford’s tractors were called Fordson. The jerk with the ford trademarked the name.

[PStechPaul]

I suppose they were af-FORD-able...

[Commander_Chaos]

That tractor is also why Ford’s tractors were called Fordson. The jerk with the ford trademarked the name.

That was how this got started. I was telling a guy I work with about Fordson Tractors and where the name came from.

[BCRider]

I suppose they were af-FORD-able...

You forgot to add the BADDA-BOOMP-CHING! sound to that.....

[PStechPaul]

Perhaps coincidentally, this is the 100th anniversary of the Fordson Tractor. And in this documentary, I learned that Fair Lane is the name of the Henry Ford Estate, and the source of the name of the popular Ford Fairlane.

[RB211]

Speaking of Ford and the Ford Estate, one MUST go visit the Henry Ford Museum just outside Detroit. One of the best museums in the country.
There's an indoor museum and an outdoor museum. Only been to the indoor one, requires a full day. Both are on the same property.