Rusted, Busted and Worn Out

I saw this link on one of the traction engine forums that I visit and thought it may be of interest , scroll down past the first few pics. I would welcome suggestions of how best the rust could be treated

Rusted, Plumb Busted & Plain Wore Out

J

Love those pictures.Wish I could visit the site. I reckon a spray or two of WD40 and some matches and most would soon be running

WOW! WOW! looks like they could use about a dozen Fred Dibnahs, on loan for the next 20-30 years. Question is, is there enough intrest in the US for this kind of restoration project? A container full of wire brushes, and a tanker full of elbow grease, and that would just be for starters.

WOW

Some graveyard, where would you start?

I have visited many such graveyards in North America (there are many) and often times the owner is more than a little eccentric, sometimes extremely so, almost to the point of mental illness with hoarders' disorder. Often they will refuse any offer on any item, and if you push at all, they just say "see you". Obviously the collection in the photos has been there for many years, the newest vehicle being a mid 60's Pontiac sedan. I'll bet this guy refuses all offers fair or not and intends to take the collection with him when he passes.

I was told one such fellow in his 60's had a mental block about selling anything in his huge inherited collection because his long-dead father always told him forcefully from an early age that he should get about twice the going rate for every item whe selling. He had imprinted on the son by his continuous harangue that all his stock was extra special and thus worth more. The son was scared to sell thinking he would make a mistake and let something go too cheap, dishonouring his father's memory somehow. So, 30 years on, it is all still rusting away to worthless piles of brown oxide dirt, not even enough left to use as patterns in many cases.

Once many years ago I was at a public sale of four steam traction engines locally, where there were over 200 potential buyers present. One rare engine started bidding at $50,000 and quickly reached $200,000, an unheard-of price locally for any engine. The two bidders were famous local trucking and brewery millionaires building collections, so real live cash money was on the table. The auctioneer reached that peak bid, announced that it still did not reach the reserve, checked with the owner to see if this huge bid might be accepted, and he shook his head no. That engine and 2 others now continue to rot in the field.

Senseless and sad.

JD

I would love one of those on my drive.

The big engines in the middle remind me of when i was an apprentice and used to visit large mills in Bradford. They had engines like that as standby to run the factories. The pulleys used to impress me with all the 2" ropes on them, All equal and spliced at the joints.

They used to gleam and you needed ladders to get to the top.

Ah nostalgia

Bri

This is amazing. Is this site open to the public-I would love to visit it. Makes me realise that there was major engineering developments outside the UK scene in 19/20th century which were on a different scale (USA big!) and design concept that deserves serious research. Thanks Jason for the insight!

I used to work on traction engine restorations. On the cast iron and the thick steel plate we used an air tool that we called it a nail gun at the time but it seems to be called a 'needle scaler' now - video here: **LINK** It's really the only way to do it, a wire brush is completely useless.

we used to use those to clean up welds

Got a friend who restores old tractors, he uses sand via a water blaster, it gets rid of the heavy rust, but as the steel dries, you can see the new rust forming. A number of years ago we entertained a large group of model engineers from UK, both there, and at our museum at Homebush, where we have our own collection of rusting machinery, and I inflicted them to a demo of one of my little hot air engines. There are quite a number of collectors of scrap machinery, and a few who rebuild, and restore, often to better than new, Tractors, cut and polished, where the origional got a quick blast of paint as it went out the factory door. Ian S C

Good to see some of you enjoyed that link. If you did not go to the home page there are also some links to photos of other steam events and railroading for those that like locos.

It does seem that a lot of these collectors don't want to part with things, thats the impression you get watching programmes like American Pickers, most are reluctant to sell and the only way that things come onto the market is when someone dies and they have an estate sale.

Talking of which I was just having a look through this auction catalogue which has some nicely restored Tractors and gas engines. Still time to get a bid in

J

This is the grid ref if you want to see the size of the site on Google Earth, apparently the photos are "only the tip of the iceberg"

40.006239, -85.580063

A huge pile of rust BUT there are a shedload of restoration projects here, Yanks get your fingers and money out and get them

Bob

A rich seam to mine, that site:

**LINK**

Joey

I used to work on traction engine restorations. On the cast iron and the thick steel plate we used an air tool that we called it a nail gun at the time but it seems to be called a 'needle scaler' now - video here: **LINK** It's really the only way to do it, a wire brush is completely useless.

Got a friend who restores old tractors, he uses sand via a water blaster

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Descalers are quite hard work to use and the scale itself is miles tougher than rust so you need to develop a few minor skills at spotting and removing it

For the really tough scale you actually needed a chipping hammer, which is like a geologists rock splitting hammer

If I was going to do a job like that again myself I would shot or sand blast it, which was the ONLY system they ever used in dry dock because it's far more manpower efficient on those tough jobs

Lidl are actually selling the air powered pneumatic gear to do that sort of thing this week

Edited By Ady1 on 28/09/2012 14:35:38