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The Model T Axle vs. the Okie Pipe Sizer Gizmo
So the US Postal Service delivered one of them pipe sizer gizmos that is standard issue in Oklahoma. You hold it up next to the pipe and it tells you what to punch into that there data collector.
But when I tried it out on something that I found today, I stumped it. What I found was in this here yard in an older neighborhood in Austin.
Well, when I dug up the iron stake, it sure looked like this here:
The danged ole Okie gizmo didn’t tell me what sort of a pipe or pin this were, but I suspicioned that it were a car axle, a Model T Ford rear axle, to be exact, but there was no “Axle” setting on that Okie gizmo.
So, having to put my old noggin to work on this one, I was thinking maybe I should describe it as “Center of Model T Ford Rear Axle with 24-Tooth, 3.5-inch diameter Gear attached found (3 inches Down)”, but that is waaay too long to mash into the good ole data collector. “Found Iron Stob” might do it, but would “FIS” be better?
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6 Replies
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Kent McMillan, post: 348300, member: 3 wrote: ….thinking maybe I should describe it as “Center of Model T Ford Rear Axle with 24-Tooth, 3.5-inch diameter Gear attached found (3 inches Down)”, but that is waaay too long to mash into the good ole data collector. “Found Iron Stob” might do it, but would “FIS” be better?
Oh c’mon, Kent. I know for a fact you’ve mashed way more words than that in your good ole data collector…;-)
Merry Christmas!
ps – how do you know it wasn’t a Dodge?
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Dodge Brothers did in fact make various parts for Henry Ford, at least through about 1914.
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Many years ago I was told one of those there gizmo’s could be found along an alley. The informant was a renter who lived a couple houses to the south of the target property. He assured me I would find it, “RIGHT THERE”. My magic measuring ribbon had told me it would be about eight feet further south. He insisted it would be “RIGHT THERE” at the edge of where he had been mowing the lawn. I explained that the magical yellow wand with a box on the upper end would begin to scream when it found the gizmo he remembered seeing for many years. Not a peep anywhere near “RIGHT THERE”. He knew my wand was broken. I slowly kept moving further south despite his protestations that I wouldn’t find anything there when…………..SCREAMMMMMM! Down about one inch in the grass roots was the gizmo. The look on his face was precious. He promptly announced he was through mowing an extra eight feet of lawn since he just rented the place.
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I had one client that would provide axle to be set for his monuments and that we replace any monuments that were anything less than an axle.
He also insisted that we set the gear at the bottom of the hole and the splines at the top.
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I recently dis-assembled a 1914 Champion Seed Drill and now I have two very similar axle(square)/cog assemblies to what you found.
I bet that locator was singing pretty good!
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About 40 years ago I was with a group touring the production facilities of a company that manufactured various farm equipment attachments and tillage tools. The company had done quite well in the 1920’s and was in expansion mode during The Great Depression while many other similar companies went belly up. This continued through WW II. They needed steel to expand their construction facilities when new steel was in very short supply. They had lots of time and plenty of welders so they built what they needed out of whatever they could get. Buggy axles, for example. Random chunks of almost anything. But, they got the job done.
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