This is yet another axle in a rock mound. I promise I won't post a photo of every axle that I find, but it turns out that there are a few posters on this discussion forum who know quite a bit about different types of car and truck axles as well as PTO shafts from agricultural machines.
The mound marks a corner of an original land grant surveyed in January, 1857 and the axle was evidently driven into the mound in 1951 to give it a definite center, which it does extremely well considering that the axle has a machined center.
Since 1951 and following road construction, soil had washed in covering the mound and axle sufficiently well that there was no obvious surface indication. The corner post of a wire fence was about a vara (2.8 ft.) away and that had attracted a 1/2-in. rebar that a surveyor had set sometime before 1993 on the theory that the fence post somehow perpetuated the position of the invisible rock mound.
The axle is 1.25" in dia and has 10 rather flat splines. Is anyone willing to take a guess at what sort of an axle this is? It's safe to say that it dates from before 1951, I think, and was old enough to be in a scrap yard then.
I don't know in this particular case, but like on that last one I'm thinking that tranny shafts are what many of these "axles" actually are. For one thing, they're one of the toughest hunks of steel in a car, and they also tend to exist in lengths that would lend themselves to this particular use (8-24", depending on the make of transmission). Having grown up in an AAMCO, I've had a zillion of those things in my hands, and any time I see something similar in the field I automatically assume it would be that, rather than somebody going after lengths of axle with an acetylene torch. Not to mention they tend to be splined on both ends, and would likely drive into the ground easier around here.
flyin solo, post: 432358, member: 8089 wrote: I don't know in this particular case, but like on that last one I'm thinking that tranny shafts are what many of these "axles" actually are. For one thing, they're one of the toughest hunks of steel in a car, and they also tend to exist in lengths that would lend themselves to this particular use (12-24", depending on the make of transmission). Having grown up in an AAMCO, I've had a zillion of those things in my hands, and any time I see something similar in the field I automatically assume it would be that, rather than somebody going after lengths of axle with an acetylene torch. Not to mention they tend to be splined on both ends, and would likely drive into the ground easier around here.
A couple of the shafts I've found were definitely cut with a torch since the distinctive marks remain on the upper end. The shaping of a point is my speculation. I do know that at one time there were at least a couple of folks in and around Austin selling land surveyors stakes that they had forged points on, both iron pipes and scrap steel shafts, so it isn't inconceivable that someone at a scrap yard was cutting up axles with a torch and adding value by roughly pointing the business end.
