35 Years in the Making!

[greenbeast]

I own a JD 331 skid steer along with the kubota tractors. To be clear, I agree the skid steer has many utilities. However all 3 kubota tractors I have don’t add up to what I have in the skid steer. For occasional lifting a smaller tractor will do just fine and offers opportunity for certain implements at a lesser cost (most of the time) than the skid steer’s cost.

My skid steer burns more diesel than the smaller tractor but maybe a smaller unit would use less. Getting on a tractor is easier than getting into the skid steer and carriers less risk if you were to slip. I’ve been navigating getting in and out of mine the last few weeks with hay spears on it and you really have to be careful.

I am selling my 2 smaller tractors because of the usefulness of the skid steer but I can’t mow around the house with my skid steer like I can with the finish mower. I don’t trust the wife on my skid steer but the tractor is no big deal.

I’ll stand by the recommendation for the smaller tractor for occasional lifting. I just loaded the gooseneck up with road leveler which is great to maintain driveway, post hole auger, heavy angle blade and used front end loader on the L4700 with out any difficulty.

 

[LDowney]

Depending on the details of what I need to move around the house and shop (size, weight, stability, surface, distance to move, ...), I opt for KISS to guide my choice.

As such, I would consider turning to a makeshift stoneboat as an early choice when faced with moving a heavy awkward item. Growing up; we always had a purpose built stoneboat on the farm to move glacier boulders out of the fields, so we pressed it into service on numerous other pop-up needs and it always worked great.

In situations like this to move large'ish shop equipment around on the property, I would most likely re-purpose material such as plywood, lumber, door, ... to rig up a makeshift stoneboat to meet the immediate needs. The stoneboat could be pulled by one of the Cruisers or an Allis Chalmers CA that I have [choice driven by the details]. Once done, I would disassemble the makeshift boat and return the materials to their original stored position (as possible).

Good luck.
However if an objective is to buy additional equipment for home projects and you are trying to build justification to get a purchase order approved, discard my suggestions here.

 

[knuckle47]

So in near 70 years, I have not heard the word “stoneboat”. I had a vague idea but Google had the answer and damn that is a great suggestion ! I could surely use a machine to keep the place maintained and logs moved when needed, scrape the driveway, move some freak snow when we get those 20-30 inchers. Even on older hobby of building BBQ smokers has become impossible as the things get heavier as each welded part gets stuck in place.

my other KISS plan was to get a mover to come over, carry a few items 100’ away and be done with it….

 

[PIP]

I own a JD 331 skid steer along with the kubota tractors. To be clear, I agree the skid steer has many utilities. However all 3 kubota tractors I have don’t add up to what I have in the skid steer. For occasional lifting a smaller tractor will do just fine and offers opportunity for certain implements at a lesser cost (most of the time) than the skid steer’s cost.

My skid steer burns more diesel than the smaller tractor but maybe a smaller unit would use less. Getting on a tractor is easier than getting into the skid steer and carriers less risk if you were to slip. I’ve been navigating getting in and out of mine the last few weeks with hay spears on it and you really have to be careful.

I am selling my 2 smaller tractors because of the usefulness of the skid steer but I can’t mow around the house with my skid steer like I can with the finish mower. I don’t trust the wife on my skid steer but the tractor is no big deal.

I’ll stand by the recommendation for the smaller tractor for occasional lifting. I just loaded the gooseneck up with road leveler which is great to maintain driveway, post hole auger, heavy angle blade and used front end loader on the L4700 with out any difficulty.

Maybe it's geographical, but skidsteers are not more expensive than tractors as a rule where I'm at. For example, my made in USA 1996 Mustang 2040 with Yanmar diesel and 1300 hours cost me $1000. It ran, but needed a new fuel filter bowl on the engine and the chainbox oil changed. For about $1500 I got a nice smaller skidsteer with a bucket. I've spent about another $1500 on a hydraulic auger, a 48" brush hog I converted to hydraulic and a 48" tiller I converted to hydraulic. So $3000 investment. Since buying that one, I've been offered a much larger, newer 100HP New Holland with implements for $7500. I passed because I have seen reliability issues with New Holland diesels.

A friend buys all the tractors from local farms when they upgrade equipment. He has a rotating stock of decent tractors all the time. I almost bought a good running 2008 40HP 4x4 Kubota bare tractor from him for $4000, but I just didn't see the versatility in owning it. I could mow and till with it. That's it. I could put a loader on it for a few grand, but I've had tractors that size with loaders and they aren't good for much of anything.

I think it's import to make a further distinction with skidsteers. To people that use these things for a living, a skidsteer is a smaller or older machine that you buy to use around your hobby farm or for occasional paying work. Anyone who makes a living moving dirt has moved on to CTL's- Compact skid loaders and everyone I know in that business runs Takeuchi. Those things are amazing and on a whole different level or performance and price.

 

[LDowney]

So in near 70 years, I have not heard the word “stoneboat”. ...

I was lucky in that dad held onto old ways that were effective in getting work done and light on his wallet. So the stoneboat was an integral part of my work education.

The stoneboat was absolutely one such cheap/effective old way that he carried forward (from working with teams of horses). The rolling hitch was another, which was also a great complement to stoneboat for getting boulders out of the fields.

{You would dig a perimeter around the boulder, then position the stoneboat close to the boulder; next you would lasso the boulder with a chain where the circle of the chain lasso is hooked on the opposite side of the boulder from the stoneboat; next step was to back the tractor up next to the stoneboat and hitch the chain to the tractor; finally pulling the chain with the tractor, the rolling hitch rolls the boulder out of the ground and onto the stoneboat}

I recall a neighbor watching us roll a boulder out (that was somewhat ellipsoid in shape with major axes of ~8 ft by ~6 ft by ~4 ft) with an Allis WD (40'ish hp). The boulder rolled right out and onto the stoneboat slicker than they normally did, and the neighbor was in awe. We then skidded the boulder across the plowed field and into the pasture where we had a large collection of boulders & smaller rocks from the fields. The ground was lightly disturbed by the passage of the stoneboat with such a heavy load, because the pulling force from the tractor would lift the front of the stoneboat a few inches. This would result in the load tobogganing over the soil rather than plow through it, so small tractors could make handy work of moving multi-ton loads.

Years later in college, my 1st physics class gave me the mathematical tools to analyze and further appreciate the practical genius of the old school farmers that developed such techniques for getting their work done.

Sorry for side tracking your build thread. Back to scheduled programming ...

 

[knuckle47]

@LDowney …not need to apologize, these are some remarkable details I would have never discovered standing in the puddle I am usually in. I enjoyed reading these posts and following up on things I might have actually done many years ago and only attributed it to not having the tools to do it another way, so this worked….stoneboat !

my wife and I lived a few miles from the Canada border in dairy farms and old school farmers. Schools in the 1950’s and ‘60s were still 1 room schoolhouses very small….brought out the best of the “Norman Rockwell “ visualization of old time New England. With todays lifestyle changes I enjoyed the thoughts and memories without the need to enter my passcode or two-factor authentication to think about these. Thanks for the education

I am wondering where I can start looking locally for a skid steer….seems like the details outweigh the rest… if one pops up, I may need to move on it. websites only seem to have the Meg-buck equipment listed… after all, as land cruiser people, we have some damn decent mechanical skills

 

[LDowney]

@LDowney ... Schools in the 1950’s and ‘60s were still 1 room schoolhouses very small….brought out the best of the “Norman Rockwell “ visualization of old time New England. ...

LoL Your reference to your one-room school house experience was a big memory moment for me. Sorry but here I go on another tangent;

In the '50s the remaining one-room schools in Illinois were closing; bussing the kids to more centralized multi-room schools made the best sense for education quality per tax dollars spent. This meant the one-room schools were surplused and sold. This led to my grandfather buying the Downey school house (it was located at the extreme southwest corner of our farm). Grandpa jacked up the building off its foundation and put skids under it, then lowered is back down. He then pulled (skidded) it 3/4 of mile down the gravel road to the homestead. There, he positioned it about 20 yards from the house and poured a new foundation under the school house. He reframed a wall and the one-room school house was repurposed into his garage. He left the majority of the interior unchanged. So my Norman Rockwell visual of our one-room school house is somewhat perverted by grandpa's tan Mercury being parked in the middle of the room, where it was the only student & teacher in attendance. After he passed, we bought the farm so my memories from our one-room school house continued to accumulate.

Based on the stories that my dad shared from going to school in a one-room school, you are lucky to have first hand experiences that have been mostly lost to the rest of us.

My school experience was different from the norm and the past. The school that I attended was the built in the '50s (the one that allowed the the one-room schools to be retired). All classes, K thru 12th grade, were under one roof. This created unique school experiences for us. Illustrating this... my younger sister was in kindergarten when I was a senior. So, she got to sit next to me on the schoolbus on her first day of school and I walked with her from the bus to her class once we got to the school. So school was just a big familiar adventure for her. Not a common experience that is likely to carry over too much longer in our society.

 

[knuckle47]

So it would seem as though we are about the same age. Even in the late 1960’s this one room schoolhouse had not been supplanted by the new developing school format. This is northern Vermont who without its ski industries about 4 miles up the road, would still had remained a quiet sleepy town. Things had only changed by the mountain’s popularity drawing in people who purchased small tracts of land and a winter house…some more elaborate than others. Although still bankrupt, this mountain is sold and resold and re re-sold to investors in an attempt to get it to be a productive center for a vacation resort. They have expanded the condo base around the terrain and these went from 175k yrs ago to 750k now. Some of the greatest skiing I have done in the east (weather permitting). The old dairy farms are gone except for 1. That land just sits…so far in my 69 years I can see it sitting another 50 before the area changes that much, maybe even longer.

My wife and I moved to NJ back in the late ‘70s but because of our “rural” lifestyle, we insisted on having a similar looking spot….we have a 17 acre plot of oak treed land on a dirt road and quiet. Thank goodness as in 40+ years, things have changed. Once you are about 2 miles away, the 4 corner stop sign is now a series of green arrow, left lane, walk don’t walk intersection and traffic lights.

You can’t believe these hard working farmers here would turn down the cash NJ developers waved in front of them years ago. HMMMM!, plant soy beans and corn or move to Florida or?

I would move back to Vermont in a heartbeat …my wife saw something they call a “mall” with colored lights and flashing signs and said….”WOW…this is Great !”

On top of that, son son went and had 2 kids only a few miles away… we’re stuck here

 

[LDowney]

Completely understand. I had similar aspirations. After graduate school, I bought the original homestead/farm from my dad. I bought it on contract which allowed him to capture all the interest income too, plus I did not need much down. The farm was already a centennial farm and even identified as such by the state, so I was addicted and planned to return to enjoy farming as my retirement. However, a few years later I married a city girl and she has zero tolerance for rural life. In the coming years when people would ask if we would be moving to the farm, Carolyn's response was an emphatic 'Only if I die first'. Moving back was clearly off the table ... hard.

Regrettably, in 2011 we sold the farm. Squatters had moved into the house. My tenant nor none of the neighbors said a word about the squatters for close to two years; until they had enough of the theft centered around the squatters, plus they were concerned about the possibility that they were brewing meth. After my heart started beating again, I found out that the squatters had significant rights to my property; plus if the state caught them brewing meth, they would seize the farm. After a lengthy span and dumping a non-trivial amount of money into lawyers' pockets, we got them evicted. Clearly, this was too much risk to continue as landowners 800 miles away, so we sold the farm.

Now, I am stuck on a 2.5 acre plot. My bride has her dream house. 2 out of three of our kids live only a few miles away. The 3rd will most likely move back once she completes her residency. This is an unbreakable combo with the bride, so I don't even suggest a change.

lol Different paths but we wind up in the same place before the journey ends.

 

[knuckle47]

@LDowney man, you are a very good writer. Your discussion Comes across so clearly and visually. Could also be we have similar events in our lives and have the passion of our convictions for those events. That is some story. Your wife and mine have a stubborn streak. The irony is that one day she sees a house in the Vermont Lake Champlain area and says she’ll move…she likes the house….we are 9 hours away. When I called the realtor, they had an offer so….

is she serious…? now that I am old enough to carry 2 pieces of firewood at the most, she wants this house… great house though. 4700sq ft, 15 acres with waterfront on the lake. I just finished my pole barn and I have come to terms with staying here

 

[LDowney]

@LDowney man, you are a very good writer. ...

Thank you. That is a first.
No one has ever described my writing as good before. Being an enginerd, writing and communication skills have always been a profound weakness for me. Again thanks for a first for me.

 

[knuckle47]

Hahaha, I am certainly no scholar ….but when a story is conveyed and the images and sense of being there develops in the mind of the reader, you gotta think the writer has expressed his thoughts well…

don’t be a stranger, once my garage is ready to move in, the fj40 comes apart

 

[Waorani]

@LDowney did you ever get that bandsaw running?

 

[LDowney]

@LDowney did you ever get that bandsaw running?

Bandsaw ... The one that I helped my friend Mike pickup? If so, I do not know. As I recall, a machine tool friend of Mike's was very eager to have the bandsaw so he could restore it himself. In time, Mike was talked into a swap (mill as I recall) and my knowledge of the status came to a close. Would you like me to ask?

 

[knuckle47]

Well, I did get this out of the old garage and into the new one. Still wondering how I’ll get it on the stand. Probably need to dismantle it and re-assemble in place

 

[PIP]

Amazon product ASIN B07VFF9Z5B

 

[knuckle47]

This will help me out on 4 other tools… they’re not more than 300 lbs and it’s like having a helper…THANKS! @PIP

it also overnight so will be here tomorrow morning

 

[PIP]

I have a little jet 500 lb chainfall I keep in my truck and use for all kinds of silly things like that. The chainfall is real slow though. I think the blocks and rope will be a sound way to get done what you need to do. I'd just be prepared with something strong to tie the rope off to when you need to.

 

[knuckle47]

I’ll add a 8” cleat from a boat dock to the vertical post of the pole barn…should be fine..it is only 250 lbs

 

[Waorani]

Bandsaw ... The one that I helped my friend Mike pickup? If so, I do not know. As I recall, a machine tool friend of Mike's was very eager to have the bandsaw so he could restore it himself. In time, Mike was talked into a swap (mill as I recall) and my knowledge of the status came to a close. Would you like me to ask?

Nah, don't worry about it. It just fired a few dusty brain cells when I saw your name. Remember now you were helping a friend pick it up. Sorry Knuckle47 - back to regular scheduled programming!