Picture of Plow for Hugh McKay!

Hugh, here is a picture of the plow I talked to you about the other day. Any information you have that would date it, or anything else, I would appreciate.

Anybody's comments are welcome! I plowed with it this week, with very few problems.

Ed

The particular plow that I am most familiar with is a 1942 model that my dad bought new. My guess, and it is only a guess, your plow is pre war stock. The two items that look different and not right in my eyes are tongue or pull bar and the levers for adjusting the plow. All No 8 pull bars that I have seen use a cross member just in front of hinges, with tongue hooked to the cross mamber. The main tongue is paralell with plow beams and has a diagnol brace to the cross bar. Also the spring for the trip hitch is full length of tongue The levers I am familiar with have the end you grab on at right angles. I can see these levers being a choice item when ordering a plow. Of course the very reason I am calling your plow pre war, is the items that look not right to me, may well have been standard equipment in the early 30s. I have been around a lot of these plows since the 40s and have never seen those two items.

Have you been able to see anything other than white up there yet?

What is your planting/harvesting season?

Mark

Planting season here for the most part starts last week of April and harvest is over by mid Nov. I do have some peas in the ground, they may or may not survive.

I'm in N Texas and have onions in the ground. Peas could survive. Most of the goodies (tomatoes) are in the greenhouse. We have to wait until Easter to plant them. Get in a hurry and loose em. Have done it many times thinking I could "Outsmart mother nature"....Wrong!

Close as I ever was to you was Harmon AFB, Newfoundland in 1960. In USAF aboard a C118 (Douglas DC-6) from McGuire AFB, NJ to RAF Upper Heyford England. The runway was clear, but the drifts adjacent were above the tail fin. We were only there for about an hour to refuel and had to dust the snow off the bird to leave.

Best,

Mark

The peas I have planted are up, and were planted on hills or rows I made last fall. I planted them the last day of February, the extra day this year made the difference. I have never planted in Feb. before. I have however had peas a foot high and have snow hit. Kind of amusing to look down the rows of green peas up through the snow. I used to grow them commercially for fresh market trade, so first on market was important. today it is just a gardners chalange. They will survive 10 degrees of frost and the snow as well.

On your boys (from Youngster's post), great message of yours with the family teaming rather than fighting. Course on a dairy farm you had better work together or you won't get done, right!

Thanks,

Mark

That plow also using the same model number was also sold in two different versions; being the Canadian version and US version. Interestingly enough the Canadian version had options not available on the US version. There were also two separate bottoms. The IH general purpose bottom, I have seen on both Canadian and US plows. The other bottom was called an Ace bottom. I have seen thousands of pictures of these but never an Ace bottom on a US plow. The Ace bottom was more like the European bottoms we see on modern day plows.

Plows were built here in Canada until the early 1960s. I suspect the only part ever produced here was the frame, and the bottoms came from either US or Europe depending on who had excess supplies. Our frame had perpendicular cross members between beams and were adjustable as to width of cut. This meant dealers could keep frames around and add whatever bottom the customer wanted. A better description may be that IH could dump in Canada what ever bottom they had excess of from various plants around the world.

Other differences on the No 8 plow included the levers for setting the plows. Our levers here in Canada were hinged in middle and by use of a three notch adjustment you could quickly set your levers to suit either a Farmall or a W series tractor. Our lever also incorperated a reduction cog in the setting of the plow which gave finer settings.

So I looked at the picture and said that's what mine are - until you pointed out the straight release levers, and drawbar differences. Mine all have short trip springs like the photo, though.