I know this picture has nothing to do with gas engines, but I thought it might be interesting to anyone who might have at one time cleared land of stumps.
When my uncle moved to this part of Montana, they bought five acres of standing timber and had to clear the ground to build a home and grow strawberries on the rest. This was in 1937. You could walk on stumps and logs from their house to the neighbor’s.
The plow-looking tool in the picture at right was used to pull stumps and to cut the roots of large stumps. It was pulled using a cable and a capstan winch and horses. The name on the beam says “Faultless.” On the other side it says “Coward and Swedson Company, Creslo, Iowa.”
The ‘pipe’ looking thing is used for blasting stumps apart. Black powder is poured in then a wad and then the pipe is hammered into the stump, (with the grain). A fuse is put in the “touch hole,” and lit. Some loggers still use these stump wedges today, splitting big logs in half.
