RR #1, Box 63 Avoca, Iowa 51521
Wives and mothers are some of the most wonderful things we can
have around anywhere, any time. Especially at a gas engine show.
They are always there to fix things to eat, help set up the tent,
or just watch the display while we take a break.
My wife has been with me 35 years now. I believe she enjoys gas
engine shows and swap meets, about as much as us guys. Last summer
our son David went away to work, so he couldn’t attend many
shows. I didn’t know if I really wanted to go to the trouble of
getting things ready to go, or just stay home. I’ll have you
know, my wife set her foot down, and said she wanted to go, so we
went to several.
I’m really a John Deere tractor fan. My wife seems to like
several brands. Her favorite old tractor is any Rumely Oil Pull.
She has often said she just loves the sound of their exhaust. We
both would like to have one, but I’m afraid it’s out of the
question, on two counts. First, we live in town, and I’m afraid
it wouldn’t go over too big, for us to have a monster like that
in our backyard. Especially, considering the neighbors have already
objected to our son’s John Deere tractors. Also the cost would
be prohibitive.
Thinking, I would still like to own a Rumely, the next best
thing would be to build a model. This winter she and I looked
through the different tractor books David has. We found lots of
pictures of Oil Pull tractors.
I started out with a sheet of white card stock, from our local
newspaper office, and some sticks sawed about W square. I’m not
great on figuring scale inches, so just tried to make things
look believable. Our Rumely is about 11′ long and possibly
7′ tall. I had noticed they are a rather stubby tractor. I have
pieces of white ‘semi trailer’ mud flaps. They are plastic,
and break off in cold weather. We found them along the highway.
This plastic is very easily glued with Dupont Duco Cement. It is
also very easy to drill and shape. This is what I made the wheels
out of.
I had purchased a hole cutter, in one of those boxes of
inexpensive tools, the stores carry at times. The arm on the hole
cutter is adjustable, so I cut 6 circles 4′ in diameter, for
each rear wheel. With a band saw I cut out spokes from the center
one, and outside rings to glue on each side. This made a wider
tread. The front wheels are made the same way, except smaller and
only a single wheel is used on each side. All wheels have a band of
card stock for tread.
The oil hopper on the front is all of card stock, with a small
paper tube in the top. This tube had very fine silk thread on it at
one time. The canopy is framed with pine sticks, which were sewn on
our table saw. Some pieces are 1/8×1/8 others are 1/8x, this then
is covered with card stock. The rivets are made with a leather
punch by punching a scrap of card stock one will get lots of little
round scraps the size of the inside of the punch. I glued these on
to the fenders and oil hopper, using a tweezers to handle them. The
axles, steering shaft, etc. are all 3/16′ dowel pieces. The
steering wheel is of plastic mud flap.
On the back page of a back issue of GEM is a full color picture
of a Rumely. We got color ideas from this. We mixed a spoon of this
and a dab of that in a baby food jar until the color suited us. My
wife suggested yellow on the canopy and tread of all wheels. For
this we used John Deere yellow. The orange wheels are a True Value
orange. All in all we thought it a pretty colorful model.
The wheels turn when pushed gently on carpet. I saved several
small plastic gears from old TV sets we junked out. These I matched
up so when the tractor is gently pushed, the flywheel will turn.
Also the steering works.
We copied mostly from ‘The Agricultural Tractor
1855-1950’, page 32, put out by the ‘Society of
Agricultural Engineers’. This book was compiled by R. B.
Gray.
To finish the story, now, the wife and I have a Rumely Oil Pull.
It’s nice and clean and can sit on a doily on the dresser. The
only thing is it doesn’t have that good sound.