Wooden Thresher

by Ida Livingston of Davis City, IA

In issue 45-4, I wrote about William Livingston rebuilding a 7-sweep horsepower unit to power our standard McCormick-Deering threshing machine. This unit has enough power to run this thresher but it works the horses kind of hard in the July heat. Ever since he rebuilt the 7-sweep, William has wanted to find a smaller thresher, preferably a wooden thresher as those were built at the same time period that the 7-sweep would have been and they, presumably, would have been made to work well together. Fast forward to this spring, I was doing errands in Jamesport, Missouri, a little over an hour south of where we live, I stopped by an antique store that I had seen but never stopped at before. When I stepped out of the vehicle I spotted a wooden thresher under roof by the edge of the parking area. I do not pretend to have any mechanical skill, but I can recognize a thresher and I can recognize wood. I came home with the contact info and delivered it to William.

William lost no time in going to find this thresher. He was disappointed as it was too large for what he was looking for. It had a larger cylinder than the one we had, our thresher has a 22 inch cylinder, and this one had a 32 inch one. It would take a lot of power to operate.

Coming home from this, William renewed his search for the thresher he wanted. He found one advertised in South Carolina but before going through all the effort of finding out how to transport it the 1000+ miles here, he wanted a look at one like it. He contacted the Old Threshers Museum in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa and talked to Paul Bishop there. Paul told him that yes, they had one and as a matter of fact, it was currently for sale. They had another donated to them that had a bagging feature this one did not and so they were going to sell this one.

Paul Bishop and William worked out a price and the middle of April found William, Khoke and his cousin, Nathan Miller heading to Mt. Pleasant to pick up the thresher. William was happier than a kid at Christmas. They came home and unloaded it under roof by William’s shop and he has been doing whatever repairs he can find to do, there are not many.

We expect to use this thresher in July for our threshing and I expect to document this and share it with the Small Farmers Journal readers. At the Old Threshers Reunion every fall (Sept 3rd-7th this year), they have powered this thresher with a 6-sweep horsepower unit. We will be using the 7-sweep to power this thresher, which should be more than enough.