What is the oddest machine you have worked on or operated

[oosik]

1964 - I owned and drove a 1941 Willys Jeep.

We lived in Glennallen, AK for a year. Not far from Doofy and the Copper River.

The Alaska natives ran fish wheels in the Copper. They split the salmon - right down the backbone - hung over clothes lines to dry.
A lot of this salmon was also smoked.

They had subsistence permits and were allowed to catch all the salmon they could use.

 

[jjeff]

Same old pamco (I believe) travel lift mentioned earlier helped an old timer I used to work with do maintenance on it/ replaced points/ condensers and used an old timing light to make that old gas 4 cylinder continental/ and or Hercules engine run another 60 yrs lol.

 

[MossRoad]

Printing Letterpress. Ran on the fly wheel.View attachment 850706

I have a cousin that has several of those. He made a pretty good living running his own small print shop. The one time I saw him using one, his wife was the operator. He said she did better production than him. He was the sales, setup and maintenance guy. They were printing specialty Hungarian food labels at the time.

 

[MossRoad]

Also, I have sister that has a couple of those for art work.

 

[BnRidge]

I've been kicking around parts to this thing for years, not really knowing what they belonged to. At a local thresheree I finally got a look at an assembled unit and picture. You could order one from the Montgomery Ward catalogue, 1895. Hay/grass seeder. The seed metering device clicks back and forth across the spokes.

 

[jjeff]

Occasionally operated an old carry deck crane for stepping and unstepping sailboat masts. They are interesting but are pretty straightforward to operate, piloted a 22' pontoon boat backwoods style converted as a work boat with homemade bow mounted push bar, placing and removing floating docks spring and fall. Awe the interesting stories with unique contraptions I can recall to me anyway lol.

 

[FriendwithTractor]

Many moons ago, I was a young intern at a data center. I had the privilege of watching this monster work.

Easily the most nerve-wracking typing I've ever done. While watched closely by 4 people.

 

[jjeff]

Many moons ago, I was a young intern at a data center. I had the privilege of watching this monster work.
View attachment 850733

Easily the most nerve-wracking typing I've ever done. While watched closely by 4 people.

Meanwhile these things are pretty odd and foreign to me unfortunately lol.

 

[JethroB]

A number of years ago I worked for a John Deere dealer in central Pa. It was on the commercial equipment side and I worked with a lot of forestry equipment. One of the units was a Bell feller buncher. It was three wheeled , hydrostatic drive, and looked like the body for an old helicopter. It was made in South Africa and even with correct part numbers you were never sure what you might receive. And when it came to operating , if the linkage was out of adjustment which they always were , it was like trying to control the wildest animal you could think of. I had one parked between to new JD machines and when I went to move the Bell it almost ran into the two new machines, I was a busy somebody for a few seconds.

My brother owned a Bell for many years in his small land clearing business. He said only one of his employees could properly operate it. Odd looking machine.

 

[orezok]

The oddest one I’ve seen was on one of my housing projects. We had to connect to an old sewer main that over time was covered with soil until it was 25’ deep. No backhoe at that time (45 years ago) could trench that deep.

One of my subs had this ancient trencher that could. He called it a ladder trencher. It was like a big chainsaw but had buckets 3’ wide that went down the required 25’.

They had to shore it fully and I would never have considered going down there.

 

[forgeblast]

david bradley walk behind tractors. I had a few and a ton of attachments. When they ran they were a beast, when they didnt you collected others to rebuild them. I truly wish i didnt sell them off. They were fun at times lol.

 

[careyo63]

I have a cousin that has several of those. He made a pretty good living running his own small print shop. The one time I saw him using one, his wife was the operator. He said she did better production than him. He was the sales, setup and maintenance guy. They were printing specialty Hungarian food labels at the time.

Used It for Numbering mostly. Several other things with it also. Quick copy shop! It was actually really cool work on. 2 Cyl. one for blowing air to separate the sheets and the other suction to pick it up! It would bang and clang!. My die table

 

[flyerdan]

When I worked at a sawmill back in the 70's, the carrier op would often doss off for long periods of time and when the green chain bays would fill up I'd have to give this rig a go. Hopefully without dumping the load due to not grabbing the bunks properly, that's a right mess.

 

[MossRoad]

A number of years ago I worked for a John Deere dealer in central Pa. It was on the commercial equipment side and I worked with a lot of forestry equipment. One of the units was a Bell feller buncher. It was three wheeled , hydrostatic drive, and looked like the body for an old helicopter. It was made in South Africa and even with correct part numbers you were never sure what you might receive. And when it came to operating , if the linkage was out of adjustment which they always were , it was like trying to control the wildest animal you could think of. I had one parked between to new JD machines and when I went to move the Bell it almost ran into the two new machines, I was a busy somebody for a few seconds.

I think you win so far!!!

 

[Duds13]

Drove one of these for four summers while home from college on Lake St. Catherine, VT. Would cut the Eurasian Milfoil which would then ride of the conveyor on the front and dump onto a longer storage conveyor on the back. When the load was full, we'd make the very slow trek to the offload conveyor and the dump truck would bring the milfoil to local farms. great summer gig as long as you didn't get caught in a thunderstorm, lol.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

My grandfather had a late 30s Taylorcraft then a Cessna, the Cessna he ran into HV power lines but survived. I was a very young kid flying with him and he thought it was funny saying he felt faint & I'd have to "take over"...but of course he was there in control letting me steer.
My wife engineered an 1949 F7 similar to this one, like me...not alone.
We did each ride an elephant if that counts.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

david bradley walk behind tractors. I had a few and a ton of attachments. When they ran they were a beast, when they didnt you collected others to rebuild them. I truly wish i didnt sell them off. They were fun at times lol.

Dad had one and I still have the B&S motor from it. It had tractor- like tires, if I remember right each wheel had a flip lever to disengage it. The manual for it is around here someplace and shows attachments you could get for it. He had a front tiller & mower deck. I'm thinking by right grip was throttle, left was an engagement lever.

 

[dodge man]

When I was about 14 me and a buddy built a go cart out of 2x4’s and plywood. We even rigged up steering by using rope wrapped around a steel rod, which worked surprisingly well. The brakes didn’t exist and we just wore old shoes and drug our feet. I think the only thing we spent money on was a centrifugal clutch.

The engine was originally a vertical shaft Briggs and we converted it to horizontal. It wasn’t that hard and I remember pieces of Erector Set held the carb in place and we had scrap flat steel to hold it on the go cart. The gearing wasn’t great and it took a long time to get up to about 15 mph but then the clutch would lock up and that 3.5 hp Briggs would dig in and it run about 40 mph. We had a big parking lot we would run it in at night after the stores closed. And yes, it wasn’t very safe.

 

[Tractorable]

I used run a pharmaceutical packaging and labeling facility. I became expert at operating and repairing the tablet/capsule dispenser, cotton machine, cap machine, induction sealer, and label machine. One time, we were doing a run of 26,000 bottles and the cotton machine broke. I couldn't stop production to fix it, so I had to hand stuff 20,000 bottles with cotton. It sucked. I bought my first motorcycle after that. In retrospect, I probably should've used the skills I learned there to open my own packaging business, probably woulda made good money.

 

[Joel/ak]

Many oddball pieces of gear. Airports are notorious for weird crap. Whenever our sales rep for TLD would make a visit, I would grab him and ask WTF they were thinking on designing this crap.

Schematics on some were in French (didn't help much).

I definitely hired good fabricators and hydraulic mechanics.