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.