Wooden Farm Wagon Axle Spacing

fpappal

Member
Sorry for the poor quality pic. After about 8 months I am finally ready to connect the two axles on this old farm wagon I have been restoring from my family farm. All I had to work with was the wheels and the skeins, all wood was completely rotted away. Everything else had to be made by hand. On this particular wagon both the front and rear axles turn. I am wondering what the axle spacing should be? Right now I have them about 90 inches apart. I am planning on making the deck around 11 ft. Was there a standard length for these old wagons or pretty much whatever the farmer wanted?
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Front wheel about even with front of bed, back wheel about a foot ahead of back end of bed. Thes is to rim of wheel and not wheelbase. Wheel tread either 56" or 60" center of rim to center of rim on opposide.
 
Thank you. I am a little confused about what you are calling wheel tread of 56 to 60 inches. Is that the distance from front axle to rear axle? Or distance from wheel to wheel on same axle? My axles are 60 inches long.
 

I think that you have it about right at 90 inches. As Leroy said convention is that there is 2-3 times as much overhang at the back as the front. Also as Leroy said tread is center to center opposite SIDE.
 
Wheel tread is on same axle and center of left wheel to center of right wheel. That is what willmake you trouble if you have a small car and try to drive thru snow-ice ruts from a full sixe truck. One wheel will pull into that rut and other will try to go in oposite rut but cannot do it but will keep trying to go it. Reach would be what the distance from front axle to back axle would be called (may also have other terms. A 56" wheel tread wagon had boulsters of 38" for a 38" wide bed. a 60" axle would be for a 42" wide bed. When later all steel gears came out with moveable boulster stakes you could set for either 38" or 42" beds the wheel tread became standard at 60" but then some manufactures started using wider axles as a 60" wide axle did not fit good in picking corn behind the picker on 40" corn rows so they went to 66", 72" or other wider spacing and now the big new hopper wagons have a lot wider wheel tread (some will call it track) to help the from not tippong over as tall as they are. Reach depended on how long a bed was used and how much overhand you wanted. On a flat bed (hay wagon) I liked about 6" of bed in front of tire with about 2' in back of rear tire but on a short bed of like 10' and that probably was what your wagon had orignally you sat the axles as close to end of bed as possible. Sams as on a 10' hopper bed as you needed that distance for stability.
 
Hello, Thank you for that information. I am still learning the terminology that goes along with these wagons. You mention the bolsters are at 42 inches. On this particular wagon the wheels were under the bed of the wagon. The bed of the wagon was somewhere around 6ft wide. I am assuming the 42 inch bed would be for one that sits between the wheels?
 
These wheels look like the wheels on my hay rack. They were ORIGIONALY John Deere wheels with 2in axles and origionaly mounted under a JD Thresher. Im confused. you say that both the front and rear axles turn. Does that mean that they were origionaly ment to turn, which I cant understand, OR that the wheels will turn while the axles remain still? That I can understand. U say all the wood is gone, but yet you have axles. Are they 2in steel like mine also? IF SO, they also may have come from out underneith a thresher.
 
My father who is 80 used this wagon when he was a kid on the farm. It was used to haul bushels of onions and lettuce off the muck. The muck is very soft which must be why they used such wide wheels. Yes, every piece of wood was gone, so everything you see in the picture, including the axles we had to make. The bolster is so tall because the deck goes over the wheels. You can't see it in the picture but the bolster as well as the axle has an 1 1/4 inch hole all the way through. A huge pin acts as the pivot point between axle and bolster. That is not installed yet, in this pic we just have the bolster sitting on the axle to get a feel for dimensions. The front and back bolsters will be connected by an actual 2x4 in the slot you see in the pic. The front left axle will be connected to the rear right axle, and the front right axle will be connected to the left rear axle using 2x2s. So when you turn the front axle the 2x2s force the rear axle to turn as well, both of which will be pivoting on the giant pin that goes down through the bolster and axle. The deck will remain stationary as the axles turn beneath it. As far as the wheels go there are no markings at all on them and they were designed to be used with a wooden axle and skein. I am 43 and as long as I remember this wagon was simply a pile of scrap metal in the hedgerow. My father always wanted to restore it and bring it back to life, he is the only person alive that knows what it actually use to look like. So a year ago I told him it was time to restore the old wagon. Hopefully in a month or two it will be finished.
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It looks like you will have around 16 inches between the bottom of your deck and the tops of your wheels.
 
From the top of the wheels to the top of the bolster is only a couple inches. The picture makes it look higher than it actually is. On top of the bolsters will be a 4x4 to support the deck, and the deck boards will be another inch. So maybe 7 inches or so from top of wheels to bottom of deck. The deck will be about 3 feet off the ground. That is one reason my father tells me he never liked to load bushels onto this wagon because it was higher off the ground than the more modern running gear they eventually purchased.
 
Yes but for that 6' wide bed I an guessing it was a flat bed and needed something underneeth to put that flat bed on and that is what they would call sills or stringers and they would have fit that 42" spacing.
 
Sounds like you are making the boulster way too tall. Top of boulster should be at least 6" below top of wheel. Not at farm now to measure a boulster.
 
We were lucky enough to have all the original metal, just with the the wood rotted away. We made the new bolster to the exact dimensions (or pretty close) of the original based on the old metal. With the attached picture the bracket and plate on the right were attached to the axle, while the bracket and plate on the left were attached to the bolster. If you push the plates together you can see how much wood there was between the plate and the top of the pin. The other end of each bracket attached to the 2x4 that connect the front and rear axle. The rear axle has the same exact setup. My father says he can vividly remember how tall that bolster was. I am not saying it was right, but that is how it was.
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(quoted from post at 17:26:53 02/18/19) From the top of the wheels to the top of the bolster is only a couple inches. The picture makes it look higher than it actually is. On top of the bolsters will be a 4x4 to support the deck, and the deck boards will be another inch. So maybe 7 inches or so from top of wheels to bottom of deck. The deck will be about 3 feet off the ground. That is one reason my father tells me he never liked to load bushels onto this wagon because it was higher off the ground than the more modern running gear they eventually purchased.

So do I have this right? all you are going to have is two 4x4 stringers from to back and one inch boards on top of them? that will make for a VERY light weight wagon with very little load capacity. You probably better bring the two axles a little closer together with only 4x4s
 
The 4x4s will then have cross beams every 2 feet or so. The deck boards will then sit on top of them. I forgot to mention the cross beams. The cross beams will be actual 2x4s from the saw mill made of white oak. To keep the height down we are going to lay them flat instead of standing them upright. I know they are strongest upright but it also adds two inches to the height of the deck. This wagon is not going to be used for anything strenuous other than maybe hauling a few pumpkins around. The majority of its life will now be protected from the elements in the barn.
 
Still the boulster is to high as you should be able to use a 2x8 with the 2x4 on edge for the floorboards. The height you are saying the boulster is and that is the heigh of what we called log boulsters so that without a bed rou could role logs onwith a piece of wood laid on top ov the wheels and when you got to the saw mill you could just roll the logs over top of the wheel.. Special height so the logs would roll over the wheel without lifting. So soundes like it was designed as a log hauler and somebody just adden a bed without thinking about height.
 
(quoted from post at 12:48:20 02/19/19) The 4x4s will then have cross beams every 2 feet or so. The deck boards will then sit on top of them. I forgot to mention the cross beams. The cross beams will be actual 2x4s from the saw mill made of white oak. To keep the height down we are going to lay them flat instead of standing them upright. I know they are strongest upright but it also adds two inches to the height of the deck. This wagon is not going to be used for anything strenuous other than maybe hauling a few pumpkins around. The majority of its life will now be protected from the elements in the barn.

Your figures make it an 8 inch clearance between the tops of your wheels and bottom of your deck. I have always built mine for two inches clearance. This can require a slightly wider space between two cross members.
 
I did a quick search to find a picture of a logging wagon but nothing came up. My father told me that he remembers at least two other wagons identical to the one we are building, with the tall bed on other muck farms. The only difference was the rear axles on those did not turn like this one does. He told me that his uncle mentioned at one time that this wagon was originally used on an orchard. The rear axle turned to allow for a tighter turning radius around the trees. Who knows if my great-uncle was just guessing or there was some truth to it. I live north of Syracuse, NY and there are quite a few orchards and muck farms here. Right or wrong my father wants to restore it to the way this wagon was when he was a kid. He also mentioned he vaguely remembers a different farm wagon that had even taller wheels and a taller bed when he was a kid. He said it didn't last long because it was so hard to load bushels onto it.
 
I also had to set the rack up higher by around 6 or 8in higher than normal, BUT with it being 20ft long, one didnt have to throw the bales up 4 or so tiers to get 50/75 bales on the bed
 

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