Body Off!

While waiting for the hot, windy weather to moderate before continuing the painting of the carriage seat, I was seized by the urge to dive into another dirty, tedious, boring task!

So out I went to lift the little carriage body off the gear!

Thankfully, some farsighted carriage builder of the past painted the shanks of the bolts that held the body to the bolsters (the large wooden blocks between the body and the springs) so that they released the body with only a feeble fight. No corrosion welding the wood and the bolts together!

In those "famous last words", there appears to be very little repair to be done to the body.  Here I am pointing to a long shrinkage crack in one of the seat risers (the part that the carriage seat is bolted to) which must be repaired.

And here is its matching crack on the other side.

One of the first jobs is to get rid of this hack job of a tool box under the seat.  When I first saw it, with random nails everywhere, and those split up end pieces, I thought how am I EVER going to repair this?!  Then I realized it was a careless add-on.  The ends look to be made from the same piece of wood from which the repair panel in the seat was made!

There probably WAS a tool box under the seat before the seat was repaired.  Like most buggy seats, the bottom seat frame has a large opening for a "hatch door" to access lap robes, tools, etc. stored in a little wooden box underneath. 

I found the old screw holes where the seat had originally been mounted.  Since there are no corresponding holes in the present seat frame, that suggests a major repair to the seat!  New seat boards.  And as I suspected, the original seat was held on with only four screws, not seven!  So more little wee bits of history revealed.

There is no rot in the floorboards, but they're all badly split and will be replaced.

Cosmetic damage from unknown hardware.

The only corner that seems to need a little repair.

And just the usual signs of wear and tear.

 As is typical, the body could be removed from the gear by removing four nuts.

My first really good look at the side-spring gear.  I am not really familiar with side-spring carriages.  This gear has no wooden "reach" connecting front and rear axles, but rather these apparent extensions of the springs, forming "outriggers" from the centers of the springs to the rear axles.  It is certainly NOT a Concord wagon gear (which I already knew, but the side springs and body style make it look a lot LIKE a Concord wagon).

These "outriggers" are tied in with the springs at the center bolt.

And this "wishbone", tying the fifth wheel at the center front axle to the springs, also layers into the springs leaves.

I always thought that the carriage body had a slightly lop-sided appearance and blamed it on the blocks that the axles are sitting on.  But, oh no!  Can you pick it out?  The near bolster is a full 3/4" shorter in height than the off bolster!  It is also made of two pieces of wood, where the off bolster is one single piece!  What tattle-tale of a wreck have we here!!  There are also unused bolt holes at the front of each bolster, suggesting that something was re-drilled at some point.  I'll worry about what to do with the problem later.

There are bolts going through the bolsters into the cross braces that appear to be "sprung" or at least twisted hard to fit existing holes in the metal.  These refused to release the bolsters from the gear.  Again, something I'll worry about when I tear down the gear.

My winter project!  I am still waiting for the wheels to come back from the wheelwright.  But it looks like I'm definitely NOT going anywhere in this carriage for awhile anyway!