Friday, April 8, 2011

Scraper

    This is a Miskin Scraper.



     See? It says so right on the side. Miskin is the company that made the scraper. This scraper was purchased from the Slater Implement Company in Homdale, Idaho in 1963.
     It behooves a field to be field shaped. That is to say, mostly flat, with a slight tilt to it. (At least if you want to irrigate it with furrows.) That's where the scraper comes in.
     A scraper doesn't so much scrape as scoop. Those of you with sharp eyes will have noticed three hydraulic cylinders in the top photo. The scraper has a drum made of two halves. The front cylinder connects to the front half of the drum and the rear two cylinders connect to the back half.


     The rear half of the drum is sharpened on it's leading edge. When you lift the front half of the drum and rotate the rear drum down the sharpened edge scoops a thin strip of dirt into the drum. You can then rotate the rear drum back up a bit and lower the front half back down and carry the dirt wherever it's needed.


      When you get to that place, you raise both sides of the drum and drop a strip of dirt. Depending on how you work it, you can lay down the dirt at whatever depth you want. To get a better idea, imagine holding something fluid in your cupped hands. You can control (more or less) how fast the fluid flows out by widening or narrowing the gap between your hands. Now imagine that your hands are different sizes and you fill them up by passing them sideways across the surface of what you want to pick up. Okay, that last part might have been a bit too far, but that's how the scraper works. You create a flat surface by "scraping" up the high parts and laying them into the low parts.
     Not every farm has one of these handy little implements. They're somewhat of a niche tool.  But when you're in the business of dirt, the dirt movers are going to be around you quite often. So it's nice to have an old veteran like this Miskin Scraper to rely upon when you need to.


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