Hay Scale? (It's made of metal!)

Joe fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

It might require a chain-hung pan. It could have been a merchant's scale for weighing things like nails.

Pictures? Weight range without counterweights?

LLoyd

It is probably a cotton scale.

I was told that it was common to have two sets of counterweights. One for buying and one for selling.

It looks like you got the buying weight.

Paul K. Dickman

"Joe" wrote: I just bought what I've always called a "hay scale". (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It sounds like a steelyard scale (pronounced stilyerd.) I have one hanging in the living room with a pan, holding some plants. It is constructed so the beam can be inverted to bring different hooks into play, changing the ratio. Yours most likely has a pan missing. You could make one or find one from an old grocery scale. You will have to tinker with the weight, of course, if you want it to work.

How about a picture or two?

There was a lot of these scales produced for almost an infinite number of items. Ice scales is another one not yet mentioned.

I'll take a look in some of my books and see if anything looks similar if you want to post some picts.

OK, I posted a photo in the Dropbox: Hay_CottonScale.gif & Hay_CottonScale.txt Coming from this area, it's possible that it's a cotton scale, but I still don't know what would have been attached to the left side to bring it level. The scale is 0 - 50 lbs. Maybe a pan - it took about 2.75 lbs to level it out.

See my note about the extra weights; It looks like I missed a good deal, unless I can find the dealer again.

Sorry about the file size - IrfanView converted it to a smaller format, but defaulted to a .gif & I sent it before I realized it was no longer a .jpg.

Joe

Yep the one I've used was about 3 ft long and we were using it to weigh quarters of a beef in the butchering. The quarter were going in the range of 200+ lbs (for all metric folks I havent any idea how many Kilos that is :-) ) Havent been doing any butchering for about 20 yrs now. The business end had a big hook to hang the quarter on. ...lew...

Search on "steelyard" and see what you find. Platform scales have mostly taken over what they used to use the steelyards for, they take less skill to use. It needs an overhead support to use, a barn or shop rafter was commonly used. The load end used whatever was needed, chain with a pan, chain with hook or hooks, whatever. Probably that has been salvaged. Usually the beam was iron or steel and the one I have is about 3' long, hence "steelyard", or so I've been told. It was cheap, portable and gave results accurate enough for the purposes for which it was used.

Stan

50 lbs is way too light to be for cotton or hay. From the picture, it looks like the scale the old hardware store used to weigh nails in. Except it is missing the scoop shaped pan.

Paul K. Dickman

If one were to hang a counterweight on the loop shown to the right, would that act as a multiplier? A small counterweight would say double the reading shown on the slider and a large counterweight might let the scale read say 500 lbs, max?

--Winston

"Winston" wrote: If one were to hang a counterweight on the loop shown to the right,

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Physics 1A: No. A counter weight shifts the zero--it does not change the ratios.

Right, my large Fairbanks platform scale (as well as all others of that type I've seen) does exactly that. There are a number of flat, circular plates that are stacked on a hanging plate that is suspended from the right side. As you say, the zero is shifted, so the scale that read from 0 - 200 lbs now reads from (say) 300 - 500 lbs. I assume that is the purpose of the loop on my scale in question, as well.

Joe

I was under the impression that a lot of cotton scales were used in the field to weigh the bags (not bales) as the individual brought them in. Of course, I don't know how much any one bag would weigh when full.

One interesting thing about the scale is that the beam is tapered. If you loosen the counterweight setscrew just a little, it will slide to the right, but not to the left. There must be a specific reason for this, but I don't know what it is.

Joe

Ah, I see. Thanks

--Winston

No, the bags are enormous,usually well over a hundred lbs.

The cotton scales I've seen are all rustic looking things and weigh upwards to 200lbs.

Here's a picture of one:

I think if you showed up at the end of the day with a 50lb sack of cotton, you'ld be lookin for another line of work.

Paul K. Dickman

Hi Joe,

I suspect you only have the beam portion of a platform scale. Take a look at Fig 1 in this old patent diagram:

It looks like your beam may have been meant to sit in some sort of framework. That would explain why it doesn't have any hooks to hang it up with or hang stuff to be weighed on.

The McFarlane patent diagrams also use the same shape of cut-out on the sliding weight. I couldn't find out much about McFarlane Manufacturing other than they did make some platform scales that used a dial indicator...

It seems like I have seen some floor type platform scales that used a similar balance beam system before. Maybe this will stir up some other peoples memories of what they looked like.

If this were the case, then the upward loop to the left of the sliding weight would not be there, this would be the place where the knife edges would rest on the bearings of the scale.

This is common to every beam scale I have operated in the range of 5 pounds to 50 tons. Incidentally, this is why my signature is so terrible - at one time I was signing up to 500 weigh tickets in a 12 hour shift.

The additional weights may be marked "50" and "100" which would extend the capacity to 200 pounds. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

I was thinking that too until I looked at the patent I referenced. It has the same loop and yet shows a stand holding it. McFarlane had several similar patents from this same time period, all for their dial indicator and beam. One of the other patent drawings used a hook that held the beam loop up.

I realize that this could have been a drawing error, but would rather believe the draftsman just copied something that was already in existence that they had on hand (shrug).

See this patent for one that they represented using a hook to grab the loop:

I couldn't find any good images/diagrams that showed how the beam was implemented in old platform scales...

The loops are around 5/16-3/8 inch in diameter and so are the knife edge pins. Seems like pretty stout stuff for just

50 pound capacity.

Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Wow! Thanks to both of you guys for your comments. Leon, I noticed in the 2nd patent drawing that there appears to be both a hanging loop and a pillar; seems a bit redundant. Maybe the pillar is supporting the hanging hook. I'll have to read the full application later to see if this is explained. Also, you are correct that the loops are 3/8" dia.

My wife is going back to the flea market tomorrow (it's only open on Wednesdays) I'm asking her to be on the lookout for the other beam the guy had, which I think goes with the 2 weights. The undersides of the hooks for those weights come to a knife edge, and I believe they hung from the notches on the beam of the other scale. It looked like what around here is called a tobacco scale. Maybe I'll luck out.

Again, thanks to all who offered help.

Joe