Happy to post something about the tractor this time.  I don't think I had mentioned earlier that when we brought home the H it was missing the hydraulic pump.  The pump is a big self contained cast iron unit that fits into the belly of the tractor and is powered by a coupler that attaches to the counter shaft.  Not long after initially getting the tractor home I found some pictures from the web and sent them to cousin Renae and asked that if she came across something that looked like the picture to let me know.  Well, they are selling the farm and in the process of cleaning things out she came across the pump in a shed.  I was ecstatic!  I have no idea why it was removed or if it even works but at least now there won't be a big gaping hole in the tractor where it goes.  It probably weighs 75lbs or so and moving it around was pretty fun.  It was missing the lever that engages it, the rod that is used to move the lever from the tractor seat and the coupler to power it.  Thank heavens for ebay - found them all and they arrived is short order. 

Here's the pump itself.  The lever on the right was purchased from ebay.

The round slotted part on the front of the pump is where the coupler attaches to power it.

The coupler and the rod to move the lever in the above pic.  More ebay finds.

The counter shaft where the coupler attaches.  This is from the web.

I didn't feel like crawling under the tractor and taking a picture so I found this one on the web so you can see where the couple attaches.

Wow, it's been a very long time since my last post.  Have done nothing new to the tractor (the purpose of this blog) but did make a good deal of progress on the timber-frame shed project.  The two top plates that joined the top of the three "bents" were a real challenge.  They are 8 x 8 inches and 16 feet long so just moving them around was a struggle.  Heck, just rolling them over while working on them was a struggle.  The real problem I had to deal with was that in spite of my best efforts to dry them properly they both ended up with pretty pronounced twists and one was bowed.  Getting the mortises all on the same plane and in the right spots took a lot of measuring and some string and level gymnastics that I'll not bore you with.  To my surprise they both fit!  Getting the beasts up over 10 feet in the air was another feat.  During the past few days I've been putting up the rafters which I had made a couple years ago and have been storing.  More twisting issues but nothing insurmountable (so far).  Here's a couple of pics of what she looks like today.



After the rafters are up I'm going to bolt them to the top plate to make sure the roof doesn't blow off during a storm.  This will be the first metal used; up till now all the joins have been with wooden pegs.