Patina by bmac62
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No AI - This artwork was created entirely by hand or with traditional digital tools.
Description
100-120 year old horse drawn road grader.
I discovered this piece of antique, heavy equipment just this morning sitting in a field ten feet off the edge of a county farm road 5-10 miles from my home.
There are many manual cranks and controls for changing the angle of the blade, the lean angle of the steel wheels, blade height, and such to properly maintain a road and remove snow to the sides of the road. These manual tasks are now handled by hydraulics and the touch of a lever. But the basic functions of a modern road grader are much the same as on this early machine.
Driving along rural county roads is like going on a treasure hunt. You never know what you'll find around the next bend.
Thanks for stopping by.
Bill:)

Comments (37)
Amazing find! Great shot of this antique. :)
WOW!, excellence Bill a real neat find and capture, this would have made a dandy HDR...But that said, it's excellent anyway.
The light quality and colours are real nice, and the old contraption adds a bit of history. Very good.
Looks like it needs tuning! LOL!!!
Amazing image, excellent composition and POV! Congrats on a wonderful work! 5+
I used to wander amongst the rusty old farm implements on my granddad's farm, but none of them were as unique as this! I never would have imagined a road grader back in those 'good ole days', what a unique find and capture, Bill!
An interesting and exciting find! It looks exceedingly uncomfortable to operate!
...great lighting....very warm.
awesome shot my friend 5*
Cool shot, Bill! That toy looks great! Good composition, awesome view!
Fantastic capture!!
Stunning old farm tool!!! Excellent capture, lovely colours and details!!! Great work, thanks to the info too!!! :)
Beautiful capture and composition Bill!
octa said it
My pal Bill Chapman had one of these. He kept it on my Wyoming oil lease in the early '70s. I pulled with my V8 Wagoneer in compound low a day or two after a rain. He loved cranking the blade around. Backing up was a real pain.
I nearly fell off my chair when I saw this. This is damn near perfect Bill. A fantastic mixture of old and very technical machinery (which I can never get enough of) and nature at it's best. Truly stunning my friend :)
What an astounding and most intriguing find! Superb clarity and lighting, only to bring out the most beautiful antique piece of art! I love the background and the setting for this! It suits the subject so well, and tells a story........ Excellent capture!!!
Excellent picture!
Superlative POV, clarity, colors and lighting contrasts here, Bill. Also appreciated the narrative. Definitely something I didn't see at any of the auto shows I attended.
THIS is wild! I never thought much about the early days and how it would have been done. Incredible find and really outstanding shot!
That looks like some brutal work. Great fine and capture and thanks for the writeup - would of been a puzzle to guess.
with out doubt this is the oldest grader I have seen. outstanding find and capture
Super photo! My father-in-law had one similar to this one.
That is so cool! It makes a wonderful picture. Now I'm in mind of a song I hear on the radio these days by Shawn Mullins, "Beautiful wreck"...There are lots of gorgeous wrecks like this rusting in the fields around my sister's house, my challenge has been to find a way to get to them on the narrow little roads. It WILL happen.
Great discoveries on those back roads. I live in a rural area also, and there's all kinds of stuff like this. I was just thinking how today's farmers have it a bit easier, with their covered, sometime air conditioned tractors, etc. Nothing they can do about the weather, bad crops, poor markets, etc etc etc~~that'll never change!!
Fantastic capture! I need to get closer and look at all the connections and levers and wheels. Fascinating!
So cool, Bill! Really great find and such a wonderful looking picture! Really great job. Such items often went straight to the scrap yard here! Shame. Rob.
Cool shot. I think if you and I went on a road trip we would never get anywhere, but it sure would be fun... Driving my daughter to her boyfriends last night we saw the coolest barn just minutes from here one, I've missed before.. and I had to pull over I didn't take any pictures because I knew Erin was wanting to get to her friends but see I can't even get a few miles from my house without stopping. :)
Beautiful find and capture Bill. It is a treasure hunt for you. Just image as a little boy, before TV and all the other modern gimmicks they have for kids now, this would have been a magnet for us boys to play and learn. We would have been all over this thing. A wonderful capture!!
Brilliant. I can just feel this machine hankering for some action of days gone by. Cheers, Clive