The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-09-23
EVOLUTION OF THE SULKY.
DAN HETFIELD TELLS THE STORY
FROM SUFFOLK'S DAY TO ALIN'S.

New York horsemen up to Goshen on the
day of the Patchen-Gentry pacing race,
old Dan Hetield tilted back his stiff
brimmed, soft-crowned hat; laid his feet
| across the other seat, pulled out big
| black cigar and started in to tel the story
of the evolution of the sulky. Hetfield
halls from Railway, and is noted all over
Jersey as a judge of game chickens trot-
ting horses and local political prospects.
He dates back TO the days of Lady Suf-
folk and Hiram Woodruff, and was one of
the first of the o.d-time wheelwrights who
made business Of building track su.ke
for trotters.
The Record Lowered.
Eyes, I've seen the trotting record low
cred from 2:S0 to 2:O3% in my day" said
he, land want 20 tell you that the man
who builds sulkies has had about as much
10 do with it as the man who breeds trot-
/ ters or the man who trains and drives
| EN-. You young fellows that were hug
! gin a bottle and cuttin teeth about the
! time Goldsmith's Maid was cuttin' the
record down TO 214 don't know what IL
meant for a horse to trot in 2:S0 back in
! 1885, when Old Suffolk was on top. With
out saying word about the old tracks
| with their fiat turns, or about clumsy
/ shoes, the lack of boots, weights and rig
ging TO balance a horse, just let me try 10
/ tell you what a track sulky was like in
those days You didn't see any pneu-
matte tires and arcned truss axles, braced
all over with steel tubing. Not much
Not SuIkies, But Gigs.
1.-The sulky old Suffolk pulled must have
weighed 125 pounds. 1t had a straight
axle made of hickory, with steel ends
driven into the wood about fifteen inches
The seat was set up high from the axle
and rested on heavy springs a good deal
like one of these hackney gigs you see in
Central park nowadays. The fact is.
/ there were no real sulkes in those days
They were only light gigs, and not very
light, at that. The wheels were five feet
| high, with spolSes over an inch thick; hubs
that were four inches through and nearly
| seven inches long, and the tires were
pretty close TO an inch wide. The cross
/ bar was set away forward, and perfectly
straight and the shafts were bent only
a very little. Nowadays, of course, the
shafts and the crossbar are curved to fit
the horse.
The secret of Sull1y building.
Il suppose a trotter had to be hooked
anywhere from eighteen inches to two feet
further away from the sulky I'm those
/ times, to avoid hitting on account of the
straight axle and crossbar. That was
big handicap to speed, for the suky was a
/ whole lot harder to pull, and then it would
sway and slip and culver on the turns
so as to throw horse off his balance and
pretty near throw the driver off his perch.
| The system Of bracing was nothing at all
in those days, compared with the present
time. Why they used to raise the seat
away up two feet or more above the axle,
with hardly anything to support it except
ing four light iron rods They didn't know
the first thing about making a sulky rigid
| and getting it up close to the horse. Brac-
ing is pretty near the main thing now. In
| fact, I have been saying for thirty years
| that the secret of sulky building is to
distribute the bracing so to put an equal
strain on all parts just as far as possible.
That enables you to take off weight with
! out losing anything in the strength and
rightly of the sulky. It's improved brac-
ing more than anything else that has cut
down the weight of the track sulky from
125 pounds in Lady Suffolk's day TO about
30 pounds, or even % pounds, in the time
of AliX and Star Pointer.
The First sulI<y without Springs.
"Peter Dubois made the first track sulky
I ever saw without springs. That was
| somewhere about 1852 1 would say at a
| guess 1t was a big Improvement on the
old gigs, because 1t let the drivers seat
down and made the vehicle much more
rigid. ] think that sull1y had an iron axle
! about an inch square in pace of the Old
hickory axle, but I won't be sure. Any
how. wood or iron, the axle was as
| straight as a gun barrel and the horse had
| to be hooked just as far away as ever.
| Dubois made this suky for Flora Temple,
| as / remember it. She was a very wide
| gated mare-one of the Kind that you
| could run a wheelbarrow between her legs
when she was going fast. To give her
| plenty of room for sti1e action, Pete bent
| the shafts instead of making them
| straight The whole thing was well made,
and a good deal lighter than common.
think 1t weighed eighty-fve or ninety
pounds After the springs had been done
away with, the next great improvement
was the bow ak. It's a disputed oues-
ton is to who made the first one. But
think the original bow AK was sawed OUT
/ of the butt of plank by your humble ser
want l tried to get it to the grain of
the wood as near as l could. We had our
doubts about the strength of the thing, so
/ put an iron rod all the way through
the axle. This was about the year 1853.
About the same time Charles S. Caffrey
made one for Flora Temple and another
for George NJ. Patchen. He took the
Patchen suky down to the Camden fair.
and it attracted lot Of attention among
horsemen. Dan Mace saw the one I made,
and he suggested the scheme Of bending
the wood Instead of saving 1t out as !
1 had done before.
/ by the time Dexter came out these bent
axles were all the go. Either Caffrey or
! Dubois made one for the white faced horse
early in the sixties. II weighed only about
sixty pounds, and was built and braced
quite a bit like the bust of the old high
wheel sulkies. The shafts set right down
to the axle making il a great deal more
rigid than the old ones. and the axle was
arched up so that the horse could be
hooked quite close. Then it was braced
| from The axle to the shafts in several
places. distributing the strain and dong
away with the weight. In the old sulkies
/ il was necessary 70 support the seat by
| braces sixteen inches long, and the shafts
were attached to these braces about half
way up, so that the draft was not direct
! from the axle, as il is now.
! "'rhere were great Improvements in
bracing after Dexters day and the axles
were bent higher and higher until you
c,u1d run the sulky right up TO horse