IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY AND APPARATUS FOR PLOUGHING LAND BY STEAM POWER
Year: 1875

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Henry Fox at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
8th December 1875.
I, WILLIAM HENRY Fox, of Graveley, in the County of Cambridge,
do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN
MACHINERY AND APPARATUS FOR PLOUGHING LAND BY STEAM POWER," to be as
follows:-
My improvements in steam ploughing consist in constructing a cheap
and simple windlass to be worked by an ordinary farm engine for
actuating a turnwrest plough.
There are in operation many complicated and expensive systems of
steam ploughing, well adapted for use on large farms where first cost is
of little consequence, and where the heavy working expenses necessary
to keep such a system in operation would be distributed over a great
number of acres, but these from their difficulty of manipulation and
great cost are not adapted to the requirements of a large class of small

page_text: farms throughout the country, where the steam power is but small, and
where the working expenses must be kept low.
My Invention relates more particularly to a method of ploughing
applicable to small farms to make use of the ordinary portable farm
steam engine, when not otherwise employed to do the work of horses
in drawing backward and forward a turnwrest plough across the field to
be ploughed.
At the fire-box end of the engine I fix two lugs with pin holes through
them for attachment to the frame of my improved windlass, and on the
driving shaft of the engine is fixed a sprocket wheel for giving motion to
the windlass by means of a pitch chain.
My improved windlass consists of a strong frame attached at one end
by means of pins to the projecting lugs of the engine, and at the
extreme end supported on two wheels. At the front end or end nearest
the engine is a platform, on which stands the man to control the engine
and ploughing apparatus, under the platform is a water tank for
supplying the boiler. At the top of the frame is a cross shaft running
in bearings, and carrying at one end a sprocket wheel, over which passes
a pitch chain from the engine; on this shaft there is also a small bevil
pinion gearing into a bevil wheel on the end of a shaft running over the
top of the windlass barrel; on the bevil wheel shaft is a small spur
pinion, gearing into a large spur wheel on the barrel. The barrel
projects on each side of the spur wheel for a length sufficient to wind
up the required amount of chain; passing round the barrel is an
endless chain, to which is fixed a turn wrest plough; this chain is
stretched tightly across the field by means of an ordinary movable field
anchor.
When ready for action the barrel is set in motion and the plough
drawn across the field, making a furrow in its journey, the engine and
anchor are then moved forward the width of a furrow, the plough is
turned and the motion of the barrel reversed, the plough being drawn
back and forming the next furrow.
The barrel may be reversed either by reversing the motion of the
engine, or by an extra pinion on the cross shaft gearing into the opposite
side of the bevil wheel, and actuated by means of a sliding clutch:
between the two pinions.

page_text: I also attach to the ground wheels of the engine a brake consisting of
two steel bands, one on each axle, the loose end of one band being
attached to a lever by means of a chain, and the other band being
connected to the same lever by means of a screwed rod; on turning
this rod both bands are simultaneously tightened and act as brakes on
the axles.