Rural Heritage June/July 2025

material will make it light and strong for animals this size. Each socket has a 1/2” hole centered 1/2” back from the front. The back end of the pole has a matching hole. It only takes seconds to slide the pole into the socket and drop in a 3/8” pin. The pin drops in easily. It doesn’t need to be snug. The pole can be made rigid by tightening a 1/2” bolt in a nut welded over a second hole on the socket. Pin and bolt can be inserted quickly and easily, no tools needed I won’t say how many times I went looking for that darned pin before I chained it and the bolt in place. The tongue pictured is not the described 2”x2” tube. That tongue went with a wagon I sold recently. Since I have only needed one pole for the last seven or eight years, and barring a bad accident I will only ever need one, I splurged and made a tapered pole of the same weight. Tapered just looks better to me. This tongue is 94” long from neck yoke to evener bolt and weighs 36 pounds on the neck yoke, hitched. It tapers from 1 1/2 inches square to 2 1/2 inches square with a 6-foot long insert welded in the back to fit the sockets. The team carries the pole from one implement to the next, leaving my hands free to guide it into the socket. This works well on four-wheeled vehicles with a hinged socket. It is hard to lift the stiff socket on the fore cart with one hand. My solution is to mount a kick stand under the front of the cart. When the pole is pinned in place, the stand folds up beside the frame without reducing ground clearance. Noise is the only drawback that comes to mind for using a steel neck yoke, pole and evener. Since I only have one tongue, the yoke is permanently attached A kick stand is mounted beneath the front of the cart and is nested beside the pole when not in use without reducing ground clearance.

The shafts encircle the draft animal and protect it from injury should it struggle to gain its freedom.

by a tie rod end. It flexes freely in all directions but is tight enough to be silent. The underside of the pole has 5/16-inch holes drilled every foot. Expanding foam sprayed through the holes fills the steel tube. Trace chains slapping the pole will produce a click rather than a CLANG. A foot of radiator hose split and riveted over the back of the pole does a little more to silence contact with the singletrees and heel chains. Training Shafts and Tongue Shafts that entirely circle a single animal have several advantages. The rigid crosspiece at the front allows The shafts are attached to the cart using the same receiver as the tongue.

Rural Heritage

12