Saturday, May 4, 2013
(Another Sunny Day)
(Another Sunny Day)
Kenton Ditch Diggers
The Kenton Hardware Company of Kenton Ohio started in the late 1890's and produced beautiful cast iron toys from 1898-1952. Interestingly, many of the cast iron toy companies of the time were in fact producers of hardware for the house such as locks, latches, knobs and so forth. However, amy of them adapted and expanded to produce the beautiful cast iron toys that were produced form the early 1900's - the early 1950's
I've written a post about the Doepke sand loader, which was made of pressed steel. NOw that I'm thinking and writing, some of my favourite toys are the ones that you could play with and watch as they operated in a sandbox and backyard. The toy toys from different eras (1930s and 1940's) would have a crank to turn a geared and chained mechanism. Both would "scoop" up dirt or sand, and then move it onwards. The Kenton toys were of course stronger, having been made form cast iron. However, the Doepke sand movers had many more "scoops, and you could naturally load a pressed steel truck full of sand. If you search out another one of my posts, I wrote about some of the modern-era toys, including a ditch differ. That one that I wrote about is a "monster machine". It looks like a giant chain saw with giant teeth to dig out a large-sized vertical sides of about 5' deep x 2'-3' wide ( 1.55M x.6M-.95M). Of course, that is the "real one". The items that I talked about are "models" that people collect rather than play with.
The nickel-plated crank (top photo) attached to the green motor turns a chain that also then turns the "scoopers" or digger teeth. The dirt or soil is then moved along to the angled slide where it could be loaded on to a lower level train or truck.
As you can see, the Kenton Bucket Ditcher came in 2 colour combinations and 2 sizes. There was the red and green combo,and the orange and green combo,both of course with the nickel plated crank, buckets, and chains.
The digger above is the larger-sized version measuring 12" ( .305M) in length compared
with its smaller brother measuring 9"(.228M).
Another variation of the Kenton's inventory was the Fairfield ditch digger. I'm sure the "real" machine was motorized, but this toy was hand-cranked without any part to show the motor.
The fact that these toys have lasted so long says a lot about the quality of their manufacture. Of course, children did play with this toys, as well as their children. After that, the toys were probably stored in an attic, garage, or shed, and then passed on from generation to generation. Alternatively, the toys would goto auction or be sold at an antique store, where on a nice sunny day like today, people might venture out searching for those rare toys.
As for myself, I'm finishing this post now, and will continue moving our summer furniture from inside our house to the back lawn. I keep trying every year to convince my wife that a nice small storage shack would be better than moving the summer items inside and out.
25 years later, I,m no further to getting that shack!
Thanks for visiting
on this fine spring day (at lest in Montreal),
and have a great rest of the weekend,
Stacey
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