Farm Toys That Really Work

Farm Toys That Really Work AG WORLD Ag World 19-5-21 The pair of threshing machines really works. So do the silo filler, the corn and grain binders. Nothing's so unusual about old farm machinery still humming along like the day it came off the assembly line, you say? Not until you consider that this "machinery" and more like it is all hand-crafted, scale models of the originals. The farm toys are the handiwork of Al Van Beek, a St. Lawrence, Wis., priest who's become something of a celebrity after recent magazine articles in "Toy Farmer" and Wisconsin's "Agri-View." "I have a big stack of cards and letters to answer," says Van Beek. "I guess a lot of other people are as fascinated with farm toys as I am." What's remarkable about Van Beek's farm toys is they all work, thanks to pains-taking study of the original implements they're patterned after. Study - including exhaustive measurement - of every inch of the original implements takes place on the farms of Van Beek's father and brothers. Further study of operator's manuals takes place at the parish rectory. "I haven't built anything I haven't been able to examine first-hand," Van Beek says. So far, that includes horse-drawn as well as power equipment. A couple of Van Beek's more elaborate creations: • A 1/12 scale model of a McCormick-Deering thresher, with 28-in. cylinder and 48-in. separator, manufactured by IHC between about 1925 and 1935. It was Van Beek's first made-from-scratch toy, taking four or five months to complete in 1982, and was patterned after a thresher his family had. • A 1/16 scale model of a McCormick-Deering grain binder IBC manufactured from the 1920's into the early 1950's. Bind ing and tying mechanisms as well as all levers and adjusting mechanisms work. It took Van Beek 6 months to build and was his most challenging project because of the large number of moving parts. • A yet-to-be completed 1/16 scale model of a Belle City thresher manufactured in Racine, Wis., up until the 1950's. Van Beek says his hobby sprang partly out of sibling rivalry between he and his eight brothers in trying to outdo each other building model farms when they were boys. "My brothers and I were making these kinds of things ever since I can remember," he says. Van Beek also always liked to fix broken store-bought toys and is a collector, too. The hardest part of building a working model, he says, is the brush or spray paint job at the end. First, the toys have to be taken almost completely apart to do so, he says. Then extra care has to be taken so paint doesn't clog tiny bearings, gears, chains, etc. The best part of making the toys is in getting to play with them occassionally, he says. "I can `thresh' right in my living room all year around," he says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Al Van Beek, 4886 Hwy. 175, Hartford, Wis. 53027.

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