Iowa Farmer Makes Shark Out Of Sickles

Iowa Farmer Makes Shark Out of Sickles AG WORLD Ag World 14-1-18 Retired farmer Dale Nafe of Pierson, Iowa, has never seen a shark. But that didn't stop him from creating a life-sized look-alike from a bucketful of discarded sickle sections and some metal rods. The "Midwest Man-Eater", as it's been called, stands 12 ft. long and 5 ft. high in Nafe's front yard. It's supported by four 1-in. dia. metal rods. The sickle sections are welded to a framework made from 3/8-in. metal rods spaced about 4 in. apart. Nafe used a shop vice to bend the rods to the shark's profile which includes four fins - two on the back and two on the belly. "It's unusual enough that it catches the public's eye," says Nafe. "People often stop along the road and photograph it. Some even plop their children on top of it, but that's dangerous because the sickle sections are sharp. I got the idea when I visited a local blacksmith who had a bucketful of new mower sections that he said he couldn't use. I hated to see the mower sections thrown away, and they looked like shark's teeth. I'd never seen a live shark so I went by photo-graphs I found in an encyclopedia." Nafe used a pair of blue-green telephone insulators for the eyes and put white paint on the sickle sections that form the jaw, teeth and part of the belly. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dale Nafe, Rt. 1, Box 144, Pierson, Iowa 51048 (ph 712 375-5470).

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