Fire Department Harness Part 3: Harness Design

My latest model harness is a fire department team for a steam pumper, circa 1900.  There was no standardized "fire department harness", although they usually had the following parts:

Historic fire department harness with pumper engine, photo from http://www.bakersfieldcity.us/fire/bfd_history/HistoricalHORSES.htm

• "Quick hitch" collar.  These were invented by a firefighter and greatly reduced harnessing time.  The hames are permanently attached; the collar opens with a latch at the bottom and has a hinge at the top (over the withers).  As far as I can tell, they were only used for fire horses.  This collar and the bridles used are the main differences between fire harness and regular harness.
• "Express" harness.  This was a standard streamlined style of work harness used by expressmen/deliverymen, made for easy harnessing but without sacrificing pulling power.  Girths are optional (they attach to dees on the traces) and cruppers are not used.
• Reins (and girths, if used) clipped on instead of buckled.
• Bridles were often some kind of halter-bridle, or had clip-on bits.  Some fire departments' horses wore more normal bridles around the clock; they had to be taken off when the horses were fed grain, which could cause problems if there was an alarm during mealtime.
• NO blinkers.  This was a safety concern.  Horses had to be able to see to navigate through traffic at high speeds on their own.
• If more than two horses were needed to pull a vehicle, the usual hitch was three horses abreast to keep the hitch compact for city driving.  The reins buckled together so that the driver only had one right and left rein to hold.
• Brass hardware and black leather seems to be standard.  Firefighters took great pride in keeping their horses, harnesses, and vehicles polished and in top shape.  Vehicles were usually ornately pinstriped and gold leafed.  

Fire harness with clip on girth and halter style bridle.  Photo from an online auction.

 Optional items include leather fly fringe browbands, and leather fly fringe "blankets" or wool blankets could be brought along to keep the horses comfortable once they were at the fire.  Lead ropes were probably stowed in the vehicle.  Dogs (any breed, not just Dalmatians) were sometimes used, as companions and mascots or to clear stray dogs out of the path of the horses.

So, after looking at various fire harnesses, I chose some of the most common features.  Most of the photos I found had similar harnesses; there was more variation in the bridles.  I chose a simple halter-bridle where the bit clipped directly to the halter rings.

The harness was made with leather and buckles from Rio Rondo; jump rings, wire for the buckle tongues, and chain from the craft store; brass strips from a local hobby shop; twine and cardboard found around the house; and bits and clips from twmhc ebay store, which I hadn't used before.  The fire engine is a Jim Beam bottle from ebay, with some wool fluffed up for the steam and a removable wood tongue made by myself.

Next week, the final post in the fire horse series will cover some of the history of fire horses.

Fire Department Harness Part 2: Hames...and finished!

First of all, I'm going to try a new blogging schedule, which will hopefully be more consistent: new posts will be once a week on Mondays - for now at least.

And here it is: at long last, a finished project!  This is a harness for use by a fire department circa 1905.  My next post will be a bit of history and more information on the design of these harnesses.  The biggest difference from a normal harness is in the design of the hinged collars with attached hames.

In Part One, I showed how I made the collars themselves.  The hames, though, were the really tricky part.  They were made from brass strips, jump rings, wire, sewing pins, and gold thread.  They are attached permanently to the collars.

The main part of the hames were shaped by bending with two sets of smooth-jawed pliers, a difficult task as they have to bend along the width as well as the length.  I did try hammering them on a small anvil, but in the end careful bending with the pliers worked best.

 Next, I punched some holes in the hames.  The way to do this without a drill is to pound a nail (of a metal harder than the brass!) carefully through the strip.  Hold the nail with a pliers and place the brass strip on a scrap piece of wood, then hammer away.  Be careful to keep the nail centered on the brass.  Eventually you will get a small hole.

The hole can be widened and smoothed out with a round file.  I also used a flat file to get rid of the burr on the back side of the hole.  There is a small hole on the top of each hame and a larger hole (for the latch) on the bottom of the right hand side.

 All sharp edges are rounded off with a file and sandpaper.  The hames were then lightly sanded with very fine sandpaper (600 grit) and rubbed down to remove any tarnish.  Craft brass will tarnish fairly easily and  fingerprints may show up much later if not cleaned off.

 First, I had to peel off the chamois lining from the back of the collars, as I had gotten ahead of myself.  Then, the hames were attached at the top by a sewing pin bent at the top and pushed all the way through the collar.  The pin is drawn all the way through and the end trimmed short, to create a sort of rivet.  If you've ever made a Rio Rondo kit saddle, it's exactly the same idea.  The small rectangle of chamois in the picture below is covering the end of the pin, for extra security and protection for the horse.

 

Using a round-nose pliers, I made a series of rings with long ends out of wire - you can see two of them in the upper right corner.  I made holes in the collar (hidden under the hames) with a large sewing needle, then pushed the wire through and attached jump rings.  This made the collar terrets for the reins, and the ring to attach the pole chain (seen here with a lanyard hook attached).  The left hand side of the collar has a piece of wire attached under the hames for the collar latch.  Thinner flat brass strip was used for the trace attachment.  The ends go through the collar and bend flat on the back as with the other parts.  It is also sewn in place with a few loops of gold thread.  The lower ends of the hames are sewn down as well.  Then the chamois lining was glued back in to cover everything.  I rubbed down the brass one more time, and coated the whole thing with clear leather sealant to keep it from tarnishing.

The collars close by passing the wire from the right hand side through the hole in the left hand hame.  The wire has a bend in the end to hook the latch.

The best part of this harness is that it works exactly like the real thing: it is ridiculously fast to put on!  Simply slide the breeching under the tail, and hook the collar closed.  Everything else can be adjusted ahead of time.  I'd even leave it attached to the vehicle, except that the bridles are hard to buckle if left til last.  The pole chains and trace chains all have working clips, so everything snaps together.

Next week: history and design of fire department harnesses!

New Year, Old Projects: Continuing the Fire Engine

Today, I actually got something model-horse-related done.  It still needs paint, but I finished building a tongue for my Traditional scale fire engine.

The engine itself is actually a Jim Beam bottle, so the tongue had to be removable.  In the end, I just cut a notch in the tongue with a round file and made a hinge with a piece of brass strip to hold it in place on the axle.

The doubletree is a piece of the same 1/4 inch square strip as the tongue, but I used the table sander to cut it down to half the thickness.  This isn't really a good idea - I sanded two fingernails off - but hey, I didn't have to use a saw or go out and buy another pre-cut strip of wood.  It's held on by two small nails and a piece of aluminum sheet.

The singletrees are made with 1/8 inch strip, and were rounded off a bit by hand-sanding and an X-acto knife.  The rest of the hardware is made of gold wire and jump rings.  The holes were drilled by hand with a pin drill.  I don't use power tools for model horse projects much, because hand tools are usually easier or better suited for what I'm trying to do.  Not safer, though.  My worst tool injuries have been with hacksaws, hammers, and X-acto knives.  Just because it doesn't have a motor doesn't mean you can let your guard down!

The front end of the tongue was carved and sanded down to a smaller point.  The round piece that goes side to side is aluminum tube, pressed flat on the ends and center.  It's held on by "nails" (cut-off sewing pins) on each end and a brass strip that goes top to bottom, also attached with sewing pins.  Instead of trying to drill a hole in the brass strip, I hammer a small nail in just far enough to punch all the way through.  The sewing pins then fit nicely into the small hole.  Two mini lanyard clips are attached with jump rings to hold the collar chains.

The wood will be painted red, and the silver metal will be either black or gold.  Now I just have to finish the hames for the harness - I can't put them off any longer!