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"The Steigers will be repainted over the winter..." What's up with American farmers and repainting things? Drives me nuts.. I can not understand it. I would lo

"The Steigers will be repainted over the winter..." What's up with American farmers and repainting things? Drives me nuts.. I can not understand it. I would love to know.

bluGill 6y ago
Paint protects the iron from rust.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  Having never stroked a paintbrush on any of my late-70's and early 80's equipment I can assure you that this is not a practical factor.
  - Loughla 6y ago
    Where do you live? If we didn't paint our machinery every 2-3 years, we would have rust in the frames. Source: The Massey 1100 that is sitting in my machine shed right now acting as a huge and impractical paperweight because of a lack of rust maintenance by the previous owner.
    - randomdata 6y ago
      What environmental conditions do you have that lead to that? Around here a brand new car will start to show significant rust after a few years, but the tractors spend 90% of their life in the shed. They stay in pretty good shape.
    - JamisonM 6y ago
      What about the rust is making your Massey 1100 unusable? I live in the Red River Valley, we have poor draining soils, a clay bottom, and almost no sand.
- masklinn 6y ago
  Possibly JamisonM lives in a drier area where rust not a concern? Rust was certainly never an issue for my grandparents' farm, they're 20+ years gone and the tractors are still going, rust and all.
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    We have heavy, heavy soil here. We do wash equipment to make sure that wet soils are not left in the nooks an crannies of our equipment, but the idea that we'd have a frame rot away from rust.. that seems like a 100 year timeline issue to me. Combine hoppers need to be cleaned out every season and do rot away, put that's not a tractor frame. The painting at issue always seems to be very cosmetic to me, painting the hood on a tractor doesn't extend its life.. but it might increase its resale value!
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  It is also known as a MaryKay* Makeover in the South <insert laugh emoticon> On a serious note...paint jobs also hide flaws and can increase resale value. *Mary Kay is a MLM cosmetics/make up company. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay
colechristensen 6y ago
Nothing wrong with finding something to do over the winter even if there isn’t a whole lot of practical value. Some people are happier when things are neat and tidy.
- jfengel 6y ago
  Do you need a special paint to do it over the winter? I know some paints won't cure at low temperatures.
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    I just looked at a random paint intended for farm equipment and found a minimum application temperature of 50F which is easy enough to accomplish in a machine shed or on a warm day. You could also just blast your work quick with a heat gun. Nothing need be perfect.
eecc 6y ago
it's for rust protection and while you're there scanning every inch of the surface you get to see defects and rust spots early on
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
He's targeting 4x4 tractors specifically because he works on soft waterlogged soil. Rust is going to be an issue.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  You'll not find more waterlogged soil than where I work, the red river valley, hence my skepticism regarding the rust thing.
eitland 6y ago
Downthread there's a lot of talk about rust. I grew up on an extremely small scale farm on the west coast of Norway, lots of rain and 100m from the sea, 12 or so km from the open ocean (you see the Atlantic if you drive a boat 500m out to the middle of the fjord.) Rust didn't stop any of our tractors, not a single stroke of paint even for the 40-50 years old machines. But here's another thing, picked up from a friend of me after I asked him why he bought a brand new Valtra at some point instead of buying a slightly used one that was available on the market. His answer has stuck with me since: if you enjoy getting up and going to work in the morning that count for something too. I still happily use old equipment - if it works - but I factor in the value of not wasting my (or my customers, when I work as sysadmin) patience on slow computers. Edits: spelling, redundancies
- JamisonM 6y ago
  Haha, love this: > lots of rain and 100m from the sea, 12 or so km from the open ocean If you are that close to salt water and don't have a problem it sure does seem to make the rust thing a red herring! Agreed, it is of the utmost importance that the old machines start and go when it is time to work, that's the primary thing! But I own a rather new sprayer, worth more than my entire combine fleet combined. Why? After a lot of honest consideration of the choices we were making we concluded that the experience of spraying with our old one was so miserable that we were failing to do things that needed to be done when they needed to be done. There is no substitute for getting the job done properly, on any reasonably large farm that is the biggest profitability factor. If any farmer needs a quiet cab and heated leather seat to motivate them to go out and finish seeding in a timely manner then it is a good investment, no matter how frivolous it might seem!
  - eitland 6y ago
    Thanks for the answer! Also I really appreciate seeing so many active farmers here on HN, having grown up on a farm, studied farming and worked a bit in farms it makes me happy for HN as a community that we manage to keep farmers coming back :-)

"The Steigers will be repainted over the winter..." What's up with American farmers and repainting things? Drives me nuts.. I can not understand it. I would love to know.

bluGill 6y ago

Paint protects the iron from rust.

JamisonM 6y ago
Having never stroked a paintbrush on any of my late-70's and early 80's equipment I can assure you that this is not a practical factor.
- Loughla 6y ago
  Where do you live? If we didn't paint our machinery every 2-3 years, we would have rust in the frames. Source: The Massey 1100 that is sitting in my machine shed right now acting as a huge and impractical paperweight because of a lack of rust maintenance by the previous owner.
  - randomdata 6y ago
    What environmental conditions do you have that lead to that? Around here a brand new car will start to show significant rust after a few years, but the tractors spend 90% of their life in the shed. They stay in pretty good shape.
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    What about the rust is making your Massey 1100 unusable? I live in the Red River Valley, we have poor draining soils, a clay bottom, and almost no sand.
masklinn 6y ago
Possibly JamisonM lives in a drier area where rust not a concern? Rust was certainly never an issue for my grandparents' farm, they're 20+ years gone and the tractors are still going, rust and all.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  We have heavy, heavy soil here. We do wash equipment to make sure that wet soils are not left in the nooks an crannies of our equipment, but the idea that we'd have a frame rot away from rust.. that seems like a 100 year timeline issue to me. Combine hoppers need to be cleaned out every season and do rot away, put that's not a tractor frame. The painting at issue always seems to be very cosmetic to me, painting the hood on a tractor doesn't extend its life.. but it might increase its resale value!
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
It is also known as a MaryKay* Makeover in the South <insert laugh emoticon> On a serious note...paint jobs also hide flaws and can increase resale value. *Mary Kay is a MLM cosmetics/make up company. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay

colechristensen 6y ago

Nothing wrong with finding something to do over the winter even if there isn’t a whole lot of practical value. Some people are happier when things are neat and tidy.

jfengel 6y ago
Do you need a special paint to do it over the winter? I know some paints won't cure at low temperatures.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  I just looked at a random paint intended for farm equipment and found a minimum application temperature of 50F which is easy enough to accomplish in a machine shed or on a warm day. You could also just blast your work quick with a heat gun. Nothing need be perfect.

eecc 6y ago

it's for rust protection and while you're there scanning every inch of the surface you get to see defects and rust spots early on

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago

He's targeting 4x4 tractors specifically because he works on soft waterlogged soil. Rust is going to be an issue.

JamisonM 6y ago
You'll not find more waterlogged soil than where I work, the red river valley, hence my skepticism regarding the rust thing.

eitland 6y ago

Downthread there's a lot of talk about rust. I grew up on an extremely small scale farm on the west coast of Norway, lots of rain and 100m from the sea, 12 or so km from the open ocean (you see the Atlantic if you drive a boat 500m out to the middle of the fjord.) Rust didn't stop any of our tractors, not a single stroke of paint even for the 40-50 years old machines. But here's another thing, picked up from a friend of me after I asked him why he bought a brand new Valtra at some point instead of buying a slightly used one that was available on the market. His answer has stuck with me since: if you enjoy getting up and going to work in the morning that count for something too. I still happily use old equipment - if it works - but I factor in the value of not wasting my (or my customers, when I work as sysadmin) patience on slow computers. Edits: spelling, redundancies

JamisonM 6y ago
Haha, love this: > lots of rain and 100m from the sea, 12 or so km from the open ocean If you are that close to salt water and don't have a problem it sure does seem to make the rust thing a red herring! Agreed, it is of the utmost importance that the old machines start and go when it is time to work, that's the primary thing! But I own a rather new sprayer, worth more than my entire combine fleet combined. Why? After a lot of honest consideration of the choices we were making we concluded that the experience of spraying with our old one was so miserable that we were failing to do things that needed to be done when they needed to be done. There is no substitute for getting the job done properly, on any reasonably large farm that is the biggest profitability factor. If any farmer needs a quiet cab and heated leather seat to motivate them to go out and finish seeding in a timely manner then it is a good investment, no matter how frivolous it might seem!
- eitland 6y ago
  Thanks for the answer! Also I really appreciate seeing so many active farmers here on HN, having grown up on a farm, studied farming and worked a bit in farms it makes me happy for HN as a community that we manage to keep farmers coming back :-)