The Rural Voice, 1993-04, Page 55Please be seated
The show is about to begin
Grey County farm families host Cast Iron Seat Collectors Association's
'Seat Meet' at Kilsyth on April 17
By Cathy Laird
The Cast Iron Seat Collectors
Association will hold their Spring
Meet in Kilsyth, Ontario, near Owen
Sound, on Saturday, April 17.
Enthusiastic collectors of the old cast
iron farm implement seats will spend
the day trading, buying, and
exchanging news about the latest
discoveries.
The event is a first for the Grey -
Bruce area, and two farm families are
hosting the event: Stewart and
Marion Weaver of Kilsyth and
George and Sylvia Kuhl of Keady.
"It is a common mistake to think
that these seats were used on
tractors," says Stewart Weaver. "The
old farm implements with these seats
were all horse-drawn implements
such as reapers, corn planters, plows,
rakes, discs, mowers, cultivators, and
the like."
"A lot of people think `tractor
seats'," says George Kuhl. "But the
old farm implements were gone
before tractors were made."
Cast iron seats were first used in
the United States between 1832 and
1852. After the Civil War in the
U.S., iron became very popular and
agriculture soon found that it was an
improvement over wooden farming
tools and implements.
Author John Friedly has written a
history book about cast iron seats:
"At first, seat bottoms were made
from wood with backs being made of
steel and cast iron, mostly cast iron.
It soon became apparent that it would
be easier, cheaper, and stronger to
make the entire seat of cast iron .. .
At first, the seats were crude and not
shaped for comfort, but they were
well accepted ..."
There are two main types of cast
iron seats. The most common type is
the kidney -shaped seat that was used
on the farm implements in general.
The second type of seat is a round
seat that was used on corn planters,
where the second person rode and
raised and lowered the planting
mechanism. This scat is known as
the dropper's seat.
The Cast Iron Seat Collectors
Association started 20 years ago on
July 28, 1973, in Atlantic, Iowa. The
group holds two meetings a year — a
Spring Meet held in Canada and a
Summer Meet held in Waukee, Iowa.
No one knows when seat collecting
began, but the CISCA celebrate 20
years of scat collecting this year.
Before the organization of the
CISCA, collectors had to search for
scats at farm auctions and steam
engine shows, at antique dealers, or
run ads in local newspapers. The
price of scats has risen steadily over
the years as the popularity of seat -
collecting spread.
In 1969, a book was published
listing 180 known scats. The fifth
edition of the book is soon to be
released, listing more than 2000
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