antique iron & brass farm hay rope or garden hose guide

Old vintage rope or hose guide with an iron body and solid brass guide wheels. This is out of an old Wisconsin farm estate and would have been used to feed the large hemp hay rope for loading the farm's hay harvest up into the hayloft over the barn. The rope would be fed through a series of pulleys and attached to a large iron grapple hook on one end, and a team of horses on the other. The hook would grab a stack of either loose hay or hay bales and the team of horses or tractor would pull on the other end, lifting the load of hay off of the wagon and up into the haymow loft for storage.

This rope guide could be put anywhere on the system that the hay rope would need to be pulled to either side while reducing the friction and without damaging it. The hay rope could be up to several hundred feet long and would have been quite expensive.

The basic style of this guide is the same design as the hose guides that are used on the old fire engines, although the guides on the fire trucks are larger as they are made for much larger hoses.

This guide measures about 7" x 4" and will work with and about 1" rope or garden hose.