Wooden Furniture Moving Sleigh  This sleigh was made from two straight 6-inch by 6-inch hardwood planks each 15-feet long.  A removable platform of tongue-and-groove flooring was fastened with bolts when required. A hinged welded steel drawbar and metal runners the full length of the sleigh made this a useful way of moving large furniture items behind a tractor, for example, when he was moving his household from one house to another on the other side of the paddocks.  Illustrated is the railway carriage from one of Lionel's playground equipment trains being towed around the paddock by Lionel at a child's birthday party. The sleigh is being towed by a vintage Ferguson TE20 tractor at Eraring that he and a friend (Steve Fitzclarence) had previously restored.  Photos and description courtesy of Lionel Hartley. Posted with Lionel's permission by The Friends of Lionel Hartley . 

Trailer Stand To keep the drawbar of his trailer level without undue weight on the jockey wheel when it was in storage (creating a flat section on the jockey wheel's rubber tyre), Lionel made this trailer stand. He welded a 50mm towball to one end of an 18-inch length of 2x2 steel box section, welded a steel disk to the other end, put a heavy-weight eye bolt through a hole below the towball and welded the nut in place.  This not only made a useful stand that  kept the drawbar level, but was made more secure as the trailer safety chain was padlocked to the ring to discourage would-be thieves. Photos and descriptions courtesy of Lionel Hartley. Posted with Lionel's permission by The Friends of Lionel Hartley .

Streetside Plant Stand As a fundraiser for the charity ADRA ( www.adra.org.au ), Lionel's wife Rosemary propagated plants for selling.  Lionel made this metal two-tier display stand with a sign and built-in cash collection/donations box. He says it embarrasses him to confess that it needed to be fastened to a nearby tree with a length of chain as seen in the bottom right of the photo. Photo and description courtesy of Lionel Hartley. Posted with Lionel's permission by The Friends of Lionel Hartley . About ADRA (Video)  

Project-a-sign As a fundraiser in the 1970s, Lionel invented Project-a-sign .  This was a resource for enabling sign-writing, making stage scenery, cycloramas, murals, plywood Christmas displays, posters and banners etc. without the actual user having the need for any artistic skill.  The hand-drawn illustrations, mounted in projection-slides were simply projected onto the posterboard, plywood sheet, canvas flat etc., the user then traced around the outline and painted the article as appropriate. The Project-a-sign project consisted of 2,650 hand drawn original pen-and-ink illustrations that were photo-reduced to the size of a 35mm film slide, printed on transparency film, cut and mounted onto plastic slide mounts. These were then sold in sets of 20 (Sign lettering, traffic signs and subjects such as hobbies, transport, cartoons, music, religious graphics, people, occupations, seasonal illustrations, etc.) The sign lettering slides had the full alphabet on each slide in a dif...

Boat and fishing Jetty at Eraring The original Jetty at Eraring on Lake Macquarie (NSW) was rotted and the timber piles supporting it were dangerously decayed.  So lionel built this new 15-foot by 7-foot jetty with treated decking timber and mounted it on four 44-gallon (200-litre) drums filled with cement.  After painting it with clear marine decking varnish added a safety rail and two galvanised boat mooring rings.  Photos and description courtesy of Lionel Hartley. Posted with Lionel's permission by The Friends of Lionel Hartley .