Years ago, a rancher down in the Big Hole called us and said he was about to burn and bulldoze all his old horse-drawn equipment. If we wanted it, come and get it.

We loaded up everything we could lift. Over time, many pieces have been restored or "cannibalized," particularly buck rakes and dump rakes for haying.

Some things just sat around, though. It was only this summer that I decided to fix up an old walking plow we'd brought back.

It would be a simple job -- mainly a matter of replacing split and weathered wooden parts.

However, as it sat outside the shop, a couple walked up. The man suddenly grinned and turned to his wife: "Look, Honey! An old lister plow!"

"It sure is!" she replied. "How about that? An old lister plow!"

Um .... lister plow?

A lister plow, they explained, is for digging up potatoes. They showed me how the "wings" on either side carry the potatoes away from the center and pile them up so they're easy to gather.

Their enthusiasm gave me the incentive to get to work. I always start jobs like this by making a really detailed sketch so I can get all the parts back in the right places, but as I measured and sketched, a surprising fact came to light: The plow was homemade.

The wings to each side were riveted to the central shovel with door hinges. Some of the "washers" were odd-shaped pieces of iron recycled from unidentifiable bits of machinery.

When I took iron reinforcing plates off the wood, yellow paint with black stenciling was revealed. I've seen that particular yellow on old military carts, and I wondered if the wood had been recycled from something military.

Despite the fact that it was a conglomeration of mismatched nuts and bolts, roughly cut bits of steel and split wood, I began to have a lot of respect for the long-ago rancher who had fashioned it.

His attention to detail was impressive. When a bolt passed through the wood at an angle, the bolt head had been angled to fit flush to the wood. Where the nut attached to the bolt, a tapered washer ensured that the nut would fit flush as well.

Even where it would have worked nearly as well to simply drill straight through the wood, the unknown craftsman had drilled each hole at the correct angle.

Rather than replacing the old wood, I sanded, glued, clamped and oiled it. I didn't want to throw out any of his careful work.

The only real problem was the handles. They did have to be replaced, and I needed my miter box to cut them at the correct and awkward angle.

Unfortunately, it was elsewhere, but I did have some horseshoe nails. Horseshoe nails have one flat side. I took four nails and tapped two on each side of the proposed cut, flat sides in and spaced close enough to guide the saw without damaging the teeth. The cut came out perfect. I hope that long-ago rancher would have approved.

Lynde Meikle works on a Deer Lodge-area ranch.