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Farmer Turns Junk Into Rural Sculpture
Some craftsmen work with paint and can-vas, and others with wood or clay, but farmer Curly Leiker works with discarded "junk". He turns scrap metal into mailboxes that get all the neighbors talking and also builds mini tractors and artistic sculpture out of common, everyday items.
Curly has built mailboxes for f
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Farmer turns junk into rural sculpture AG WORLD Ag World 12-3-20 Some craftsmen work with paint and can-vas, and others with wood or clay, but farmer Curly Leiker works with discarded "junk". He turns scrap metal into mailboxes that get all the neighbors talking and also builds mini tractors and artistic sculpture out of common, everyday items.
Curly has built mailboxes for farmers all over the country. He gets orders strictly by word of mouth. Before he starts each project, he likes to know a little about the owners so he can "customize" each mailbox. One box at an Oklahoma ranch, for ex-ample, shows a cowboy sitting on a fence. The cowboy is seated on a pipe fence with one leg up. The head is made out of the compressor unit from a refrigerator. A large flat washer, made of heavy tin, fits over the head to form a hat. Individual chain links make ears, eyes and mouth. Small corn-pressed air tanks were used to form the body. The arms and legs were made from scrap pipe. The body sports a horseshoe tie, nuts for buttons, a light furnace chain for a watch chain, and cultivator shovel feet. Steel cable serves as a lariat. A saddle made out of scrap flat iron mounts on top of the mailbox itself.
Another customer plays the accordian so Leiker fabricated an accordian player for him. The mailbox is a part of the accordian, which opens to hold mail.
Leiker also makes toy tractors out of scrap parts. A recessed shelf in his home holds 16 tractors. Wheels on the mini tractors were made with valve handles and the bodies were formed from floats, square tubing, and shot gun parts. Nuts, couplings, clock gears, worm gears and assorted bolts are arranged to resemble working parts.
One of Leiker's favorite creations is a foot stool turtle he fashioned out of a tractor seat. Pipe nipples and 90? elbows were arranged to look like turtle feet. Other miscellaneous scrap was used to form the realistic-looking head and neck.
For more information, contact FARM SHOW Followup, Curly Leiker, Rt. 2, Box 22, Victoria, Kan. 67671 (ph 913 623-8161).
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