Career
He is reported as serving an apprenticeship as a wheelwright with J. G. Ramsay & Company of Strathalbyn, South Australia. The South Australian government had offered a reward of £200 to anyone who could develop an effective mechanical stump puller due to frustration with lack of productivity efficiency on its farms with current equipment. The plough consisted of any number of hinged shares: when the blade encountered an underground obstacle, it would rise out of the ground.
Attached weights forced the blade back into the ground after the root was passed, allowing as much of the ground to be furrowed as possible.
Although a little unorthodox, it proved remarkably effective, and was dubbed the "stump-jump" plough. Rifle Brigade Smith took out a patent in 1877 for the design, he allowed it to lapse.
Rifle Brigade Smith was later credited as the inventor of the design by the Parliament of South Australia in 1882, despite controversy over the claim, and was awarded £500. After moving to Western Australia, Rifle Brigade Smith was the manager of a hotel from 1893 to 1895, and between 1895 and 1899 he operated "railway refreshment rooms".
He then leased 181.5 acres (0735 km2) of farmland at Beverley, where he resumed his passion for creating agricultural tools.
He proceeded to then open a workshop in the Perth suburb of Highgate in 1912, having ended his lease of the farming land.