Baraboo Gas Engine Show Delivers Variety
Gaggle of gas engines at annual Badger Steam & Gas Engine Club show in Baraboo, Wis.
November 2009
Leslie C. McManus
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Dan Dorece’s mystery engine he displayed at the 2008 Badger Steam & Gas Engine Club show in Baraboo, Wis. The engine has very rough castings, no tag and no parts numbers.
Leslie C. McManus
|
If you’re looking for something a bit off the beaten path, check out the gas engine display at an antique farm equipment show.
You’re sure to find an unusual blend of regional favorites and short-run devices. The display at last year’s Badger Steam & Gas Engine Club show in Baraboo, Wis., offered just that – with everything from Wisconsin-built engines to an unusual specimen out of Canada. Nestled in a wooded glade, the engine area is like a living encyclopedia of America’s industrial past.
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Collectors haul their treasures to shows for a variety of reasons. Some are proud of a restoration; others have something unusual they want to share. And others, like Dan Dorece, Kenosha, Wis., are looking for information.
One of the engines he displayed is a mystery piece with no tag or parts numbers. Dan found it at an auction in Dorchester, Wis. “There was another auction that day, closer to home, with things I was interested in,” he says, “but I decided to chase this. I’d never seen one like it before.”
He estimates it to be a 4 or 5 hp engine dating to about 1910. It has an unusual head and ignition system. Entirely original except for the muffler, the engine shows little wear. “It has full tooth gear and the round connecting rod and brass bearings, which you generally find on high quality engines,” Dan says. The engine was not running when he bought it, but runs now. He’s built a cart and different gas tank for it.
It may be the remnant of an extremely small operation. “I don’t have any way to prove this,” he says, “but I think it may have been built by two brothers named Fleischman. They lived near Marshfield, Wis., and we know they built engines – a couple a year for five years. As far as I know this is the only one left. Nobody knows what the original looked like, and they didn’t advertise.”
The Lang & Scharmann foundry once located in Marshfield was known for the rough castings it produced. Dan believes the castings in his mystery engine originated there. “Although I’ve been told that castings for the Fleischman engines were made by a foundry in Oshkosh,” he says, “everything I see on this engine tells me that they were actually made by Lang & Scharmann. Since I’ve been told by three people that the Fleischman engine was built in Marshfield and I found it only a few miles from there, in Dorchester, my gut feeling is that the engine was not only built there but cast there.”
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