From the Ground Up:
1902 New Giant Restoration Continues
By Karen Bates Chabal
Editor's note: This is the second installment in a series about the restoration of Wayne Kennedy's 1902 New Giant 18 hp steam engine. The first installment was published in the March 1999 issue of Farm Collector.
Like the deliberate motion of a traction engine, the restoration work on Wayne Kennedy's 1902 New Giant keeps moving forward at a steady pace. Wayne plans to debut the fully-restored engine at the Old Threshers Reunion in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, in 2002, the year of the New Giant's 100th birthday.
Wayne started working on the 18-ton engine in the fall of 1998, and although he has about two and a half more years of work on the project, he's happy with the progress.
Wayne has been working with steam engines for at least 30 years. This is his fourth complete engine restoration, including an 1890 center crank Case, owned by the Midwest Old Threshers Association. So when he convinced himself to buy the New Giant in 1995, he knew from its condition that it would be a lengthy process to bring it back to good working order.
During the winter of 1998, Wayne tore apart the engine and had a local welding company make new boiler plates from his drawings and templates. The boiler plates were ready that December. In the the winter, he worked in his shop, getting the plates ready to go into the boiler.
When a century-old machine is being restored, advancements in mechanical technology come into play. This time around, the iron in the boiler was welded together, instead of riveted. To give the boiler an authentic look, Wayne sat at his lathe and made dummy rivet heads for the boiler. Last summer, on a 102-degree July day, he mended the boiler's belly.
Although the summer's extreme temperatures were uncomfortable for welding, a seemingly endless Indian summer enabled Wayne to finish the boiler repairs, including sandblasting and painting. Then he shifted his focus to the wheels and axles. He reconditioned the rear axle brackets and shaft, sandblasting away about an inch of grime that had built up on the wheels and gears. Then came the challenging task of remounting the brackets and axles for the rear wheels. The process, Wayne says, involved fitting the brackets to the boiler, shimming them into place, removing them for grinding and then checking the fit all over again.
"Before you ever take something like this apart, you take pages and pages of measurements and pictures," Wayne cautions, "because if it doesn't match, it won't work."
For nearly all of the work during the first year, the engine was suspended from an A-frame behind Wayne's shop. Last fall, he met his goal of putting the wheels back on and rolling the New Giant into storage for the winter.