Scale Model Engines Offer the Best of Both Worlds

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Working implements and machinery are very important to and engine show display, James Gehringer says. This 1/2-scale John Deere corn sheller gets plenty of use at each show he attends.

The concept of scale model farm machinery isn't novel by any means — the idea's been around at least since Jean Schoenner of Nuremberg, Germany, crafted a three-cycle, flame-ignition engine sometime between 1880 and 1890. A quick glance through a September/October 1951 Iron-Men Album proves engine and steam machinists have been showing off their homemade handiwork at threshing reunions and engine shows since those events began in the early 1940s.

While the prevalence of scale models wasn't widespread during the early years of these shows, today scale models occupy their own healthy-and-growing niche right along other heavy- weight farm show categories such as tractors, stationary engines and steam traction engines.

Talk to any scale model builder or collector, and they'll likely explain with passion how they used to collect traditional farm machinery until they experienced an epiphany about scale models.

"They're easy to transport and display at shows," James Gehringer of Elburn, Ill., says. "But the real reason I like them is because I built them myself. I can go to a big engine show with 10,000 people showing old engines that have been restored, but inevitably people will come looking at what I've made and find themselves amazed because I'm the one actually making these engines."

James is among many collectors — some who also moonlight as resourceful machinists — who find crafting their own versions of today's most popular antique engines is more rewarding than locating and restoring an original. The decision to build and display scale models is often as thrifty as it is pragmatic: Searching for rare engines can be a time-consuming and fruitless effort, and buying a rare engine can often hit collectors heavy in the pocketbook. A scale model, on the other hand, can be designed after any engine model and might cost significantly less than the real thing.

"Let's face it, buying old engines is big business these days and finding a nice, rare engine is hard and expensive," James admits. 'I like the fact that I can buy the plans for whatever engine I choose, then make a copy of one with my own hands."

Bit by the bug

James, who also has collected full-scale engines for more than 30 years, says his passion for scale models began in 1981 when he first noticed an advertisement for a scale model kit in an engine hobbyist magazine. He'd been interested in tools and engines since his childhood, and mixing the two seemed a natural fit. Motivated by the ad, James purchased a freelance (originally made) scale-model kit from Ted Young of Peoria, Ill., and built it that same year. The 'Young' kit is a 1/3-hp horizontal, hopper-cooled hit-and-miss engine. That first project motivated Jim to build more.