After 21 Years A Thank You To All From Cattail Foundry

that we are something big, we are not, but have learned a few
things in these years. We try hard not to get too big, but we have
a few boys working for us that are fine workers, so we can get away
with some iron. So, I want to thank all of you that have brought
things here to cast, also those who sent their things by mail or
UPS. It has been a pleasure to us, because you are a good and
trustworthy group of guys; very few have let us down with their
money.

Now let me write a few things that brought this progress
about:

First of all, my grandfather, David M. King, is responsible for
some of it, as he was a very dedicated thresher. He moved to the
farm where we still live, already having five children in 1916, and
having five more here on this farm, my father being born in 1920.
About that year Granddad bought his first steam engine in co-op
with his brother. It was an R Peerless, which they drove home, a
distance of about 20 miles, right through Lancaster Square! They
took the job of running a threshing machine for Reuben Stoltzfus,
who had another rig consisting of engine, thresher and baler. So
after a few years of running Rube’s machine, Granddad and his
brother John bought it, also got a bigger engine, a TT Peerless.
After a year or so, Granddad wanted a baler to go along with it.
John, not ready to invest in a baler, sold his share to
Grandfather.

This is the engine that Benjamin L. King bought in 1962: E. J.
King’s 9 x 10 Frick, threshing July 6, 1993. (My son Aaron is
on the seat.)

The TT Peerless had a small leak in the mud ring, so about 1925,
he traded the TT for an 8 x 10 Frick. This engine did lots of
threshing and silo filling for him. My father and uncles used to be
along threshing for about nine weeks. Sometime in the mid-thirties,
he bought a 40-62 Huber, which proved to be a very good tractor and
we still used this tractor in the 70s. We then sold it to a Paul
Seacrist from Quakertown, who still has it!

Now with the Huber to go threshing this left the 8 x 10 Frick
with only one job, steaming tobacco beds. My father bought the
Frick from Grandfather in 1942 (the year I was born), so I grew up
with this engine till I was nine years old.

My father, Emanuel F. King, farming on this same farm, wanted to
do without a hired man when I was nine years old, but steaming the
big run of tobacco beds in the neighborhood without a hired man,
would not have worked. So Dad sold the Frick to his brother, David,
who had big boys old enough to go steaming beds. This made me very
upset, so I made Dad promise that if Uncle David would ever sell
the Frick, that I would get a chance! Well, in 1959, at age 17, I
bought it back.

Now by that time tobacco was a big thing. I was steaming from
two to three thousand pans a year. Going to Young’s Shop in
Kinzer for supplies, I took notice to a 9 x 10 Frick No. 21978
sitting there, which seemed in very good shape. After staying on
their heels for about one year, they sold it to me. They put new
tubes in it for me. At that time Arthur S. Young Company had new
grates in stock, as they had their own patterns at a foundry. So I
bought four extra grates from them for $15.00 in 1962. By 19641 was
steaming about 3000 pans. I was also married that year and then
went carpentering until 1970 when I started farming.

About 1974 it was necessary to use the last grate that I had
gotten in1962, and also other people were looking for grates. By
this time Young’s were out of business and the foundry had
burned down, including their pattern. I had one new grate left and
so I started looking for a foundry. After lots of trying, I found
one that said they could do the work but I must have a pattern
made. Walter Horst had just retired from pattern making at Sperry
New Holland, and made my first pattern in his basement.

In 1975 I went back to this same foundry with a pattern for 9 x
10 grates. When I got there all the windows and doors were boarded
up. What a letdown! Well, a man working on his truck across the
street told me where the man lived who owned the foundry, or used
to! I looked him up and asked where to go now for casting. He did
not know where to send me with a loose pattern. I asked him if I
could make them. After a long look at me he said, ‘Yes,
but’ (so on and so on). So I asked, ‘Would you help me get
started?’ He said yes, and I could come to the old foundry the
next Saturday and he would give me a bunch of stuff. So my fire was
lit!

This man’s name was Ed Stahl and his son’s named Ashley.
He worked at a foundry supply and brought me information about a
Speedy melt Gas Furnace, which we bought in March, 1976. We used it
to melt our first iron, and used it after that for five years; and
still use it to melt aluminum and brass. The first five years I
used to think that after we finish this batch, surely there’ll
be no more, but, you guys kept right on coming; plus a good friend
started making stoves, D. S. Stoves, by name. Another one by the
name of E.L.S. started making manure spreaders; another one I &
J Manufacturing, started making other farm machinery; also S &
S Stoltzfus wanted sewing machine wheels and treadles.

In 1981 our good friends Ed and Ashley Stahl helped us pour our
first iron with a small cupola made with 55 gallon drums. This
proved to be a better way to melt iron than the gas furnace. We
used this little cupola for eight years. My sons, Emanuel and
Reuben, started taking iron away from this cupola when they were 14
and 15 years old. This little cupola would melt at the rate of half
a ton an hour. In those days we’d pour about 1 ton per
heat.

Then in 1988, we made a cupola four feet outside, but I bricked
it down to about 30 inches. This thing seems to like to melt
’em down. We have put whole baler flywheels in it and they went
to pot! This one melts at the rate of about 1 or two ton per
hour.

In 1990 I gave up the paperwork to my oldest son, Emanuel. Also
in 1990 my other son Reuben took over the farming and dairy,
leaving a little time for me sometimes in the evening or early
morning, so that I got to finish (or almost), the scale Frick that
I started 14 years ago.

Since I was a small boy, I always wanted to make a model engine
of a Frick. I made a wonderful working model ( scale of a 9 x 10)
when I was in my teens. Later, with us being involved with making
patterns and castings, I got to thinking about making a scale of a
9 x 10 Frick. A good friend who makes boilers, under the name of
Benson Mountain, made the boiler, which I may run at steam shows. I
took it to R & T the last two summers. I made some ice cream
with it, which was not hard to get rid of (Ha!). I also made ice
cream a few other places last fall.

A very good friend of mine, Raymond Martin, was in the pattern
business 25 years ago, had his own shop but, business being slow,
he took another job until he retired two years ago. So, now
he’s back making patterns for us and others. He also enjoys
taking the Frick and me to these places with his pickup and small
trailer, to make ice cream.

Last fall he made a rather big pattern for us. He even had to
put extensions to his lathe. This turned out to be a pattern and
core box to make Case smokestacks, which he took pictures of, also
he took a few pictures of us, pouring one, and a few of the furnace
(or cupola).

I would like to express myself about this work that we got into
(not ourselves, but you fellows out there), since it’s about
impossible to get the bigger foundries to use a broken part to make
a new one, or even a loose pattern, it has given us a good feeling
when you picked up the new casting with a smile! Therefore, we hope
to continue and, Lord willing, to make those hard to get or needed
parts. But, no production unless you have a good pattern.

Thanks again, and let us give praise to the One on High who lets
these things happen. We are pouring about every two weeks, making
molds most of a week, then getting a few neighbors to help the two
hours pouring about 3 to 4 tons. We like to have seven boys or men
for the two hours while we pour. Then it takes about a week to
clean up again! We get to pay them back at hay making, silo filling
and threshing time.

Oh yes, don’t forget there’s another man doing our type
of work in Indiana, Charley Simson. I would like to see his
operation sometime. I think the furthest that we sent steam engine
grates was Port Orchard, Oregon.

Now to finish up this letter. Just a few lines about the engines
here. We fixed up a 1910 UU Peerless 10 years ago with at least 140
new castings. We used it to thresh and fill silo several times. We
have been threshing with steam about every year again since 1983,
and most years fill silo at least one day, most times with the 9 x
10 Frick which I let my son Emanual have a few years back. He takes
very good care of it. He also has a 10 x 12 portable Frick that
took lots of work, as it was on skids. This engine is now about
like new, and is at R & T’s sawmill since last summer.

Also, here on the farm is the 8 x 10 Frick that Granddad King
got in the 1920s. Benson Mountain has agreed to make a new boiler
for this one. Emanuel has one more on the back burner that we are
making some new castings for, like a new hub for the back wheel.
This one is also a UU, 60 HP Peerless with a high pressure boiler
and on springs. A man by the name of Sam Osborn got his engine at a
sale in Missouri in 1984 for parts.

I’ll close, hoping you’ll keep us in business, but
won’t flood us! I am sending a few pictures along that friends
have given to me. Well, that’s about enough steam blown
off!