Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
IT WAS IN 1892 AND 1893 that the last portable threshed at our
place in the town of Friendship. I remember this engine very well.
The crankshaft was in front of the dome, just back of the smoke
stack, the flywheel was fairly large and had curved spokes. The
crosshead guides were 4 bar locomotive type, held together on the
out end by a yoke bracket.
ACT 1. This is the Otto Fennier’s Huber in distress.
Happened at the West Branch of the F. D. L. River in 1914. The
horse shoe on the grease box symbolizes the luck had by the riders
of this Huber. Their lives, hung on the last few inches of the rear
end of the bunker frame. She. will be in worse shape before she
gets out of this. It is Saturday afternoon.
Old wood cuts in newspaper files of the Fond du Lac
‘Journal’ for 1868 and 1867-68, show Russell portables and
these fit the picture that I have in my memory of this old engine
but remember that I was too young to read so I don’t know what
make it was same holds for the separator, hand fed, of course, with
integral apron stacker. The rig was owned by Bob Grallop, farmer,
thresherman and saw miller a fine, orderly, responsible man. I,
threshed for him when I had a rig years later, of which more
later.
In 1894, the ‘Lamb Boys’ (the ‘red Lambs’), 7
boys, sons of Peter and Mary Lamb. Not one of them ever went to
school a day in their lives. Old Peter, a devout man educated them
himself. When he first settled in the town he built his buildings a
quarter of a mile from the road so the children wouldn’t come
in contact with the wicked world. There was Joe, Henry, Tom and
John (twins), Willie, Mike and Dick, and Mary. Henry and the twins,
and Dick had the threshing outfit. Henry was boss and fed the
separator. Tom ran the engine, John was separator man, and Dick
hauled water.
I remember very clearly the day in the fall of 1894 when the
Lamb boys pulled their new rig into the yard, a Rumely
self-propelled 10hp. Link reverse (the first ones had the
Stephen-son link motion) and Rumely separator all painted and
striped brand spanking new, with separate stacker, the whole a
grand and exciting thing to a young kid of 6 quite unforgettable.
As soon as the separator had been set between the stacks and Tom
had backed into the belt and the threshing job started, I got
myself a large piece of stove wood and fixed myself a grandstand
seat in back and to the left of the engine. I was curious about the
crankshaft and flywheel being on the back end of the boiler. After
Tom had gotten his fire fixed and his holes in the barrel, he came
over to where I was sitting and asked me how I liked it. I told him
that his engine was built wrong. I wanted to know why they put the
engine on top of the boiler backwards. Tom explained that this was
a self-propellor, ‘it goes along the ground by itself’, and
as a result it was necessary to have the flywheel in back because
of the gearing. His explanation satisfied me somewhat. Soon he came
around again and asked if I thought I could get used to it. Now the
Rumely had a cover over the crank to keep the mud carried up by the
drive wheel, out of the brasses. I told him that I didn’t like
that feature because I couldn’t see the engine work.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we can fix that.’ He stepped over
and turned the cover over so the crank and rod could be seen.
It’s an odd thing but from that time on when that engine was
running in the belt that cover was always open. As a matter of
fact, this was true even on the twenty horse which they brought out
later until somebody started away from a setting having forgotten
about the cover and it was torn off.
ACT 2. Sunday morning. Otto Fener was in church. Bill, his son,
steamed her up and attempted to throttle her across on two propped
up timbers, one of them slipped and flipped her over on her dome,
wheels up. This is bad for canopy, crank shaft and steam
connections. It took ‘Fisher’ Jewson, the house mover, to
get her out of this. No one was hurt. Bill must have had a horse
shoe around his neck.
The Lamb boys bought a new 20hp. and a 30-60 Rumely with gear
driven blower in 1897-98. It was hand fed but later added a self
feeder. I ran this engine in 1919 which was the last season that it
operated in our neighborhood. I have never seen any other make of
engine in its power range that would out-perform that old Rumely in
the belt for steady motion with intermittent loads of tough straw
when the bundle pitchers were throwing them in one on top of the
other, crosswise. The governor would reach lor the ceiling and she
would bark till the women folks could hear ‘t above the
conversation in the kitchen. She kept a steady, even motion
regardless.
Now in order for the governor to grab for extra steam, there has
to be some slackening in the motion but I have stood on the left
side and tried to tell the difference in speed or any unevenness in
the motion and was not able. You couldn’t tell when she was
laboring with the eye alone. I often wondered how the governor knew
when to open up. True, she shook back and forth on her wheels as
she had no dynamic balance or fancy valves, simply the old static
balance and ancient slide valve. She burned a ton of fairly good
coal a day but on the other hand she didn’t allow the separator
to send straws into the stack full of grain because there had not
been enough steady speed to shake it out properly.
Although the old Rumely was a splendid performer in the belt she
wasn’t so good on her wheels. She had only one bull gear, with
the differential on the main axle, the tork was transmitted to the
left drive wheel through the hub and trough, the axle to the right
drive wheel also through the hub. Each hub had three spider legs
cast integral with the hub, and each of these legs had a two way
stay brace to the rim. The right drive wheel was extended away from
the boiler to accommodate the shot gun type water tank. As a result
the left wheel carried more than its share of the load and in a
hard pull the right wheel would slip but the left wheel
wouldn’t, and being connected more directly to the
differential, the spider legs, being fairly short, would exert such
a strain on the stay braces as to distort the rim to such an extent
that it would pull the spokes out of the rim and break them in two.
The last time I saw Schulze’s Rumely she had a half a dozen
spokes pulled out of her left wheel in this manner. There was
another one which had so many spokes out of that wheel, that the
wheel had to be blocked with wood, wedged between hub and rim
before she could be brought into town for repairs. But the great
majority of these old Rumely’s went through their whole useful
life and were scrapped with their wheels intact but they just were
not made to move houses with or to skid a corn crib half full of
corn.
On the other hand, they were easy to operate with their low
silhouette and big fireboxes. They were good steamers and were easy
to take care of. Their crosshead pumps always worked provided you
put in a new check valve every season or so. This only goes to
prove that the pump was effective and that it was being used and
that is the main thing.
I used to like to hear that check valve rattle every time that
you closed the throttle I can still hear it.
As for my experience with engines, 1 only operated six which is
not very many. Two Rumelys, two Advance, one Russell, and one Gaar
Scott. I owned and operated at different times one fifteen horse
Rumely with the Stefenson link for five seasons; filling on the
average of fourteen silos. One twenty horse Russell with 36-60
Advance separator I ran for five seasons, and one twenty horse Gaar
Scott for four years on a sawmill. I rented a twelve horse Advance
in 1915, the first fall that I filled silos, and liked it very much
indeed. She was an easy steamer and had a quick response to the
governor.
