Making Baskets With Steam

I’d been through Califon several times a few years ago
before Conrail tore up the High Bridge branch of the old Jersey
Central Railroad. Right after its abandonment, the track made a
good place to run the home made track car that my son had modeled
after the Buda track car that I had ridden as a boy on the Virginia
Blue Ridge Railway. But, I still didn’t know where the plant
was located which turned out to be the califon Basket Company. It
seems that not too many of the local people knew where it was
either for when I asked an elderly gentleman over by the grocery
store, ‘Where can I find the local factory that does wood
working with steam?’ (at that time I didn’t know that they
made baskets), he replied, ‘I’ve lived here 36 years and I
don’t know of any such place.’

Not satisfied, I walked around the town of maybe a thousand
population and down back of the field stone depot there were some
logs outside a group of low wooden buildings that hadn’t seen
paint since Wilson’s administration. There it was quite evident
that wood was being used as a raw material.

The A. B. Farquhar & Company steam engine is here shown
powering the line shaft serving the veneering lathes. The engine
carries shop number 16249. It also has a Good Roads Machinery
Company nameplate.

The first person that I saw was a luxuriously bearded individual
laboriously dipping, one at a time, lead fishing lures in a sort of
pseudo mass production operation. In the Florida Keys we call them
‘Millie’s Buck-tails’ and they do a good job catching
mackerel. ‘Well’, he said, when I told of my first
encounter in the search, ‘I think that the tourists know this
place better than the local people,’ as he spoke of the steam
powered operation in the buildings next door.

As it turned out, the plant was down while a crack was being
welded in the boiler, and the owner, Robert J. Ferguson, was away
too, so most of the seven or eight total employees were not too
busy. That proved to be fortunate because Elmer Sliker, the
plant’s certificated engineer, could take the time to give me
some background on not only the operation, its product and
machinery, but some insight into the steam plant.

The factory makes a line of peach baskets in the 16, 8, 4 and 2
quart sizes. There are two veneering lathes driven from line shafts
that cut the staves for the baskets. The larger of the two units
can handle a 42′ long poplar log. These are held between two
live centers that rotate the log against the trim knives and the
stave drum. It cuts ‘ thick tapered pieces that form the basket
sides.

The power for the line shafts comes from a 25 horsepower
(nominal) A. B. Farquhar Company of York, Pennsylvania, center
crank engine. The nameplate declared that it was shop number 16249.
However, there was another nameplate as well and it read, ‘Good
Roads Machinery Company, Kennet Square, Pa.’ It too had the
#16249 with the notation, ‘Refer to this number when ordering
parts.’ Although the plant has been operating for nearly a
hundred years it is not known if the engine has been there all that
time though it is most likely.

This is the heart of the operation: the veneering lathe driven
by the Farquhar steam engine on the right gets its steam from the
Titusville boiler, center rear, to cut staves from the logs that
can be seen through the doorway, left rear.

This manufacturing operation started in nearby Pottersville but
was moved to the present Califon location six years later. The
plant was owned, originally, by Boyd Hoffman. He sold it to John
Federowiecz who ran it for about seven years until Bob Ferguson
took over four years ago.

The boiler is not original. It is a 1930 construction of the
Titusville Iron Works of Titusville, Pennsylvania. It is a return
tubular boiler of somewhat unusual design in that it is internally
fired instead of the usual externally fired type. That is, the
return tubes are above the crown sheet of what otherwise would be a
locomotive type boiler. In fact, at first look it appears to be
just another traction engine boiler until one sees that the smoke
stack riser is coming out of a smoke box with clean out doors just
above the fire doors. There is no brick setting for all surfaces
are water cooled.

Cast into the smoke box doors is ‘No. 40 100# W P Series
R.’ At one time it was in a wood working plant in Scranton,
Pennsylvania, and was brought in about five years ago after several
years in retirement. It was retubed and rebuilt so that it would
pass inspection. At the moment, it has been derated from its
original 100 pounds to have the safeties set at 85 psi. It is
operated at 60 pounds and that is enough for the Farquhar steam
engine to power the veneer lathes. It is fired with scrap wood in a
bare bones operation. No feed water equipment injector or pump is
needed since the ‘city water’ pressure is 140 pounds. Just
open the feed valve on a low glass no problem.

The prestidigitating philosophers from Foggy Bottom on the
Potomac have coined a word for this thermo-dynamic cycle,
‘cogeneration’. To we ordinary folk it’s just simply
good Yankee ingenuity at work making do with what you’ve got
and don’t throw anything away.

Steam power doesn’t supply all of the power for the plant.
The round wooden bottoms of the baskets are cut out by electric
powered machines as is the wire stitching in the assembly
operation. These do not require heavy horsepower as does the
veneering operation. That turning is an intermittent load that
would result in a high peak demand charge if electric motors were
used. Such a charge would add greatly to operating cost. Thus, by
using steam power generated from wood scrap, this small plant can
remain very competitive. Steam power in a reciprocating engine
still has its place in the scheme of things.

Basket assembly and stitching operation. Staves, hoops and
bottoms are within easy reach of the operator who fits the parts
over a mandrel of proper size for the basket being assembled.