The job was too big even for ‘Ghostbusters.’ Besides,
the ‘Incredible Hulk’ that haunted Hanford Mills Museum
wasn’t quite a ghost.
It was a pink and green heap of metal, wrapped around more than
5,800 pounds of rust. For more than a decade, it had been sitting
defiantly on the museum’s lawn, perched atop railroad ties now
rotting into the ground.
A 16 HP Sta-Rite gasoline engine dating from the turn of the
century, it had been brought from a former sawmill near Oneonta,
New York to Hanford Mills in the late ’60 ‘s by the
individual owner of the site then. And, there it sat ever since,
not fooling even the youngest of museum visitors that it was a
piece of environmental sculpture.
But when Jim Williams became director of Hanford Mills in 1981,
he also became determined to get the Sta-Rite engine running. Faced
with more immediate tasks, he gave the mission to the museum’s
Collection Manager, Keith Bott, who readily admits he ‘…knew
practically nothing about gas engines, much less single cylinder
antique engines.’
Thus, Bott began an odyssey akin to Jason seeking the golden
fleece. He began by going to all the major libraries and museums
that might have special collections of this type. Curators at both
the Smithsonian and the Hagley Museum, an industrial museum in
Delaware, told him his best bet was to get in touch with Gas Engine
Magazine subscribers ‘a wide-ranging group of amateurs who
really know their stuff.’
Fortunately, Bott’s circle of friends included one gas
engine hobbyist, Herb Von Kluge, who agreed to look at the engine
in the Spring of ’82.
‘Herb went very eagerly at it,’ says Bott. He figured it
would be easy.
It took him an entire day, however, to get the piston out
because it was rusted to the cylinder walls. Von Kluge went off and
the valves were put in storage.
Now, the ‘Incredible Hulk’ was headless and needing a
piston transplant, but it lingered on the lawn. A number of other
people came by and looked at it, but were unwilling to undertake
the project because it looked like an overwhelming task, Bott
says.
Bott continued to send out distress signals to Von Kluge in the
form of phone calls and notes. That summer, Von Kluge came back
with an 80-year-old man, Ed Payne, a retired yacht broker who had
just adopted gas engines as his new hobby. Von Kluge talked him
into getting interested in the ‘Incredible Hulk’ of Hanford
Mills.
Payne asked Bott to get a price on restoring the Sta-Rite.
Meanwhile, he also found Emory Campbell of Roscoe, N.Y., a man
‘whose reputation is wide-ranging for being an expert restorer
of gas engines,’ according to Bott.
Campbell spent the winter of ’82-’83 restoring the
Sta-Rite, returning it to the museum that Spring. ‘Remarkably,
it was in running condition,’ says Bott.
Since then several refinements have been made which ‘greatly
improved the running,’ he says. A museum volunteer, Don Lane of
Oneonta, improved the timing mechanism, and a gas engine hobbyist
from Deposit, N.Y., Glen Fox, made a new exhaust valve and
carburetor. But, it was not as simple as it sounds.
Parts no longer still exist for the turn-of-the-century engine,
plus, Campbell had not even been able to find reliable models.
Sta-Rites are rare on the East Coast. Most are found in Wisconsin,
where they were manufactured.
Since the restoration project began, Bott had been carrying on
an extensive correspondence with one Wisconsin Sta-Rite collector,
Jerry Johnson. Besides answering dozens of questions, Johnson also
provided Bott with information from Sta-Rite catalogues and photos
from his own collection of engines.
With Johnson’s information and the original valve as a
pattern, Fox was able to make a new two-foot long exhaust valve
using modern pipe fitting. The original valve was so rusted, Fox
had to extrapolate the dimensions. Nevertheless, along with other
original parts, it will be kept as a model for the future.
One photo sent by Johnson, answered the mystery of a rod
protruding from the magneto on the museum’s Sta-Rite. Staring
at the photo one day, Bott’s attention became riveted on the
rod, so he wrote to Johnson to find out its function. Bott learned
from Johnson that it connected to the spark advance.
‘We had it set up in a way that you could not advance it or
retard it while the engine was running, which defeated the purpose
of a spark advance,’ says Bott. He found out a lot of
‘esoteric details’ about gas engines from Johnson, who also
told him that Hanford Mills’ Sta-Rite ‘is possibly the last
of its kind in the country.’
Finally, the ‘Incredible Hulk’ was restored and running
smoothly, thanks to a cash donation from Paine and hours of donated
time and labor.
‘Now, we asked ourselves, what are we going to do with this
thing!’ says Bott.
It was ‘somewhat beyond’ the scope of the museum’s
collection because such a machine had never been used during the
years 1820-1867 when Hanford Mills was a saw, woodworking, grist
and feed mill. But, the machine is ‘extremely rare’ and the
museum has the responsibility to take care of historic objects,
reasoned Williams and Bott.
Besides, it gave the museum a really ‘good capability.’
With the Sta-Rite engine, it could run something like a shingle
mill outside and demonstrate a process that did occur at the Mills
from 1889-1900shinglemaking.
And, Bott just happened to have a Chase Shingle Mill, the object
of another two-year odyssey, arrive on the site.
So on a sunny day in August of ’84, the once ugly
‘Incredible Hulk’, now glowing with youth from a facelift,
was wed to the automatic Chase Shingle Mill. Housed together under
a shed, they can be seen operating during regular tours of Hanford
Mills Museum, open daily 10 .a.m.5 p.m., May 15October 15. The pair
will also be a feature attraction at Hanford Mills Fourth Annual
Antique Engine Jamboree, September 21-22.
According to Bott, the marriage is working out great. And, he
now has a whole network of gas engine friends.
For more information contact Keith Bott, Hanford Mills Museum,
East Meredith, New York 13757, (607) 278-5744.
