I will be running a turn of the century lineshaft machineshop here this weekend
Steam Show
By chance, I met one of the three remaining founding members and after striking up a conversation with him, I told him it was cool to see the old shop and tools, but also disappointing to see them merely collecting dust.
From there I told him of my past growing up in a shop and that I had a home hobby machineshop in my present home.
As the conversation progressed, I mentioned that I had once been an active show participant there, but now merely went to see the shows.
Then I started dropping some very well known names and how I was associated with them.
Having heard that, he told me his history and said he would ask the powers that be if they wanted to let me run it as a working demonstration.
I went to a monthly meeting with him armed with pictures of some on my machinetool restorations and the rest is history.
That day, I was brought into the fold of the inner circle and handed my key
It is quite an honor to be accepted as one of them and to maintain and run a permanent display instead of hauling in my stuff in as I had in the past.
Over the past two months, I have been getting the shaft system in order and prepping the equipment to go live.
The stuff won't just be running, it will be working and cutting metal like it is supposed to.
In all, like anything from days gone by, the shop operation is very dangerous with big wide open belts running from the tops of the machines to common powered shafts fixed to the rafters.
The equipment is "turned on and off" by either a handle that moves the belt from an idler pulley for off to a live one for on it, or like some of the fancier stuff with a dog clutch.
That just adds another element of danger to an already dangerous operation.
We hold the largest excavating show in the word on our grounds where people can see older equipment in operation.
What started out as a small gathering on a local farm has evolved to become what it is today.
An active on site sawmill is used to slab timbers for the buildings there.
We have a coal mining section with operable equipment that moves actual coal all day.
There is an active drilling rig on site.
In front of my shop, we have an active smithy where they are forcing steel with hammers and fire.
Most of the blacksmiths have done or do machinework, so we share common ground.
There is a live steam display beside the smithy run by a friend of mine who has offered to plumb me a steam line to operate my antique two man crosscut reciprocating saw I restored and ran there maybe 15 years ago or so.
She's a beauty and was used in conjunction with a steam powered icecream maker that belongs to another friend who used to make and sell his product to support the show.
Just a taste of some of my likely 100+ years old equipment
Shaper
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Horizontal milling machine with an indexing head
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Monarch engine lathe
View attachment 69685 Our steam traction engines and both shovels are down due to no longer passing boiler inspections, but we still have a working live steam roller on our grounds too.
And antique tractors, literally hundreds of them on display with two tractor parades around the showgrounds daily.
Because the shop is now mine, I will be camping inside of the shop 3 nights starting Thursday instead of traveling back and forth to home.
As always, I will return with photos from the show and possibly video of me running my shop