Iron Man of the Month: Harold Fleisch
(Page 3 of 5)
July/August 1971
Joe Fahnestock
“Well, it ought to,” confided he. “Fixed many a one just like this and they always worked.”
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It was no easy task, following the rapid pace of the spry Harold Fleisch from job to job throughout the large shop, lugging camera and tape recorder, focusing distances and figuring parallaxes and lens apertures. From lathe to office for a quick huddle over the books, thence back to the well-stocked tool room, pausing with wrench in hand long enough to scribble a mathematical equation on a scrap of cardboard for a younger employee, after which he hopped up onto the big one-cylinder 15-30 Rumely Oil to point out a few details of its immense size and proportions.
“This has a ten-inch piston and a twelve-inch stroke,” explained Fleisch, looking down from his tall perch beside the heavy Rumely flywheel. “I hope to have it at some of the reunions this summer. Nothing wrong with the engine. All I had to do was clean it up and paint it.”
My thoughts went back to Ira Edger who used to build these huge machines, right on the main erecting floor of the Rumely factory and how he told me that out West, on a clear morning, wheat farmers could hear their neighbor start a one-cylinder Rumely nine miles away. And I believed him, for when one of these monsters fires, it sounds like a civil war cannon blasting the ramparts of the Confederacy.
“Tractor like that ought to pull about eight to ten plows,” said Fleisch.
It required an agile foot, dodging ’round the many long flat belts that hung from the old overhead line-shafts to power the diverse machinery at Pence Machine Shop, trying to keep apace with the agility of the nimble Harold Fleisch.
“Up to a year ago we powered this whole shop by this 15-horse International gas engine over here in the corner,” pointed out Fleisch. “It ran everything since the year 1912. All these line-shafts were installed when Mr. Pence erected the shop back in 1905. Cost only a quarter a day to run it.”
“I’ve been here forty-two years, myself,” said Fleisch. “I own the place, but it still goes under the name of Pence Machine Shop.”
Heading back to the far corner of the shop to check the air-compressor, Fleisch paused a moment to swap a few words with a couple of “guest mechanics” who dropped by to borrow tools for a “Do It Yourself” job of their own. Thence past the shop forge he led me, stopping long enough to call my attention to a small steam engine with upright boiler sitting nearby.
“This is a model some fellow brought in,” he said, turning the boiler upside down for a look at the flues. “Wants me to build a little firebox under it so he can run it.”
A moment later Fleisch was showing me his huge array of heavy tools for riveting boilers and hanging flues. “Just think what these would cost you, if you had to buy them today,” he said, turning away long enough to settle another problem that secretary Cliff Neff was trying to explain to a customer that had dropped by. The problem necessitating another quick visit to the office for more scribbling of mathematical equations and time computations, after which Harold showed me some very old calendar pictures of Model T Fords and antique horse-drawn farm equipment which had been hanging on the wall since the time when.
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