Woodruff and Beach Steam Engine
March/April 1992
John Bowditch
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The old Woodruff and Beach engine before it was moved.
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Curator of Industry Henry Ford Museum Dearborn, Michigan
48121
RELATED CONTENT
Reprinted from 'Tools & Technology,' quarterly
journal of the American Precision Museum in Windsor,
Vermont.
Our museum building was constructed in 1846 for the manufacture
of 10,000 Model 1841 U.S. Army rifles using only water power. In
the course of doing this, they developed the most modern armory and
machine shop in the country for precision interchangeable
manufacturing. They also began to sell duplicates of the fine
machine tools developed for their own use. This called for more
power than making small rifle parts. As their business expanded,
they found that the water power, always variable in quantity from a
steady winter flow to the much reduced flow of mid-summer,
interfered with keeping precise delivery dates. The only practical
answer in that era was an auxiliary steam engine as a supplement,
even though steam power was far more expensive than water
power.
Many visitors to the museum inquire how the machinery was driven
and about the water power obviously running over the dam. We have
no exact date when the original steam engine was installed. A
lithograph of 1849 shows no chimney or engine room, however,
another lithograph of 1853 shows an engine room, chimney and open
wood shed. Wood was the fuel of choice in the area at that time and
later; the Central Vermont Railroad only changed to burning coal
about 1900. As long as manufacturing continued in our building,
until 1884, the fuel was wood and it is said that it was the cost
of this fuel that was the major factor in discontinuance of the
business. At that time the business was cotton manufacturing, a
highly competitive enterprise.
For proper restoration and to meet public interest we have
needed a suitable replacement for the original engine. Not many
engines with the correct characteristics have survived, but a
friend in Connecticut1 brought an engine of suitable
age, size, quality, design and plausible origin2 to
museum attention in 1982. An exciting feature of the engine found
was the identification cast on the engine bed, 'Woodruff and
Beach, Hartford, Conn. 1849.' Another wonderful and difficult
to find feature was an engine that had a balance or flywheel with a
narrow rim not used for a belt to drive the machinery. Instead the
power from this engine, as with the original, was transferred from
a coupling on the crankshaft to a clutch so that it could be
coupled to the water wheel as needed or could also drive the
factory alone, as circumstances dictated. The flywheel rim has not
been machined and there is no evidence of balancing by the addition
or subtraction of weight. Very probably the heavy crank was located
on the light side of the wheel as a counter poise. The flywheel and
crank, indeed all of the castings, are of excellent quality so the
engine exhibits nice foundry work as well as superior skill in
machine work.
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