http://www.FarmCollector.com March 2016 21
Finding forgotten treasures
of the old thresher were to those in today’s combines. “The Corren says he was surprised by how similar some parts
way many of the systems work is very similar,” he says. “Ac-
tually, some new combines have wood walkers to move the material through and thresh it. The process hasn’t changed
that much. The walkers on many new combines are metal,
but some are still wood.”They didn’t use any special tools for their work. “Just ba-
sic wrenches,” he says. “It’s an old machine, and taking off
some of the old square-head bolts was a little complicated.”That job might have been easier had they opened the
toolbox on the side of the thresher. After the project was fin-ished, father and son discovered an old square-head wrench
in the toolbox, along with an operator’s manual. Belts were
also stored inside the machine. “Every year after threshing was finished, they’d remove the old belts and put them in-
side the machine,” Corren says. “Most were actually still in
decent condition, so we could use them. We had to buy ma-terial and make our own belts for a few of them.”
He enjoyed mastering that skill. “We had to use old tools
to make new belts,” he says. “We took a roll of belt mate-rial, cut off the proper length, and used a splicer to put little
metal clips and bolt the ends of the belt together so it would hold.”
Corren says what he enjoyed most was disassembling the
entire machine, cleaning it, putting it back together and tak-ing it to the threshing show that first year. “We got that
little engine to run, so I could explain to people how these
machines worked,” he says. “On the trolleys I got to stand up front with a microphone and explain what was going on
in the show, and explain that with this Wood thresher, this
is how machines worked.”
Geared down for display
set aside on the Threshermen’s grounds, unused. “We had The engine that originally powered the thresher had been
to find a gearbox to gear it down, to slow the process so ev-erybody could see how it was working,” Corren says. “Get-
ting all those things connected together and then to the
machine was tough. We didn’t have a flywheel, and we were running the thresher so slow that the small engine couldn’t
have pulled the belt.”
a tractor or steamer. Instead, they fabricated an adapter and Normally, a power belt would run from the side pulley to
attached it to the machine’s main drive wheel so they can
run the thresher with an electric motor. “Where it is cur-rently attached on the machine would normally have a belt
running off to a tractor or steamer to power the machine,”
he says.The cutaway thresher was an instant crowd pleaser. “A lot
of people were really surprised, because they had no idea how the thresher worked inside,” Corren says. “It’s really
such a simple machine, so it was kind of a shock to see that
it could do all that work. That little motor is too small for the project, too, so we had to shut it down after running it
for five or 10 minutes.
the difference between a combine today, and what it was “A lot of people asked, ‘How did you do this?’ or, ‘What’s
then?’ It was cool to explain that it’s almost the same thing,”
he says. “There’s not that much difference.”
A learning experience
The Humming Bird was Corren’s first big project. “I
learned how to work on big equipment, and the basic
Albert City ✭
Iowahand-working processes,” he says. “It was cool to get to
learn how old machines work together. I was surprised, for example, how the auger that puts out the grain had a
basket that measured each bushel, when a counterweight
tripped it and kept count of how many bushels had been harvested.”
At one point the Olsons thought about displaying the
Humming Bird at other shows. “We decided it was easier and better for the machine if we didn’t take it all over the
place,” Corren says. “It’s difficult to load onto a trailer,
and it’s so old. We don’t want to do anything that might damage it. And it isn’t light, either.”
Thresher lends new perspective
Completing the restoration was just the beginning. For
an FFA project, the student must complete a proficiency application describing the project. “I kept good records,”
Corren says. “The application was judged on my records,
the uniqueness of the project, how well it fit the category and how well it related to the mission of the national FFA
organization, which is dedicated to making a positive
difference in the lives of students by developing their potential for premier leadership, personal growth and
career success through agricultural education.”
moved onto the district and state levels during his sopho-After advancing from the chapter level, Corren’s project
more year. At state, he received a bronze third-bracket rat-ing, falling between 10th and 15th place. “I didn’t have a
lot of knowledge of what it all took going into the project,”
he says, “so for what I had, I was happy with that result.”Corren was active in FFA in other ways as well. He man-
aged his chapter’s fruit sales for two years and performed
volunteer service at his church. He also managed the non-profit FFA2Haiti project, which his chapter started in 2012,
sending FFA members from across the country to Haiti for
one week in the summer. Participants worked alongside GoServ Global (formerly Global Compassion Network)
from Eagle Grove, Iowa, building homes and working in an orphanage.
Today, Corren is a freshman at Iowa State University,
studying mechanical engineering. “Understanding how these different components worked together, and why
they were designed this way or that way, and working with
the threshing machine has given me some good hands-on experience,” he says.
“With that thresher, I wanted to show people what the
old times were like. I’m a huge fan of the Threshermen’s show up here. Many shows have tractors lined up nicely,
and threshers setting there, but here, we’re a working show, and it’s really important to keeping the history alive, to re-
member that this is where we were, where we came from,
and look at what we’ve come to. I thought this was a great way to remind people that this is the way they used to do
it, and it’s not that different from where we are now.” FC
For more information: Corren Olson, P.O. Box 23, Albert City,
IA 50510; (712) 291-1370.
Bill Vossler is a freelance writer
and author of several books on
antique farm tractors and toys. Contact him at Box 372, 400
Caroline Ln., Rockville, MN 56369; email: [email protected].