The Archives

Volume XLV No. 2 - June 2017

The Masinda BUtton Shop

By Paul Weigold

Well, it is Year #2 of the “Button Shop Rebuild”. The hard work of reconstruction of the exterior is over and the fun stuff has begun. The first thing that needed to be tackled was the open floor where we had been using the floor joists to jump on and balance for the longest time. It was great to get the floor down and completed so we could shift our focus to getting the machine benches in place and the machines back in their former homes once again. 

With that done the focus became the machines and how they were used in the production of buttons. We let the machines tell their story of how they worked. Within a short time span we were able to get the vast majority of the machines cleaned up enough and turning to make a button or two using hand-power. The mill was water-powered in 1903 but the power from the small brook was not always available. I did find evidence of an electric motor which was used near the end of the mill’s operation. 

Electric power was used around 1929, and the shop closed in 1934. What about the preceding years? That question may have been answered when Mark and I were at a local antique tractor show. One particular engine had a water cooling system which Mark recognized as similar to something in the scrap pile at the mill. Upon further investigation it turned out it is the cooling system for a 4 horsepower International Harvester Co. famous hit and miss engine. I ordered a reprint of the manual and in the parts section found tools pictured that were also found in the scrap pile. This discovery leads us to believe that the missing link is an old engine. There was also a 12 foot shaft that went through the wall that I suspected was for a blower dust removal system because a duct was nearby. 

It could have been an engine house, but unfortunately there is not much left to tell us what the layout would have been. Power in the old shops was transmitted by long steel shafts known as line shafts. These were usually up in the ceiling and flat leather belts were connected to each machine. In this shop, the main shaft which was connected to the prime mover (water wheel, a motor or engine) is at floor level and is belted to the 3 overhead line shafts. The longest was 20 feet long going from wall to wall. The shaft runs in a lead tin Babbitt bearing that runs in an oil bath. If the oil is not watched the bearing would wear out and need replacing. In this case all but one bearing was in need of re-placement or repair, a total of 10 bearings. It was clear that this was the reason to close the shop. On the shop door was the epitaph, a penciled note: “Bill Holub, backer, Oct. 6, 1934, 12:30 p.m. and Reo Forgette, backer.”