Found a 1899 tail at a garage sale

[steve p]

Well, this looks to be an 8 ft vane sheet. Maybe the previous owner painted over the brick red paint.

[Ron Stauffer]

So I was assembling several mills today and got a chance to look at some of the older vanes I have. That might be at least be a vane from a later open gear but was repainted. Here is an example of a RA and later open gear style vane

DSCF2278.JPG

The lettering on this vane helps to age it since it has the squashed o in Co and a larger period. The way you can tell in the sheet metal fabrication is the open corners at the wide part of the vane and the filler piece at the top outside corner of the vane in an 8' is wider by over 2" than later 602/702 vane piecing

Swallowtails were seamed in the middle and at least some were red. Larry should recognize this one. I have Aermotor catalogs from 1899, 1901, 1905 and 1907 and they are no help as they used the same pics throughout in all catalogs.

DSCF2279.JPG

I have an 8 and 10 bones for 1899 and yours definitely is. I have bought several 1899s to get parts and got one fairly complete one that had a busted main frame and was removed. It appeared authentic to when taken off the tower. Vane on it was non swallowtail, open corners, and very red not red oxide original lettering.

I really wish these horses could talk.

aermotor print fort worth.png

I have tried doing a black and white to color conversion and it is too subjective to know if the vane lettering was black or red. And there is not enough clarity to the pics to determine what model open gear they are. Pic dating if correct is 1896.

Ron Stauffer
Montrose CO

[Wayne]

Hey Ron, Thanks for that picture I grew up in Ft Worth. Love It! That picture is going up on my wall.

[Peter vk]

Anybody know why there are two dots on top of the E on early Aermotor swallowtail vanes?
Peter

[Ron Stauffer]

Peter

I wondered what you were up to since you have been so quiet..

The stencil used for the lettering on your vane is very segmented. So I did a google search on 1900s stencil and found that the stencils then were thin brass so had lots of reinforcing tabs. This is what they looked like

brass stencil.jpg

So on to the two dots but they actually look like small squares on both sides. A few SWASs are:

Index for stencil alignment since were individual brass stencils
The painter's "signature"

And an extreme SWAG:
There were A702 case castings that had 2 dots after them. There was the early 602 hub plug that had 2 holes for a spanner type wrench. These plugs I coined the name Martian eyes plugs since it was them that aided in the development of the oil bath mill since Aermotor engineers couldn't figure it out on their own. So that can only lead to the assumption that the Martians were instrumental in all key developments of the Aermotor that made them so successful.

HAHA

Ron

[windybob]

I was reading the "green book" again the other day, and in the Aermotor section, there was reference to an ad or some trade lit that had the 2 dots over the E like that. I will review it again tomorrow for more info. So it seems there was a reason they did that.

[Bryon]

um·laut /ˈo͝omˌlout/

Linguistics
noun
noun: umlaut; plural noun: umlauts

a mark ( ¨ ) used over a vowel, as in German or Hungarian, to indicate a different vowel quality, usually fronting or rounding.

My $0.02 worth

[windybob]

In 1894 and 1895, there was at least one piece of literature in each year with the symbols over the E. I'm going to follow along with what Bryon said about punctuation. Maybe they were having an issue with how to pronounce the word, and started with the symbols to help the general population. It didn't last long, maybe it was worse that before the symbols. Who knows.