Tractor and Engine Show – Fall 2014

There is a group in Florida called the Florida Flywheelers. They are a crazy bunch of people that got together, bought a lot of land in the middle of nowhere Central Florida, and stuck a huge pile of old tractors, engines and other cool stuff on the property. A few times a year they open it up for everyone to come see. There is a village area with permanent structures that display the restored goods, and a large vendor area. People bring all sorts of cool things to show off and sell. Some is junk, but there are some diamonds in the rough.

First, to start off with a bang, there is the Snow Engine. It was made by the Snow company and was used to pump natural gas originally. I got a video of the thing running. The flywheel is 12′ in diameter, and there is a double opposing piston running it.

Too cool! it was loud and smelly and awesome! There were also endless rows of small hit and miss engines. They spin up a fly wheel with a single bang of the piston. As the power is used and the flywheel spins down it sets off another ignition to bring it back up to speed.

In the village area there was a saw mill that would run from time to time. They could take a whole log, align it, do any desired rotations and index for the next cut all with levers. Now that is what I call serious woodworking!

I was on the lookout for old woodworking tools. I had a long list, and picked up a number of things I was looking for. Disston rip saw, wooden rounding plane, a pristine Stanley no99 side rabbet plane, mortise chisel, millers falls egg beater drill, and a pair of sturdy old scissors. In all I spent about 50 bucks for everything. On ebay it would have cost many hundreds. I might have to make a big post about cleaning up all my spoils at once.

Beyond the big showey things and woodworking tools there were all kinds of little displays of tools, cars, tractors, engines, pumps, alpaca, knick knacks, and old rusty junk! I am going back next time. We blew past a ton of stuff that might be worth looking at, I missed all the different parades, and only watched one small tractor pull.