Herford 1959 Motor

Lovely day but after doing the horses, didn't feel motivated to go for a different walk to find a new Blip victim. So was just about to repeat yesterday's village walk when the phone rang. The sawmill owner in nearby Westerheim was about to start on my logs. We had talked in the last few weeks as he had been delayed due to some unexpected and lucrative contracts and I had said from  the start it was not urgent.

´He asked me to come over in an hour to again discuss what cuts I wanted. So off we set in the car, did a short walk near the lakes. Flash was walking as though powered by Shell Formula 1 Super Vee High Octane fuel. I felt rotten about having to stop him earlier than normal and he in fact refused to walk back. I had to pick him up with the car!

Off to the sawmill and watched Max and his wife finishing off a job. Fascinating to see them work as a perfect team feeding an electric saw/planing machine with 4m long boards and then stacking the battens & off cuts.

While they were working, no chance to chat thanks to the noise of the machine but also a second massive stationary one cylinder motor chugging away in a room next door. It drives the main saw over a long belt on the fly-wheel.

It's a 1959 Herford Motor built by a company founded in 1905 in the town of the same name in northern Germany and which became very well known for the reliability of the diesel machines which were driven by virtually everything from crude-, waste-, heavy oil onwards. The company ceased in 1985. I will try to get more info from Max on the motor. I do know it was built in 1959 and he has bought a used one for spare parts, should something ever break.

There is another factory in the same town called Herforder Electric Motors which has machines ringing the bells in St  Pauls and Canterbury cathedrals as well as St Peters in Rome and Cologne Cathedral. 


Here a very short video of the motor chugging and the inside of the mill.

So will see what Max manages to get out. He thinks he will be finished tomorrow which ´will mean a cabriolet trip or two in the coming days. Great at max daytime temperatures around 0°C. At least it is due to stay mainly dry and no snow storms.