Lancaster farming. (Lancaster, Pa., etc.) 1955-current, August 07, 1993, Image 42
log, Saturday, August 7,1993 incastar Follow Your Dream With A Stagecoach JOYCE BUPP York Co. Correspondent HALLAM (York Co.) Near ly everyone has a dream. Some folks dream of wealth, some of travel, some of power or property. Alex Seigfried II had a dream. He wanted a stagecoach. A stagecoach is not an every day, readily-available item. Still, from the time he was 14 and work ed at Lauxmont Farms near Wrightsville. Alex II had become enthralled with the idea of owning this symbol of the old West “Lct’a build a stagecoach,” Alex II said to his father, Alex Sr., last fall. Alex Seigfried, Sr., York Rll, had taken early retirement from the IBM company and was con sidering turning <his building/ca binetry/woodworking hobby into a second career of building repro duction furniture. He pondered his son’s suggestion only briefly. “You’re out of your mind,” fa ther replied to son. Not one to abandon a (beam too quickly, Alex II persisted. The operator'of an excavating busi ness, he hoped someday to own a small farm where he could keep a few horses, using them to pull a stagecoach in public events, like parades, to advertise his business. After continuing persuasion from his son, Alex Sr. agreed to at least look at a stagecoach. “We couldn’t find one to go look at,” he recalls of their dilem ma. Even the state museum at Harrisburg had no stagecoach. Af ter some sleuthing, they tracked down coaches in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and at a Long Island museum. Mean while, they began researching stagecoach history and lore. “Stagecoaches were only made by the company of Abbott and Downing, of Concord, New Hampshire,” relates Alex Sr. “Ab bot was a wheelwright and black smith and Downing was a cabinet maker; they got together in 1832. Abbott was the ‘engineer’ of the project and Downing was the ‘per fectionist’ who had an instinctive knack for picking the right woods for the job.” About 20 years later, the part ners separated. Their children ran separate companies for awhile, eventually got the firm back to gether and later took in another partner. In all, five separate com panies built the coaches, but all were Abbott-Downing related in To check dimensions for their stagecoach, the,Siegfrieds first had "sldebows” of wood steamed to shape, then visually compared the bows to the length and heighth some fashion. Abbott and Downing - built both “mudwagons,” the farm-truck of the 1800 s and “roadcoaches,” the travel equivalent of today’s bus. Mudwagons were more rugged, squared and utilitarian, for hauling freight and commodities. Road or stagecoaches had a more rounded, stylish design. But they were ne-. vertheless overland travel vehicles which needed to traverse rough roads and ford streams under weather’s extremes, and required durability. “The stagecoach shape is taken from an eggshell. Its strength came from the use of tongue-and groove boards; that was their strongest method of construction,” explains Seigfried. “Bows, the frame of the coach, were steam bent.” At peak production, the Massa chusetts firm made about 2,000 vehicles annually. Abbott and Downing and its spinoffs remain ed in business for about 70 years total. Seigfried estimates that a to tal of 5,000 roadcoaches were manufactured in that time. The last were built about 1910. “There are reportedly 12 of the originals left in the United States, two of them at the Smithsonian,” he notes. Most he believes, just rotted away, abandoned to motor ed transportation. In 1832, a roadcoach sold new for about $1,200, a considerable investment for its time. Today, an original stagecoach is worth about $90,000. But, a brand new one can be had for $25,000. That’s the price tag on Siegfried Woodworking’s hand-crafted stagecoach. Their coach No. 1 is getting a few final, finishing touches, with parts of three more in various stages of construction at their Hallam fac tory. A hand-painted eagle, fin ished in gold leaf, Is the numbered, signature identi fication of the Siegfried Woodworking coach. Shiny, fire-engine red with bright yc . completed stagecoach No. 1 is beautifully handcrafted, while durable and roadwor thy. The beautifully-crafted, fire en gine-red coach is finished with black and yellow pin-stripe details and a decorative eagle, in gold leaf, on each side of the front boot It runs on a bright-yellow under carriage, with rubber-edged steel wheels turning on Farmington hubs and Timken bearings. Pic ture-perfect, Stagecoach No. 1 is a tribute to determination, research, long hours, inventiveness, sweat and some heated “discussions” along the’way. Alex Sr. had woodworking “in his blood.” His father and grandfa ther were cabinetmakers in the Bloomsburg area and dabbled in it over the years. Alex. Sr. even built several houses. But the project that really tested his research and craftsmanship detail skills and was building a suit of armor for the Eastern School District’s knight, the school “mascot.” “It was team effort that took thousands of hours of research; I learned how to research historic things,” Seigfried says of the crafting challenge of creating the suit of thousands of tiny metal pieces. By comparison, the father son research on stagecoach build ing took several hundred hours. While pictures of stagecoaches are plentiful, patterns, and direc tions are virtually non-existent. And, various construction me thods have been utilized over the years for different coach elements. The Smithsonian granted them Alex Siegfried, Sr. is the woodcraftsman of the stage coach-building team. His wood-and-glue lamination tech nique was adapted from boatbuilding and is similar to the method usedjp making paper,mache*. permission to measure their ori ginals and assisted with reproduc tion copies of scale drawings of the stagecoach’s design. “Those were good for ideas, but were not a usable scale that we could work from. And, we had to adapt the design to what is avail able today,” explains Seigfried. Having a slender piece of oak steamed in the shape of a sidebow for their finished coach gave them a guide for the size of the under carriage they would need to build. After serveral weeks of setting up equipment and workspace in Alex Sr.’s garage, stagecoach building got under way. Alex 11, the black smith worker of the team, spent a full month handcrafting the exten sive and exacting ironwork details of the undercarriage. Their intent was to build the first complete coach in the garage; but in January, they were offered space in a large factory facility nearby. Already crowded and in need of a painting room, they put aside coach building and spent se veral more weeks again moving and setting up their equipment It was early April when building of the coach construction was resum ed. Construction of the curved sid ed, wooden coach is done by lam inating several thin layers of air dried hardwoods, mostly oak and ash, and clamping the layers to a shaped form to dry. The layering of thin sections of woods a *lCotnes{cad d/otes technique similar to paper-maphe creates a finished coach shell that is light, while durable and very roadworthy. According to Alex, Sr., the project's wood worker, he finally settled on the laminating technique because of its success in boat building. “We did a lot of arguing over how to build these sides,” grins Alex 11. They are as strong, or stronger, than the originals were,” explains Siegfried. “We wanted a good looking piece that people can ac tually use, for parades, for wed dings, for having fun with.” The cab is seven-feet long, with a 3 'A feet boot on the front where the driver is seated. A trunk carrier on the back adds additional length. When set on the 16-feet-long un dercarriage, the completed coach towers well over eight feet high. A metal-crafted step boosts passeng ers climbing in and out of the cab. Modem wheels and hubs and avoidance of leather belts and straps in the design have eliminat ed the tedious everyday greasing and maintenance that original stagecoaches required. In fact, the rubber belts on which die coach rides like the shocks in an auto mobile are virtually mainten ance free, with great strength and little stretch or sag. The Siegfrieds estimate the belting and undercar riage can probably support some- (Turn to Pag* B 3)