Gardner

Gardner Propeller Company

Forest Park, Illinois

The following background information on Gardner Propellers was provided by and used with the permission of Mr. Robert C. Gardner:

My name is Robert C. Gardner. My Uncle Bill was William H. Gardner, Jr. and he manufactured Gardner Propellers in Forest Park, IL. My Uncle Bill Gardner was a very interesting man. He attended Dartmouth but never graduated. His interest in airplanes led him to design propellers. He opened a factory in Forest Park through the financing of his father who was a banker. My father was a lumberman and had his lumber company on the same property. I used to go down to the Propeller works and watch them build propellers. It had a wonderful smell of the glue room where they laminated the wood to make the propellers. He had two employees who were German and were expert craftsman in their trade. In WW-II he made club propellers for the air corps. After the war the propeller business started to fall apart due to the variable pitch props made of metal. He could not compete with them and moved his shop to Wisconsin and tried making golf club heads. This failed and he eventually got a job in Peoria, IL as a draftsman. After he retired he moved to Springfield, IL with his wife and became quite active in AA. He did a prison ministry for AA. Eventually his health failed and he passed away from heart failure.

Gardner props are stamped with a number known as a drawing or design number. The table below is arranged in drawing number order. Locate the drawing number in the left column then read across to locate the aircraft and engine combination the prop was designed to be used on. Although this is not a large page, it may be easier to locate your prop by using the search or find tools of your web browser.

Drawing No.	Aircraft	Engine
304	All	Salmson 40 hp
365-A	All	Continental 37 and 40 hp
365-B	Aeronca	Aeronca 37 and 40 hp
365-C	Single Place	Aeronca 26 hp
369-D	Aeronca	Franklin 50 hp
369-D	Aeronca	Franklin 60 hp
369-E	All	Lycoming 50 hp
369-G	All	Lycoming 55 hp
369-K	Ships other than Aeronca	Franklin 50 hp
377	Rose Parrakeet A-2	Franklin 4HOA 40 hp
377	Rose Parrakeet A-2	Franklin 4AC-150 50 hp
456	All	DeHavilland Gypsy 90 hp
457-C	Ships other than Fairchild	Cirrus Mark III 100 hp
457-D	All	Wright Gipsy 90 hp
491	All	Continental 75 hp
491-A	All	Continental 80 hp
491-C	All	Continental 65 hp
491-F	Ships other than Aeronca	Franklin 60 hp
491-L	All	Lycoming 65 hp
497	All	Continental 50 hp
569-A	Usual propeller	OX-5 90 hp
569-B	Fast revolutions	OX-5 90 hp
569-C	All	OXX-6 100 hp
581	All	Warner Scarab 125 hp
817	Rose Parrakeet A-1	Continental A-40 37 hp
1450	Curtiss Jr.	Szekely 45 hp
1451-A	Tractors	Szekely 35 hp
1451-C	Tractors	Szekely 45 hp
1471-A	All	Velie M-5 60 hp
1471-D	All	Leblond 60 hp
1471-G	All	Leblond 70 hp
1471-GA	All	Leblond 85 hp
1471-GB	All	Leblond 90 hp
1477	All	Ken Royce 120 hp
1481-A	All	Kinner K-5 100 hp
1483	All	Kinner B-5 125 hp
1487	All	Tank 115 hp
1501-C	Fairchild	Cirrus Hidrive 100 hp
1501-G	All	Rover 75 hp
1525-F	Fairchild	Warner Scarab 145 hp
1525-W	Cessna	Warner Scarab 145 hp
3691	All	Franklin 40 hp

The Rose Parrakeet information above was generously provided by Don Gillmore.