Heine Propeller identification

[bbwinters]

Hey,

So I would like to know more about this propellor I got.
From what I could read it says the following:

Heine Propeller, 180PS D290 ST180 and N2503 with maybe a 4 at the end... (for so far i can read) on the main hub. Furthermore it reads on a side 1335, and 712 with HV underneath or something like that.

For more details please see the pictures. Ideally I would like to know as much about it as possible, if possible also a guess of its worth.

Thank you very much if you can help me further!!


EDIT: Photo file sizes reduced and added as attachments. Full sized photos available on the links below.

http://83.117.164.202/prop/3.jpg
http://83.117.164.202/prop/4.jpg
http://83.117.164.202/prop/5.jpg
http://83.117.164.202/prop/6.jpg
http://83.117.164.202/prop/7.jpg
http://83.117.164.202/prop/9.jpg

[Bob Gardner]

Greetings and welcome,

Your prop dates from late in WW1. Heine was a German prop maker in Berlin and this prop was made for the Argus engine with 180ps, probably fitted to a Hannover CLII, CLIII, CLIIIa.

The data on your prop translates thus;

180 PS Argus 180hp Argus As III engine
D290 Diameter in cm
St180 Pitch in cm
N25934 Heine serial no
STAND 1335 Prop rpm achieved on test

With kind regards,

Bob

[bbwinters]

Amazing!
Thank you very much for what you are able to tell from this.
Is it possible to find a year or date to when it was produced? Never thought it was that old! What would be a 'market' price for this about?
I'm really excited, thank you!

Sincerely,
Bob

[Bob Gardner]

Goede avond, Nederlander Bob!

Your prop dates from around Summer 1918.

The prop has two valuations;

if sold on eBay, about €1000.

For insurance purposes, a replacement bought from a dealer would cost about €2000.

Met vriendelijke Groeten uit Engeland,

Bob de Engelsman!

[bbwinters]

Goedenavond Engelse Bob,

Nearly 100 years old. Un-real.

Do you believe that there is a possibility to backtrace the airplanes it has flown and possibly find where this prop made its last turns on an aircraft?

It will be hanging in my student dorm on the wall soon. As an aerospace engineering student this is of course a great view. But to find out the complete story behind is almost as fascinating as the complete 2.90 meters of wood itself.

Met de hartelijke groeten,

Nederlandse Bob

[Bob Gardner]

Oh Yes; hartelijke groeten is more Dutch than vriendelijke Groeten which is more German I think? Is that correct?

Your prop can not be traced to an aircraft, nor can any of its history be traced.

The fact that it is in the Netherlands is unusual. It might be from an aircraft that was interned during WW1, after landing in the neutral Netherlands. But it does not look like a flown example. Could you take a close up photo of the hub, in focus? It will reveal if there are witness marks where a hub-plate was fitted to the prop. You might also look to see if there is ovality in the bolt holes in the thrust plane, another indication of wear from use.

Your prop is rare and valuable, valuable in a historical sense. In twenty five years of research I have only seen three other examples. Look after it! Don't do anything to it other than polish it every six months with bees-wax polish. Don't give it to a museum.

Met de hartelijke groeten,

Bob

[Bob Gardner]

A forumite has asked me privately the question below and I include my answer here for fellow members of the forum.

You recently posted this suggestion to a Heine propeller holder:

"Your prop is rare and valuable, valuable in a historical sense. In twenty five years of research I have only seen three other examples. Look after it! Don't do anything to it other than polish it every six months with bees-wax polish. Don't give it to a museum."

I am curious to know why you suggest keeping it out of a museum. I would appreciate any elaboration on that if you have the time to do so.

Museums have long been one of the few locations where large, rare and valuable collections are available for the public to view, often free of charge, and are similarly marvellous places for research.

But they have limitations; they:
can be overburdened with exhibits.
are usually short of space.
are often underfunded.

This can produce circumstances where the raison d'etre of the museum drifts away from the primacy of the artefact; for example where the director is more concerned with the immediate, such as his next exhibition, rather than the long term future of the artefacts.

Within my country, Britain, I am aware of museums which restore aircraft such as Spitfires to as new shiny condition, where the original skins of the wings and elevators etc are discarded, and new ones added made of modern materials finished with modern paint. Interior ribs might be discarded, with little thought that an original rib might be extinct in a century, where researchers will have no original aspect to study. I am aware of interior aircraft surfaces where the original chromate anti-oxidant paint has been overpainted with modern paint with no precautionary comparative tests to see how the modern paint would effect the original.

By contrast, I know of a modern restorer of WW1 and vintage aircraft, who has found original tooling to make parts and who scoured Europe to find someone who could make double stitched fabric of the correct type for 1918 wings.

Museums can also be overwhelmed with bequests and donations from members of the public to an extent where many aretfacts will never be seen in public. The RAF Museum at Hendon for example has 80,000 items in store and only a few thousand on display in their museums.

Wooden propellers are frequently left to museums which often already have several hundred with many examples of some types. If you were to leave your prop to a museum, it would probably spend decades unseen with several identical ones on a shelf in store. But if you sold the prop at auction and gave the proceeds to your museum it would be more useful. And the prop would go to an enthusiast who would hopefully know how important it was to keep it in original condition.

I imply no criticism of museums, other than the observation that the balance between present day immediate needs such as lack of finance and the need to have eye-catching displays of artefacts and the long term preservation of originality for future generations is often weighted towards the former. Better, I think, to sell your prop to an enthusiast who will care for it and to donate the cash to your musum.

With kind regards,

Bob

[Bob Gardner]

Thank you Dave for shrinking the photographs. I can now see what the photo at the top right is. It's an octagon; inside are the letters DVL which indicate Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt, the German Research Institute for Aviation, which was located at Aldershof, Berlin. Originally a civilian institute, it became the technical authority for approved designs for both military and civil aircraft in 1917 and the stamp is often found on later props.

To the right is the word Standdrehzahl with a speed of 1335rpm. The term Standdrehzahl (sometimes shortened to Stand) indicates the test engine speed which translates as the Condition Speed, a parameter the prop had to achieve under test.

With kind regards,

Bob

[MGChuck]

Bob, thank you for your thoughts on the matter of propellers in museums. Before the Udvar-Hazy branch of the Smithsonian Air & Space museum opened, much of that collection was kept in Maryland at the Paul Garber facility. Since that facility was a working restoration shop and storage area, the ability to tour it was limited. I have been fortunate enough to have gone through it three times and remember once walking through a storage building that had racks of wooden propellers just collecting dust. I presume the storage conditions were not harmful to the props, but it did open my eyes to the sheer volume of beautiful aviation artifacts that are never displayed, and thus never seen or enjoyed.
Thanks again.

[Dave]

By the way, Bob, I so enjoyed your excellent discussion about museums that I took the liberty of duplicating it as its own thread and sticking it at the top of the Early Wooden Propeller category.

The insight is spot on and is entirely consistent with my experience in dealing with a variety of museums, including the Air and Space Museum in Washington.

(Let me know if you prefer that I remove it. I'm trying to figure out how to put it second in the queue.)

[Dave]

Bob, thank you for your thoughts on the matter of propellers in museums. Before the Udvar-Hazy branch of the Smithsonian Air & Space museum opened, much of that collection was kept in Maryland at the Paul Garber facility. Since that facility was a working restoration shop and storage area, the ability to tour it was limited. I have been fortunate enough to have gone through it three times and remember once walking through a storage building that had racks of wooden propellers just collecting dust. I presume the storage conditions were not harmful to the props, but it did open my eyes to the sheer volume of beautiful aviation artifacts that are never displayed, and thus never seen or enjoyed.
Thanks again.

Our posts were simultaneous . . .

I was invited to tour the collection you mentioned at the Garber facilty and spent the day there with the Curator of Propulsion about 10 or 15 years ago, before the Udvar-Hazy facility had opened. The previous curator had a policy that they wouldn't even accept donations unless it could be demonstrated to have specific historical value, which of course most propellers do not. That policy was being reconsidered at that time, but I wondered how many artifacts had been turned down during that period and where they ended up.

My collection includes a number of propellers that were offered to the Air Force Museum in Dayton. The curator there referred them to me and in many cases I simply offered to purchase them.

[Bob Gardner]

And of course there is another aspect. In the first part of the nineteenth century museums were of paramount importance. Collections of art, sculpture, furniture and Greco-Romano artefacts only existed in museums, where they could be seen, and in private collections, where they could not.

The internet has changed that. This forum of ours has become a museum in the sense that hundreds of interesting props have been described here with detailed photographs, which is wonderful for a researcher like me. Every WW1 prop described here is recorded in my database, which I plan to publish in CD form soon, the only one of its kind as far as I know. I'm also just starting the production of my series of books on German WW1 props and I guess that information on 20% of the props I describe comes from this forum.

And museums are also reacting to the internet. The RAF Museum, which I mentioned, and which damages some of its aircraft exhibits by over-restoring them, in my view, has also introduced on their website the marvellous system they call 'Navigator' where you can search for photographs of items in store and the descriptions thereof. They are adding photographs continously and already seem to have several thousand on line.

So, in conclusion, perhaps museums, research and possibly even the education of children and students might all in future only exist in virtual reality. And Dave or a fellow-forumite might consider putting every prop photo which has appeared here into a reference database, plus the 3000 or so photographs from my digital library. Then we might be the biggest prop museum in the world, in the virtual sense!

With kind regards,

Bob

[bbwinters]

It has been some time since my last reply. I am sorry for that.
It is interesting to learn about your opinions on keeping it from going to the museum. Indeed, I believe you are right in stating that large forums like this with detailed information and clear pictures combined with tips on maintaining propellors at the same time are very good 'digital museums' on their own.

For now my propellor is hanging on the wall in my house. I have checked for witness marks in the hub and ovality at the bolts but I have failed to see any witness for actual flying.
I applied bees-wax on the wood and it really showed off. Now I want the metal bolts in the hub to shine again PROPerly. Is acetone a good idea? Of course being careful not the ruin the wood with it.

Sincerely,

De nederlandse Bob