Early Wooden Propeller With photo frame

[Proberry]

Hi
Please can you let me know if you can recognise the wooden propeller in the pictures. It has been adapted to have a photo frame with an wooden stand but unsure of its origin.
It is very heavy and almost 1300mm high and at its widest 230mm.
Many thanks
Rob

[Proberry]

Hi
Please can you let me know if you can recognise the wooden propeller in the pictures. It has been adapted to have a photo frame with an wooden stand but unsure of its origin.
It is very heavy and almost 1300mm high and at its widest 230mm.
Many thanks
Rob

Can anyone help please

[Dave]

I would say it's not identifiable. There are just TOO many different shapes and sizes to be able to tell with any degree of certainty which of those it was.

[Bob Gardner]

It has the shape of a Lang Propeller and the metal sheathing at the tip suggests it is from a pusher configuration. The blade length of 1300mm multiplied by two with 200mm or so added for the hub width suggests a diameter of about 2800mm.

Lang only made one pusher prop with these sort of dimensions which was for the FE2B at 2700mm diameter.

With kind regards,

Bob

[Dave]

There were also many U.S. manufacturers besides Lang that had similar shapes. I've seen Paragon propellers with that shape and this one built by Matthews Bros. There may very well be several others.

[Proberry]

Dave/Bob
Thank you very much for your information
It has been of great help
Rob

[Bob Gardner]

Dave,

I agree that your Matthews prop is very similar.

Rob; where do you live? If in GB or in one of our once Dominion countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand etc., your prop will be of Lang design, although not necessarily made by him. Manufacture was subcontracted to several other prop makers from 1916 to 1919 when the RFC and RAF expanded enormously.

If in the States, you should note that Dashwood Lang was seconded from the British Admiralty to the USN in 1917 to assist and advise on the mass production of wooden propellers. He sub contracted to several makers in both Canada and in the USA of whom it would appear that Matthews was one.

After WW1 the large number of surplus British props provided the basis for a British cottage industry making propeller-based artefacts, including tables, chairs, hall stands, cigar boxes, mounts for clocks and barometers, and picture frames. Your prop with its inset picture frame is an example.

The Germans produced similar items but I do not recall seeing American or French examples. So, I conclude that the origin of your prop is the Lang Propeller Company in GB, modified as an ornament post-war.

If you wish, I can email you a seventeen page extract from one of my books which describes the work of Lang in the USA. Or you can buy the book itself where sixty one pages describe the history of Dashwood Lang from 1885 to 1953. He was involved in propeller manufacture from about 1910 until his death.

With kind regards,

Bob