Charles City High School puts old machinery on the auction block

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Over the years, a lot of pretty cool things have been made by students and teachers in the industrial tech area of Charles City High School.

On Saturday, they’ll be making room.

Come Monday morning, there will be a lot more room to roam after Saturday’s high school shop auction. The idea is to move out all the old machines and bring in more modern equipment.

“It’s 2018, and we have a lot of equipment in here that’s from the 1930s, 40s and 50s,” said vocational agriculture teacher Jim Lundberg. “If we want to continue to prepare the kids for careers, they have to be able to use equipment that’s in the industry today.”

Disk sanders, bench grinders, mills, drill presses, motors, a furnace, an engine analyzer, an air compressor, wood vices, bandsaws, tons of drill bits of various sizes, clamps, grease guns, assorted lathes, hand tools, old foundry equipment and various-sized storage bins are just a sampling of the many things that will be on the auction block.

Many of the items have been there since well before Lundberg began teaching in Charles City — 36 years ago. Some of the equipment is still being used, Lundberg said, but much of it is so antiquated that replacement parts are no longer available.

“The skill set is still the same. You still use the same skill on the old machines that you use today, but the problem is you just can’t keep them running all the time,”  Lundberg said. “We have more down time than we have up time.”

The auction will start Saturday at 9 a.m., onsite at the Charles City High School Industrial Tech Area. The auctioneer will be Jerry Hegtvedt of Cedar Valley Iowa Realty & Auction Co..

With the money from the auction, the school will purchase a new vertical mill and other computer numerical control (CNC) equipment. CNC machining is a manufacturing process in which pre-programmed computer software dictates the movement of factory tools and machinery.

“That’s what we’re seeing in the industry, and our students need to learn how to use the equipment they’re using in the industry,” Lundberg said. “We don’t have teachers like Al Nielsen anymore — guys who can teach these old machines. These days, they’re out working in the industry making a lot of money and don’t have time to teach kids.”

Nielsen was a longtime metals class teacher who retired last year after 29 years of teaching, 22 of those at Charles City. The school has some money coming for new machinery, from a grant that Nielsen applied for before he retired.

“Hopefully with that and some of the revenue from the auction, we’ll be able to replace some of this equipment with newer equipment,” Lundberg said.

Vocational ag teacher Bret Spurgin added that it’s also a good opportunity for the students to learn the finer details of how an auction works. Lundberg and Spurgin said they thought hobbyists and collectors would be the people most interested in the auction Saturday.

“People who will be able to tear a machine apart and will be able to make it run,” said Lundberg, who added that the school district once had a great program set up with the White Farm/Oliver tractor plant in Charles City. The plant would donate used equipment to the district and the students would graduate with the technical experience that prepared them to go right to work.

The auction will give hobbyists a chance to own some great equipment or just a piece of history.

Lundberg said he thought the oldest piece of equipment up for sale is a hardness tester, which tests the hardness of metal and was made in 1938 — three years before the United States entered World War II.

That antique equipment won’t be all that’s up for sale. Tools and knick-knacks, student projects that were never taken home, aluminum siding and other construction materials, much of which was donated to the school anonymously, will be on the block.

“People would build a shed or something in their yard and have all these leftover materials, and we’d find them sitting outside our back door,” Lundberg said. “We just don’t have the space to keep it here anymore.”

Three truckloads of equipment were also brought over to the high school from the North Grand Building, which was previously the middle school and, before that, the high school.

Lundberg said that the school couldn’t have pulled off the auction without Joe Leider, a foster grandparent who volunteers at the school, who has been helping get the auction organized.

“There is a lot of stuff here,” said Leider, who added that it’s time to clean out the old and bring in the new.

“Kids are into the digital age now,” he said. “If they learn on the old stuff and take a job with the new equipment, they have to relearn everything.”