Originally Posted by
Original Looper 1
You are about to take a journey through the inside of Quincy Welding/ Precision Machine, home of some of the most innovative and exciting outboard race engines produced in their time. I call these photos the "Area 51" pictures because very few people got to enter these production and manufacturing areas of the shop.
In honor of the DePue Reunion, I will be posting a series of these pictures between now and July 29th.
The 1st picture is of the northeast section of the shop, looking east (not to be confused with Gene East). This is the area where the cylinder blocks and crank cases were exterior machined for further production. In the extreme NE corner of this picture is where the Quincy pistons were machined and produced.
The 2nd picture is also of the machine shop area (east and somewhat south of the north end of the building). This is where we finish machined the crankshafts that we made and also the cylinder heads, cranking plates and other parts that required a larger lathe for the Looper finish production.
The 3rd picture is looking towards the southeast. This bridgeport was used for porting many factory Merc blocks that we modified and some machine finish work on the Loopers. In the background you will see the Dodge shop truck and on the upper rack, many customer outboards in for repair plus some new Mercury engines for sale. You will notice that the engines are on an upper level - the upper level was where we worked on outboards, both pleasure and racing, and where we finish assembled the production racing engines. (More pictures of that area to be posted later.)
The 4th picture is of the drill press machining room/ drawing room. This is where most of the drilling and tapping of the production race engines took place and also where my father had his large drafting table (not seen in the picture). This area was kept as clean as a surgical center because some of the most critical and delicate drilling & tapping work occurred here.
The 5th picture is one of my favorites - the Looper parts inventory. This was also kept in the drill press machining room. How many of us would love to reach back into this picture and snatch brand new, freshly machined parts for our Loopers? Wow!
The last picture of this series is of the pleasure boat propeller repair area and also where we forged Quincy racing propellers. This is where the great Gene East, Frank Volker and Al Herman performed magic for both stock and racing outboard uses.
I hope everyone here enjoys this trip down memory lane as much as I have. You know, Wayne is right. When we're living the experience, we sometimes forget about recording it for later. I was around the shop my entire life and learned how to work on pleasure outboards and build race engines, but never thought to take pictures of the inside of the shop for history's sake. I want to give a special thanks to the former customer who sent me these pictures. To me they are priceless!
thanks,
Paul A Christner
Please note: These pictures are for your personal enjoyment and are not to be copied or posted to any other web sites without written permission.
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