The House That Clipper Built

Stone Hills Estate, Grand Rapids Michigan

A while back California Bob was feeling the pinch from Proposition 13 and decided to see what the housing market looked like in the old home town of Grand Rapids Michigan. He found this dilapidated old mansion on a five acre estate close in to downtown. It looked like a bargain at $500K. Michigan Mike went and took a look and reported that it was just what you might expect of a bargain: it would take a heck of a lot of work to make comfortable. Nothing came of this, but somebody else thought it was a deal, bought it, fixed it up and now it's on the market at a price somewhere north of a million.

While this place is under discussion, someone notes that it was originally built by Frank Stone of Clipper Belt Lacing fame. Never heard of him? Me neither.

A pair of v-belts

Back in the bad old days, before the invention of the V-belt, transmitting power from one machine to another was done with flat belts.

Threshing at Malton (early 1950s)

Farmers used these flat belts to transmit power from their steam tractors to their threshing machines.

Factory machines driven by Line Shafts & Flat Belts

Factories used them to drive their machinery, notably machine tools. These belts were made of leather, and the ends of these belts needed to be spliced together to make a continuous loop to drive the machines.


SHOP TIPS #316 Pt 2 Using the Clipper belt Lacer tubalcain A condensed version of this video can be found here.
Frank came up with a system of hooks and a tool to affix these hooks to the ends of the belts. It's as simple minded as can be, but it did require a certain amount engineering. In any case, it became popular enough that he made a fortune and was able to build his house. Flat belts aren't used for power transmission anymore, except for those antiquarians who keep the old machines running so the iPod generation can see how it used to be done.

The Clipper company is still in business, though is now known by a cryptographic combination of letters: Flexco. Can't be much of a business if the only people using flat belts are operating museum pieces, but that's not the case because there is another market has been growing steadily for the last hundred years and that is conveyor belts.

Package Handling & Distribution Center Conveyor Belts

All of the package distribution facilities for outfits like UPS and Fedex are full of conveyor belts.

Mine Conveyor Belt

Mining operations make heavy use of conveyor belts. Most are fairly short, but some of them run for miles. So Flexco has a solid customer base and will likely be around for a long time.