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The Weiler Family demonstrates shingle mill in Edgar
By Casey Krautkramer Demonstrations during the Edgar Steam Show is a great father-son bonding time for Rob and Drew Weiler. Rob and his son Drew, who live in Elk River, Minn., are carrying on their late relative and Athens native Anton Joseph “Tony” Weiler’s legacy of building The Weiler Shingle Mill in 1932 during The Great Depression.
The Edgar Steam Show has become an annual Weiler family event since Rob’s late father, Dick Weiler of Athens, began demonstrating here several years ago. Dick passed away in 2002 but his son, Rob, continues demonstrating The Weiler Shingle Mill during the Edgar Steam Show with Drew and cousins Art Hendricks and Russ Weiler of Athens and Tony Olah of Colby.
During the Steam Show weekend, Rob Weiler used the large saw blade to cut wooden shingles from cedar logs. Drew and the other relatives made the finishing cuts on each shingle. The backs of the blue t-shirts they wore said “Cutting Cedar for the Smell of It!”
Rob’s wife, Sonja Weiler, sold individual wooden cedar shingles with an engraving to commemorate the 2023 North Central Wisconsin Antique Steam & Gas Engine Club Show.
AJ “Tony” Weiler, the oldest of 11 children, built The Weiler Shingle Mill out of necessity when his family needed shingles for the farm buildings and granary, but it didn’t have enough money to buy asphalt shingles. Tony built the governor for the Buick engine that powered the mill. When he finished the shingle mill, he mounted it to an old Overland car frame.
It turned out other people wanted wooden shingles too, so Tony sold them throughout Marathon and Taylor counties. Tony and his brother, Peter, ran the shingle mill at first until Tony went back to work. They drove a Model T to haul the shingle mill around. Then Peter and a cousin that Tony called Chapman ran the shingle mill until Peter went back to work.
Lawrence, who is Tony and Peter’s brother, ran the shingle mill with Chapman until Chapman moved away. Lawrence and Herb Fisher then kept the shingle mill going until Lawrence joined the Army in 1940 during World War II. The Overland
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WOOD SHINGLES BEING MILLED - Above: Drew Weiler, center, is seen making a finishing cut on a wooden cedar shingle during this year’s Edgar Steam Show. Russ Weiler, pictured to the left of Drew, stacks the wooden shingles. Art Hendrickson is shown in the background watching Rob Weiler cut shingles. Below: Rob Weiler uses the large saw blade to cut a cedar log into wooden shingles during the Edgar Steam Show on Aug. 25-27.
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car frame and Buick engine were sold for scrap metal during World War II. The rest of the mill sat hidden underneath straw in the barn’s hay mow from 1945 until 1983. This is the same barn on the farm where John and Ruth Weiler currently reside in the town of Bern outside of Athens.
Lawrence and his son, Dick Weiler, surprised Tony and Peter Weiler by bringing The Weiler Shingle Mill out of the hay mow in time to saw shingles at the 1983 Weiler Centennial Celebration at the farm. The shingle mill was powered by a belt connected to an old McCormick-Deering 10/20 tractor.
Rob Weiler, who figures he was only five years old in 1983, said there is an old VHS tape somewhere of Lawrence and Dick operating the shingle mill at the Weiler Centennial Celebration. Rob grew up on the farm across the road from where John and Ruth Weiler reside. Rob’s mother, Sylvia, still lives on that farm.
In 1992, Frank Weiler, brother of Tony, Peter and Lawrence Weiler, placed the shingle mill on a 1956 Ford frame. Frank built a governor to power a Ford Pinto engine that ran the shingle mill. Rob Weiler is amazed by his great uncle Frank’s engineering work.
“Frank didn’t have much past a sixth-grade education yet he was a smart as a whip,” he said. “Today we run the shingle mill pretty gingerly because all the owner’s manuals have passed away. We need to pay attention to how the shingle mill is running so that we know how to fix it when it breaks down. We need to be creative on making repairs to it.”
Rob Weiler received The Weiler Shingle mill 1937 sales card and a stack of photos when his great uncle Frank Weiler passed away. Rob, Drew and other their other relatives demonstrated The Weiler Shingle Mill at the Weiler Family Reunion on Aug. 5 at John and Ruth Weiler’s farm.
“Tony’s grandson was there and he was in awe of seeing the shingle mill,” Rob Weiler said.
THEN AND NOW - Left: Pictured, from left to right, are Art Hendricks, Dick Weiler and Ed Schultz of Athens operating The Weiler Shingle Mill in the late 1990s at the Edgar Steam Show. Right: Pictured right, Rob Weiler sends a log through the mill during the Edgar Steam Show. The Weilers demonstrated how the shingles were milled during the event.
A FAMILY’S WORK - Frank Weiler, who re-engineered The Weiler Shingle Mill in 1992, is pictured.
