StoneSupreme

Unfortunately I have very limited information on drawing numbers for Stone or Supreme Propeller Company. What I have learned is listed below. However, the story of the company as related to me by the great-grandson of Morris Stone, the founder of this company is so interesting I felt compelled to include it here:

My great grandfather Morris Stone was something of a gypsy. He was born in England and moved to this country in the early 1900's. (Not that it has anything directly to do with airplane props, but his last job before leaving England was making wooden molds for ship's propellers in Liverpool.) He became enamored of the airplane industry (according to my uncle, who died last year at the age of 102, the Wright brothers were occasional visitors to the house) early on and started the company in St. Louis as the Stone Manufacturing Company. He was here (that's where I live now) until 1918 or so, when he moved to Wichita. Apparently, the company was quite big when it was there. As I recall, he later moved to Dayton, then back to Wichita. He went broke after both World Wars, because he had geared up for military production, but the military canceled all orders when the wars ended, sticking him with the materials and supplies. Sometime in the late 40's some people in Chicago (one relative called them gangsters, but that may or may not be the case) set him up in business. The story as I understand it is that they had a contract to supply props for Piper. However, they wanted him to cut corners in their manufacture, which he didn't want responsibility for. So, he altered the pitch of the props so that they wouldn't generate enough lift to get the planes off the ground. He then skipped town, I believe to Grand Rapids, MI, where he went into business for the last time. By the way, as far as I know all of the Chicago props have "Not Airworthy" stamped on them, which gives credence to the story I was told by an aunt.

Some of the propellers built by Stone most likely were built under an agreement with Sensenich to use their type certificate. These propellers were built in the early forties under military contract using the year of the contract as the first digits of the design number. For example, a Stone propeller with a design number beginning with "43K" was built under a Sensenich contract from 1943 and refers to these props. These military contract propellers and their common number designations are cross referenced to this page here.