Topic: A memory on propellers and history

The comment about an on the water service brings up a total memory from the early days in performance bass boats. In the 1970's as pad hulls came along there were no quality propellers for holding the bows up. Many benders developed from the factories having very inefficient props, some were good, some were not. The ones mentioned below were good! Back in the 1970's one of the best in his time started as a propeller bender at Lake Stockton, on the water. G & R Propellers was Gary Pendergrass and Richard Jennings, both extremely good. That is exactly the service they sold and started their business around taking SST Teflon coated propellers and rehubbing them for Mercury engines around the late to mid 1970's, 1976-1977. Gary started out without Richard and soon they formed a partnership. They removed all the Teflon, polished the propellers adding cup and twisting rake into the blades for progression. At the time there were many OMC Johnson and Evinrude engines in the Ozarks and those also got a lift from their tweaking. The options for Mercury loyal was the Chopper series and bending cup into these wheels. Of course the large exhaust flow and lower end helped those to get hole shot, always with a tremendous amount of ventilation. Gary went on to build the Hooter there on Stockton, which was the first customized stainless steel production weld up propeller. He danced around some after that and we will book this in paragraphs below. Gary's Hooter was soon extremely closely, almost exact, copied in the 1980's (1985) by OMC (Evinrude/Johnson) for the Raker series of propellers and they worked very well. This came along with the big block 150 GT and XP series as the engines had too much torque and exhaust, coming from the high fuel burn. Then the Yamaha Pro Series propeller spun off the Raker/Hooter design and was adjusted some as those Japanese designers saw fit. The Pro Series was simply another copy and it took Mercury a decade to catch up in marketing by building the Laser and Laser II series, which was not a copy and was not a performance prop. Thus most still ran aftermarket propellers. Gary moved on to become a professional Bassmaster angler and worked closely with Yamaha and with Onalaska Marine for Yamaha. He ran one of the first YZ series of preproduction engines in the late 1980's as Yamaha brought the racing culture into marine and the 2 stroke V6 block they had copied from OMC, obviously improving the same design. The YZ Series only had the three tuning forks on the front and rear cowls. That engine eventually became the Pro Vee, which is when the Pro Series of propeller was spawned with Gary involved. It and OMC's GT/XP also spun Mercury into the XR game. This left Richard Jennings out and in the early 80's he merged with Ron Butler to form R & R Propellers, in Nixa, MO. The little shop was still there last time we looked. Just not R&R anymore. Richard left and they disbanded Ron eventually moved to Cape Fair, MO and that shop is still in existence, Dyna Prop, though Ron has passed on today. Richard rejoined Gary went to work with him building the Protestor series of propellers, and Gary sought Richard to function the building and operations of Protestor. Richard spun off that to build the next propeller the Predator series, leaving Gary for his own company with financial support. Every propeller along they way was an improvement and we heavily used Predator props into the late 1990's with those big EFI engines on Jagaur models. We sold dozens of Predator PPS series props on 1997 and later Triton TR Series boats seeking a hole shot on those EFI Mercs. Which eventually placed Mercury int perfecting the Trophy Seris which was a Four Blade Eagle (Predator) copy. Richard Jennings was the mind behind a hubbed four blade. I will never forget showing up early on a Saturday morning at the old Springfield, Mo downtown boat show (Sears bldg.) and seeing a 340 Ranger and 200 Mercury with a brand new shiney four blade, which was not there on Friday. I asked Richard had he ran it, and he said I worked all night on it. He had just finished it early that morning and it was just bolted on for the show. Gary eventually got engaged with Basil Bacon and Bac' (Bake) sold then bought into Protestor, eventually buying all of Gary out and selling the company befor it crashed on the way down. As propellers were becoming factory from the engine companies. Giving Basil credit here, he developed the venting system of inserting sleeves into slots which were plastic and located just behind the blades. Those slots could then be drilled out easily to adjust exhaust gas venting. Once you figured out the right combination for your loaded rig, you could adjust the hole sizes to fit. This eventually bacall the PVS system the Mercury copied and developed after the big tube Trophy series required plugs in the large vent holes. Roy Ridgel had come up its inserting engine block Freeze Plugs into the hub and tapping them to lock them in place, paving the way for PVS to be designed and the similar copy to Basil's system. We haven't heard where Gary is now and what he is doing. Richard moved on to help a competitor and ended his bending by working with Nitro in setup and rigging. He was the driver for Nitro until his retirement. There were lots of old names around the core of the Ozarks and with three major competitors strong at the time, and a fourth in development with many smaller ones around, they met the demand for what bass anglers needed. And it all came from starting on a dock on the water at Stockton. Then we have other parts of the stories, Campbell & Frederick Marine (Charlie), Sportboats - Dick Colier and Wallace Lee, Dick Hovic, Bill Crabb, Kenzie Propellers (Sam & Ada) Sassy Bass, and what started a company many know today as Hydro Tec. Memories form from experiences we have and the mention of the dock brought back one that was decades ago. There is a lot more to this than is posted above though it give a brief summary. Rick