Part 2: The CD 112

As noted in Part 1, the Lynchburg Glass Company struggled to show a profit throughout its short history, in fact, struggled just to break even! One of Lynchburg's tactics for reducing overhead was to reuse secondhand insulator molds thus eliminating the considerable expense of designing and tooling new molds. Of course at the same time this practice provided us collectors with something to do!

One problem in the reuse of molds was the suitability of the styles of the available molds for the current market demands. Obviously, Lynchburg was not going to have ready access to state-of-the-art molds and designs from Hemingray or Whitall-Tatum, so the company had to make-do with the molds they could obtain. One of the best examples of their creativity in re-tooling available molds to meet market demands was the Lynchburg No. 31, CD 112.

The Lynchburg No. 31, although assigned the CD number 112 and broadly fitting into this design category, is actually a unique design created in the Lynchburg shops. The style exhibits features of both CD 112 and CD 113 and comes closest in design to the early Hemingray No. 12, CD 113, although minus the top lip on the upper wire groove. In fact, on a mailer sent by Lynchburg to prospective customers to illustrate their line of insulators, an illustration of a Hemingray No. 12 was used to depict the Lynchburg No. 31. The illustration, as are most in the mailer, was obviously taken from a Hemingray catalog (a 1921 Hemingray catalog was in the Lynchburg records acquired by Mr. Woodward; see figure 1).

Illustration of the No. 31
from a Lynchburg Mailer

Since the Gayner company had never produced the double-groove pony style, and therefore Mr. Gayner could not supply these molds, Lynchburg had to either acquire or manufacture molds for this style. With the specific configuration of the No. 31 being unique to Lynchburg, it could be concluded that Lynchburg manufactured the molds themselves. But the key to their true origin is the crown top markings which appear on all Lynchburg No. 31s: either numbers, often backwards, such as "01 or "2" or letters such as "XO" (or "OX"). Apart from mold numbers, Lynchburg did not use shop markings on any insulators. The only crown markings used by Lynchburg were the occasional placement of the oval trademark there (CD 162, CD 121, CD 154) and the style numbers of CD 281 and CD 306. This fact suggests that the molds are secondhand and the crown markings, especially the "X0", immediately suggests a Brookfield origin for the molds since this was a common shop marking used by Brookfield. But Brookfield, even with their three major varieties of CD 112s (cf. Cranfill & Kareofelas, The Glass Insulator, 1973, p. 39) and several minor variations, never produced a CD 112 like the Lynchburg No. 31.

While it is possible that Lynchburg acquired CD 112 Brookfield molds and then altered them into the Lynchburg design, this is highly unlikely. There would be little reason for Lynchburg to go to the expense of altering a CD 112 mold in the minor ways in which the Lynchburg No. 31 differed from the Brookfield No. 31. It would have been much more economical to simply re-cut the Lynchburg logo over the Brookfield embossing as was done with the No. 36, CD 162 molds acquired from Brookfield.

The conclusion at this point is that Lynchburg re-worked another Brookfield style into the CD 112, No. 31. Comparing the top (crown) 1/3 of the Lynchburg mold, since the markings indicate it was left unaltered, with Brookfield styles, the size and nearly hemispherical shape of the crown suggests a certain variety of the CD 102 pony as a likely candidate.

By the time Lynchburg began insulator production in November of 1923, the small CD 102 pony style was already obsolete. While a popular early style to the turn of the century and long a Brookfield staple for short distance and rural phone lines, Hemingray's No. 9, CD 106, and No. 12, CD 113, were increasingly popular (due to several factors including Brookfield's war-era problems). By the time Brookfield ceased production in 1920 the CD 106 and CD 113 were the standard short line phone insulators. When Lynchburg laid their hands on the Brookfield molds for the CD 102 they had an obsolete insulator which was virtually unsaleable. Since they already had an insulator from the Gayner molds to compete with Hemingray's No. 9 (Lynchburg No. 10, CD 106), they needed a double groove pony to compete with Hemingray's popular No. 12. So, I suggest, the Brookfield CD 102 molds were machined to new specifications which yielded the Lynchburg No. 31, CD 112.

A careful examination of the No. 31 and a comparison with some Brookfield CD 102s supports this conclusion. The slope of the sides of the two are nearly identical and measurements of the unusually thick middle section of the No. 31 are exactly what would be required for the CD 102 mold to be retooled to allow the bottom wire groove on the CD 112 (figure 2). Also an examination of the base of Lynchburg No. 31s shows that the sides of the insulators extend between 1 and 1.5 mm past the base rim all around the base, a result of the sides of the mold being machined out into the wider style.

Too, the many minor variations of the Lynchburg No. 31, mostly in the width and shape of the upper wire groove lip, the size and shape of the crown, and the height of the insulator (rarely are two different Lynchburg No. 31 molds identical) would be consistent both with the wide variety of Brookfield CD 102s and the fact that modifications were being made to existing molds. The conclusion, then, is that the Lynchburg No. 31, CD 112, is a result of the modification of the Brookfield Pony CD 102.

The lettering on the Lynchburg No. 31 is, for Lynchburg, amazingly consistent. The front embossing is usually 7.5 mm high and reads LYNCHBURG No. 31 while the reverse embossing is the familiar "L" in a large oval (13 x 19 mm) followed by the mold number, then MADE IN / U.S.A. in two lines. I know of mold numbers through nine, although I suspect there may be more. I know of no embossing errors on the No. 31.

There are two kinds of drip points found on the No. 31. The more common one is small and cone-shaped slanting slightly inward which would indicate that the points were added to an originally smooth-based mold. There are always 28 and are uniform in size. A much scarcer type is a larger drip point that is cylindrical at the base and rounded at the tip. There are usually only 27 of these points and are frequently of slightly varying sizes.

I have never seen nor heard of a smooth base No. 31 and doubt if one was ever produced by Lynchburg. The primary competition was the Hemingray No. 12 which Hemingray widely advertised with drip points as a primary feature.

The Lynchburg No. 31 does not occur in a wide variety of colors due to the fact that it was only in production a total of eleven weeks (and not every day in those weeks). The most common color that I have seen is a light sagey green-aqua. It also occurs in green, a darker near-emerald green and yellow-green as well as crystal clear. I have reports of clear with a pinkish tint and clear with a smoke tint but I have not been able to confirm these. It also occurs in a light aqua, although I have not seen the bright sparkling blue-aqua common to other Lynchburg styles.

The number of No. 31s sold by Lynchburg in such a short time (175,000) attests to their ingenuity in the modification of obsolete molds.