Axe Equipment: American Made Engine Stands and Spray Washers Built in Council Grove, Kansas
Everybody who has spent time in a shop knows the sound.
You have a big block hanging off a bargain engine stand, you go to rotate it, and somewhere down in the base the tubing groans and the whole thing takes a half inch step sideways. Nothing falls. This time. But for the rest of the build you find yourself standing a little off to one side.
Axe Equipment has a photo of one of those stands on their engine stand page, orange and skinny with a block hanging off it, and the caption under it is short and to the point: "This cheap engine stand was made offshore. Not all engine stands are created equal."
That is the whole pitch, really. They have been in Council Grove, Kansas since 1978 building the other kind.
A Kansas town of 2,000 and a shop that never moved
Council Grove sits about two hours southwest of Kansas City and two hours northeast of Wichita, out where the Flint Hills roll and the nearest interstate is a project. It is not where you would put a factory if you were optimizing a spreadsheet.
Axe has been manufacturing there since 1978, in the same location, and their description of how they do it is one sentence long: "We do all our manufacturing right here, from the raw materials, to the final powder coating finish and packaging."
Read that again, because most companies cannot say it. Steel comes in one door. Cut, formed, welded, coated, crated, shipped out the other. There is no container ship in the middle of that sentence.
The engine stands
There are two, and neither one is subtle.
The ES-40 is built from 3 inch by 4 inch 11 gauge square tubing and rated for 1,000 pounds. It stands 36 inches to the top of the head and ships at 130 pounds, which tells you plenty right there. The mounting head uses adjustable fingers bolted to a heavy duty half inch steel plate, and those fingers run 3.75 inches long so you actually have room to work behind the block instead of skinning a knuckle every time you reach for a bolt. Every locking handle is black oxide so it does not turn into a rust lump after one winter. There is an optional ES-D drip pan in 12 gauge sheet that drops squarely onto the base, because the oil has to end up somewhere.
The ESTD-40 is the tear down cart version, and it is the one that makes shop guys nod. Same 1,000 pound capacity, built from 10 gauge material, 43 inches to the top of the head, rolling on 4 inch non marring casters. Slide a container underneath, pull the drain plug, and let the cart do the dirty work while you do something else. Then you have close to 21 square feet of flat storage for teardown and reassembly.
Both stands carry a small rack for your 1/2 inch, 7/16 and 3/8 bolts, which is the sort of thing nobody puts on a spec sheet and everybody appreciates around hour three.
They are also jig welded, which is the boring term for the reason two stands off the same line come out identical. Axe says it plainly: "jig welded for a consistent finish everytime."
The spray washers are the real operation
Engine stands may be the gateway product, but parts cleaning is where Axe really stretches out. They build 35 different spray washer models, with names like the Eliminator, the Blue Max, the Dominator, the Intimidator and the Terminator. Their own description of what one does for a shop is hard to improve on: "like having an extra employee."
Every machine ships with 12 standard features that plenty of builders would sell you as options. A direct drive turntable with a safety clutch. A built in hot tank. A digital temperature controller and a programmable 7 day heat timer. V bottom floors so sludge collects where you can get at it. Full 360 degree spray manifolds. Low water shutoff, so a dry element does not cost you a heater and three days.
The Eliminator SW-20 is the compact one, aimed at rebuilders short on floor space, and it still swallows 32 inches of vertical capacity on a 20 inch roll out turntable. That covers most passenger car and light truck work, straight sixes and big blocks included. The lay down door and roll out turntable mean you are not wrestling a cylinder head over a threshold, and the runoff drains back into the reservoir instead of onto your boots. It comes with two head racks, including an agricultural style fixture for heads up to 32 inches long.
And a whole lot more
The rest of the catalog covers the parts of a rebuild nobody photographs.
Agitating hot tanks run from the AT-10 at 100 gallons up to the AT-85 at 850, with custom builds available anywhere from 100 to 1,200 gallons. They are fully insulated, reinforced against bulging, and use an endless cycle agitation system that pushes heated solution down a trough for what the company calls "high turbulent agitation that produces great cleaning results."
The water recycling rinse booths come in 50, 70 and 100 gallon sizes, with stainless available. The point of them is not glamour, it is keeping rinse water in a reservoir and out of the floor drain, which is the difference between a clean shop and an EPA conversation. The RB-100 gets a 36 inch turntable rated for 1,000 pounds.
The SL-46 glass bead cabinet is 14 gauge steel with a 24 by 46 inch work area, a 10 by 24 inch double strength viewing glass, dual 24 inch fluorescents, and a 450 CFM reclaimer that is an actual cyclonic separator rather than a dust collector wearing a costume. And the TB series tumble cleaners handle the small stuff, valves, springs, rockers, gears, rods and bolts, with drip rails on the lid so the solvent stays in the reservoir and not on the floor.
Buy once
We have covered plenty of American shops that make the boring, permanent stuff, from Wilde Tool up the road in Hiawatha, Kansas to Heavy Duty Ramps in Wisconsin and ChannelLock in Pennsylvania.
Axe Equipment belongs on that list. Nearly fifty years in one small Kansas town, shipping worldwide, still answering the phone at 800-251-0018 between 8 and 5 central.
If you build engines for a living, or you are just building one really nice one out in the garage, put the block on something welded in Council Grove.
Just another great reason to buy American!