History
To gain greater insight, we spoke to Sensenich’s Steve Boser, vice president, engineering. Boser has been with Sensenich from 1993, when he joined the company as a junior design engineer. At the time, rather ironically, he was a glider pilot, although he has since moved on to flying propeller-driven aircraft.
The company was incorporated in 1932, but it began in rural Pennsylvania during the 1920s, when two brothers, Harry and Martin Sensenich, who loved to tinker, procured an old World War I-era engine. According to Boser, they “proceeded to fit it to a wagon, a sled, and different contraptions they could find on their dairy farm. Their wagon worked well. It was called a ‘Wind Wagon’, but eventually they were banned from taking it into town.” The brothers then fitted the engine to a snow sled. One winter, while operating on ice, the brothers’ unique air-driven vehicle crashed, breaking its expensive propeller. At the time, it was rare for someone to be knowledgeable about propellers. Boser explained, “They were pretty good with their hands, so they thought, ‘hey, let’s make our own propeller!’”
The brothers successfully crafted a propeller for their sled. Soon, local pilots took notice and reasoned, “If you can make a propeller for that thing, you can make propellers for our aircraft.” Boser continued, “They started carving aircraft propellers, and by the beginning of World War II, they were the largest manufacturer of wooden propellers in the world. We still have that title today.” During the Second World War, which lasted from 1939 to 1945, Sensenich had more than 400 employees crafting propellers 24 hours a day to support the war effort. These propellers were primarily for liaison aircraft and trainers, as well as experimental projects.
Soon after the war, Sensenich produced a tremendous number of propellers for private light aircraft. Later, in the late 1940s, the company diversified and began making metal fixed-pitch propellers, while also servicing and maintaining other companies’ propellers, in addition to manufacturing a variety of wooden products. During the 1950s, Sensenich also began designing and manufacturing target drone propellers, as well as airboat propellers. Airboats, which have grown in popularity in places such as Florida, are essentially flat-bottom boats pushed by propellers, which are similar in appearance to those found on aircraft. Today, Sensenich produces more airboat propellers than aircraft propellers.
By the late 1980s, the company had been operating separate divisions for propellers and for wood products. The Sensenich family was forced to sell one of its divisions, either propeller manufacturing or its wood product division, which made table tops and bench seats. A Philadelphian family purchased the propeller company and continues to own Sensenich Propellers to this day. In 1994, the company’s three divisions, namely wood propellers, metal propellers and its service division, were separated. The service division had a management buyout, while the wooden propeller division was moved to Florida, the primary market for airboat propellers. The metal propeller division remained in Pennsylvania. In the late 1990s, Sensenich turned its focus to composite propellers for aircraft and airboats, while also ramping up production of unmanned aircraft propellers.
Today, Sensenich has about twenty employees in Pennsylvania, where metal propellers are produced, and about fifty employees in Florida, where the company focusses on wooden and composite propellers.