Nick Poncelt and Steve Skyberg never have totaled up the number of horsepower units contained within the many engines they’ve restored and rebuilt, but suffice to say it’s a lot of power.

The two Columbia Falls men are the ramrods behind the threshing bee and antique power show that gets underway Friday at the Olsen Pioneer Park and runs through Sunday, showcasing the power machines of yesteryear.

The Northwest Antique Power Asso-ciation is staging its 23rd annual show this year, but Poncelt and Skyberg’s involvement goes back even further to the early 1990s when they held their first private power show at Poncelt’s home in Columbia Heights.

For both men, the love of engines was instilled during childhood.

“I always liked big engines, ever since I was a little kid,” said Poncelt, who grew up in the Great Falls area.

As the need for those old engines dissipated through the years and newer, more efficient machines took over on the farm, in the woods and in the oil fields, the engines were sidelined, left to an uncertain future.

Poncelt said he couldn’t bear to see the mighty engines disappearing from the landscape, so he began searching them out and restoring them. The same goes for Skyberg. He’s a farm boy from near Fort Peck in Eastern Montana.

He went to his first antique power show in 1989 near Belgrade and got hooked on the thrill of all that horsepower.

“Between Steve and I we have six big engines,” Poncelt said.

And big they are.

Poncelt’s favorite is a 75-horsepower Cooper Bessemer that was shipped brand new to the oil field near Cut Bank in 1933. He spent nine months restoring it.

Such big engines were needed to provide the power to pump oil out of the ground in the early days, Poncelt explained, pointing to a 90-horsepower, 24,000-pound Superior oil engine, a semi-diesel model that originally was shipped to the Cat Creek oil field near Winnett in 1943 to pump oil for the war effort.

“This ran a generator that supplied power to two to three houses and a shop” as well as oil-pumping units, he said.

They have found old engines all over the country, from New Mexico to upstate New York.

“Sometimes you get them for scrap [metal] prices; sometimes you pay through the nose,” Poncelt said.

Fixing up the engines comes naturally to both men.

“Steve and I are farm kids. We were raised to fix your own stuff because you didn’t have a lot of money to go buy stuff,” Poncelt said.

The antique power show offers much more than old engines, though. About 60 tractors of various makes and models will be displayed, including a 1963 Mountain Logger tractor manufactured in Kalispell and used to drag logs.

Threshing machines, steam tractors and lots of old farm machinery are part of the show.

A new display this year features a number of alcohol-powered appliances.

“We’re getting new stuff all the time,” Poncelt said.

In the old LaSalle schoolhouse on the site, wood turners and gold panners will show off their trades and a quilt show is on display as well.

A working sawmill and shingle-making demonstrations are perennial crowd-pleasers, along with the grain threshing.

The Northwest Antique Power Association, founded in 1994, has more than 40 members, but it’s an aging organization, Poncelt and Skyberg admitted.

They’d like to see more interest from younger generations, and to that end the association has been hosting a couple of hundred local fifth-graders who are bused to the show each year for a field trip.

Once the show is over, Poncelt and Skyberg will head to a similar antique power show at Choteau, with some piece of their collection in tow. After that, there’s always work to be done.

“We have four engines not restored,” Poncelt said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.