Although it’s not known as a manufacturing town, Wethersfield boasts a number of well-established, private firms making niche devices the general public likely has no idea exist.
And they all boast connections to the aerospace industry.
Consider Kell-Strom Tool Co., a 65-year-old manufacturer that specializes in making the tools used needed to service aviation equipment, particularly engines. It first began specializing in aircraft tools in the 1960s, when it signed an agreement with Pratt & Whitney to design and sell the tools needed to service the PT6 engine.
That original agreement became the basis for similar ones Kell-Strom has with other engine and industrial manufacturers like Honeywell Aerospace, Haynes Diesel and Precision Airmotive.
The 40-employee company has lately branched out to develop even more specialized accessories for the aviation industry.
Its newest is something called “Light Harpoon Landing System,” a helicopter-mounted probe that locks into a honeycomb-shaped grid affixed to Navy ships. It helps to ease landing helicopters, particularly on ships in rough waters.
Kell-Strom, which is headquartered on Church Street, is building the system in collaboration with DCN International, a French shipbuilding company.
A few miles down the street, on Wells Road, sits another manufacturer of devices for a range of uses that would baffle most readers.
It’s Kahn & Co., a 50-person manufacturer that makes devices called dehydrators — devices which are used to pull moisture and other contaminants out of the gases used to test airplane equipment.
Kahn also makes a device called a hydraulic dynamometer, basically a machine that uses water to test how much power turbine engines generate.
Another esoteric tool made by Kahn? The hygrometer, used by natural gas companies to measure the amount of water vapor in their pipeline, and by the Navy to check moisture in the gases used in submarines’ periscopes.
A little farther down Wells Road, another manufacturer makes a different type of device the aerospace industry considers incredibly valuable: trade show displays.
From its 100,000 square feet of space Oldham Studios, founded nearly 80 years ago, makes the customized, high- and low-tech displays used by companies like Pratt & Whitney, United Technologies Corp. and Honeywell Automotive during the more than 200 trade shows the companies attend over the course of the year.
The company builds the exhibits used by UTC on the east coast, said John Oldham Jr., president of the 22-person firm.
Among its other larger clients is Travelers Co., which like UTC, has increasingly turned to companies like Oldham to beef up their displays not only at trade shows, but at college fairs where they seek recruits for their workforces.
Trade show booth-building is also the forte of Wingsite Displays, on the Silas Deane Highway, a similar sized firm to Oldham. Wingsite’s past client list includes Hamilton Sundstrand, another UTC-affiliated company which builds devices for the aerospace industry.
