Antique French Drill Press?

[rusty]

>I wondered if the posters had learned anything in High School.  I'm 91.314159% >sure they didn't learn Physics.

Architects are worse, at least when you explain to an engineer why it won't work, they sometimes get it...

"Where's the door going?"
There
"What are we attaching the door frame to, there's nothing above it?"
Attach?
"Yeah, as in, when you open the door, it falls on the floor if it's not attached to something"
Oh....
What do you suggest?
"We don't know, we install doors, we don't design buildings, at least, not for $20/hr we don't....."

OK...submit an RFI...we will get back to you in a few weeks....
(That's Archispeak for 'we have no friggin clue what to do about this frigup..."

[Aunt Phil]

>I wondered if the posters had learned anything in High School.  I'm 91.314159% >sure they didn't learn Physics.

Architects are worse, at least when you explain to an engineer why it won't work, they sometimes get it...

"Where's the door going?"
There
"What are we attaching the door frame to, there's nothing above it?"
Attach?
"Yeah, as in, when you open the door, it falls on the floor if it's not attached to something"
Oh....
What do you suggest?
"We don't know, we install doors, we don't design buildings, at least, not for $20/hr we don't....."

OK...submit an RFI...we will get back to you in a few weeks....
(That's Archispeak for 'we have no friggin clue what to do about this frigup..."

Boiler plate

"Every contractor shall have on the jobsite at all times a Class D Fire Extinguisher sufficient in size to extinguish any material the contractor may bring onto the jobsite as well as any materials on the site."

Hi, I'd like clarification on the amount of alcohol already on the jobsite so I can comply with the Class D extinguisher requirement.
"What do you mean?"

Your spec calls for a class D Extinguisher in line 726 of the General jon requirements.
"Really"

Would you like me to wait till you find it?
"I have it on my computer"

Good, so how much alcohol is on the job site?
"I have no idea.  Why would there be alcohol?"

Well I have no idea either, and you're getting 5% of the job cost to write specs and answer questions so please answer the question.
"Nobody ever asked before.  I don't have an answer."

Why did you call out a Class d Extinguisher then?
"Well in the boiler plate on the computer it says Class A/B/ C so I figured D would be better."

Do you have any idea what those letters represent?
"No"

Then why didn't you find out?
"I never needed to, nobody ever reads the boiler plate"

OK, lets start over, my name is Nobody, and you're the dumbest $#!( I've talked to today.
"So what's a Class D extinguisher for?"

Go read the damn book you should have to get your license!

I wonder why I had high blood pressure.

[ron darner]

First off - thanks, Aunt Phil, for the photo: that explains it just fine, nice and clear how it functions.  And second, let me shout "AMEN!" regarding architects.  I worked with one who was told to draw up a single part for a device we were in the process of both inventing and prototyping.  He made a nice neat sketch, and added lots of dimensions.  This being a tiny start-up company where we all worked about 18 hours a day, the fellow with a milling machine went down and started scribing the already-blued brass plate he had waiting.  After maybe an hour of layout work, he began making chips.  I guess he had done another 2 - 3 hours of work (he was VERY fast, using his little mill!), when something struck him as wrong, and at 3 in the morning he went back to the sketch and started adding up columns of numbers.  Finally he had it: the idiot had just chosen round numbers for each step in the various depths of features, and had worked in from both sides of the plate.  The supporting structure for a large glass plate, a key item, had a thickness of -0.030".  Yep, a NEGATIVE thickness!  The guy could NOT comprehend that this didn't work like building a masonry building, where the worker made up minor differences in size.  His idea of a very close tolerance was +/- half an inch: and we had a piece of 3/8" plate as our basis, with probably a dozen different feature depths in all (including four ball-ramps at an angle to the surface) . . .   
     But I was a "dirty-hands" engineer; I went through my career being able to go onto the shop floor and set up and run a mill or lathe when I needed a part quickly - with full permission from the shop foreman - while one "engineer" I knew was warned by the same foreman to never, EVER enter the shop, "because of the danger that something like a wrench might accidentally fall across the room and hit him."  He had told a machinist to his face that the very simple link he had just made was the wrong length.  This a__hole "measured" it using a Xerox copy of a six-inch scale, a copy that he kept in his billfold (he borrowed someone else's rule and Xeroxed it, being too cheap to buy one!).  The part was accurate to the level that a good machinist, using a well-maintained Bridgeport, would ordinarily obtain, very likely within half-a-thou: the paper "ruler" was folded every time he used the billfold, AND it was in a high-humidity environment, AND was made back when the best copying machines were easily +/- a full percentage point on copy size, and always had at least some distortion, especially in the along-travel direction.  "Dave" was NOT a dirty-hands guy, and not a tool-user.  He was easily the cheapest SOB I've met in my entire life - I could tell you stories about him . . .

[rusty]

I have a lot of respect for good machinists. When I was a kit I worked at a place that had a fellow about a billion years old as the shop machinest. He made replacement tooling, and spare parts for machines we had that were so old nobody even knew where the companies that made them had gone, much less where to get parts. I watched him make a worm gear in an afternoon from a totally mangled and broken one, and it fit and worked perfectly the first time it was fitted.

I also remember bringing him a piece of angle and asking if he could
drill a hole 'about there' for me.

He looked at it for a second, then said 'No"

I was sorta shocked, he was a machinist after all....

Then he added "I don't drill holes 'about there' ,
I drill holes *exactly there*,
when you know where you want the hole, come back and see me...

So that was my first lesson for the day....

[Aunt Phil]

Over the years I've placed, installed and brought to life at least 5000 ton of machinery.  I can do simple work on a lathe or a mill, and I can run hell out of a drillpress.  I learned early on the names of many machines and some of their components mainly to preclude being called stupid by men who were in fact machinists.  In my book a machinist is a man I can take broken or worn out pieces to who can make a replacement without the need for 3 draftsmen & 2 engineers to produce drawings first.  I've had the pleasure of watching the old Krauts who came to the US dance their ballet.  Machine operators need drawings, machinists don't.  I am way short of being able to call myself a machinist, but I can make chips and from time to time a usable part. 

I've watched 2 generations eschew skill and knowledge while the standard of acceptable fell to "Can't see it from my house at night" to today when we must all be certain no one will be offended by the phrasing of how an instruction is issued.  Today matriculated morons in cubicles at Insurance Carriers staring into screens deciding what can't be done because the risk factor is too high. 

We spent 50 years building and placing machines to minimize the number of deadhead bodies required to accomplish a job, and now we are blessed by PC people lamenting the shortage of jobs.  Guess what folks, simple math, too many people - too few jobs.  It won't be changing back.
I have no idea what the prize was for loosing hard learned skills and knowledge, but somebody collected it.

Today we have what must be to date the best communications systems since the dawn of recorded history between the Internet and voice systems, and I spend half my day leaving messages on voice mail because some lardo is yapping instead of doing their job.  The Internet is sinking rapidly as I try to decipher a collection of lower case letters generated by some damn contraption called Taptalk or some other texting contrivance.  I'll not even speak to the crap called UTube.  An abortion claiming to be a video is NOT a set of instructions, at best it's an added.

Damn I'm glad I'm old and retired!

[ron darner]

Hear, hear, Aunt Phil!  I come from machinists on both sides of the family; my paternal grandfather would buy himself, say, a drill press, and then add a lathe or mill, "just to do stuff around the house", and pretty soon someone wanted him to make them something.  It never seemed to take long before he was doing machine work nearly full-time; he'd wind up hiring someone to help out, and within a year or two he'd have 2 -3 people working for him, and a shop full of equipment.  Sooner or later, he'd get fed up about something and decide to get the hell out of the business, almost always by selling the entire shop to the workers.  And the cycle would start over when he found the next machine-tool bargain...  On mom's side, my grandfather went through the full German apprenticeship program as a metalworker before emigrating in 1924.  He could run any machine, but could also scrape ways, make wrought iron items (did the chandeliers and wall sconces for a Cincinnati hotel's entire lobby, all hand-work, for example), or do blacksmithing, or be a full-fledged tool & die-maker.  I have a small wrought iron item he made, and his book of drawings from when he apprenticed.  Apprentices were expected to go from a perspective illustration to being able to make every component of a design without ANY formal drawings, and without measurements, before they could attempt to go for journeyman.  Anyone who was ever around one or more of these guys knows precisely what I mean: they all had incredible skills.  I worked with a number of them over the years, and could usually spot them by how they worked, without being told anything about their background.

[Aunt Phil]

Rochester is probably unique Ron in that in the past we had Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Pfaudler and a few other companies that rapidly grabbed every German they could hire, usually before he got off the boat.  We also had 100 smaller shops, often begun by one of the Germans.  Rochester also supported and absorbed both the pre WW-II and Postwar immigrations from Europe.

They were almost all men of a different mindset with a truckload of skills.  Most left Kodak and B&L in the mid 80s, due to the downsizing and brilliant matriculated management, and took positions in smaller shops.  In 03 we finished setting up a decent shop of 1920s vintage machines to be sort of a hobby shop in the days of retirement to come.  It's off to the side of a vehicle shop one of my buds runs, and one of his customers was a German who had flown a one way into Russia and spent most of the next 3 years walking back to Germany.  He came to the US after the war and built his business.

It didn't take long for word to get around and a month or so till older machinists stopped to ask if they might look.  No problem, with what you can teach us you're not only welcome to look, you're welcome to use if you wish.  I've watched those men stand in front of a #2 Rockford for hours, never touching it but moving their hand from crank to crank and running a job they did in 1950 through their mind one more time. 

It takes a while to get to know them and gain their respect, and it's worth every minute.  When and if they decide you're worthy they'll teach you all they can, but until they won't tell you the time of day. 

[Papaw]

Great stories!
Reminds me of my father and his brothers, who could design and build a house almost without drawings, and certainly without engineers! My Pop was part of the group of builders who got together with our city to draw up some of the "codes" for construction here in our hometown. Lots of common sense went into them at first, but the city decided they needed a degreed "Planner" to make them official. Pop got away from them as fast as he could!

[Aunt Phil]

Only reason for an engineer is to tell you what can't be accomplished.

The best of themare handy for one of two things, stealing what a mechanic already put together & got working, or drawing something that won't work and can't be built.  Not sure which category creates more work for mechanics.

[johnsironsanctuary]

I agree with Aunt Phil, there are more mediocre and poor engineers than there are great ones. The old riddle goes: What do you call a guy that graduates 300th out of a class of 300 engineers? Answer: A degreed engineer. When you find a great one, he is to be treasured. I have one as a friend. His name is Don, and he was, until retirement, in charge of brake and master cylinder design for motorcycles at Hayes Brake. Harley was the customer and for about 25 years, Don would come in on a monday with a cardboard and wood mock up of his latest idea. Beautiful models built at home in his woodshop. His ideas were common sense simple. The castings were well thought out and he also had thought through the clamping and machining. Over the years, he taught everyone how vital it was to think a project all the way through. In the end, with CAD drawings, all of he designers were responsible for coming up with the clamping system, the tool path for machining and the fixtures and methods for assembly. When a visiting suit on a tour asked him whet he did, Don said with a smile,"You mean besides making coffee and staring out the window?"
Aunt Phil, I am sorry that you never got to work with anyone like him. It made coming to work a delight.

[Billman49]

For more information and some superb images, have a look at http://outils-anciens.xooit.fr/t2193-outil-en-metal.htm?q=vilbrequin

This is a support for a hand brace, as used in most french metal working shops until the end of the 19th century. You will find images of them in Diderot's Encyclopedie.... Those used in the UK were far simpler, I rescued one similar to the image I posted on the site from a UK blacksmiths shop that was still being used until after WW2....

The modern equivalent is s radial drill press

[Aunt Phil]

Can't tell a thing from that website, it's all in some language written by a bunch of people who never won a war.

[rusty]

Yea, but...they sent us a really nice statue for New York Harbour : )

[Aunt Phil]

AND some dam fool set the statue in GnU Joisey which caused it to turn green.
THEN somebody set up tons of scaffolding and blasted the green contraption
AND then
A whole army of people read the words on the dang thing and came to collect welfare.

Nosir ain't ever any good come from that Frenchy language.
Did ya know Black & Decker is a French company?  One of them S.A. things.

Tell you what else, you just try making french toast in a pop up toaster, even a Black & Decker toaster.  It might pop up once, but you'll spend a whole dang hour sandblasting that toaster before you can use it again.

Mark Twain was right about them Frenchys. 

AND another thing, them Frenchys caused me a lot of aggravation memorizing some damn poem about a field owned by some guy named Flanders.   

AND
Did you know they make some absolutely terrible tasting juice called wine they put up in square tin cans and ship all over the world?

Nosir, I got absolutely no use for em, not even the ones in Quebec.