Cool old machine shop

[Papaw]

 

Traces of Texas reader Ned Benson shared this stellar 1916 photo of Albert Sheppard Hopper's machine shop in Lubbock. Per Ned:

Albert Sheppard Hopper was born in Grayson County, TX on 31 Dec 1881, the youngest son of J. T. Hopper and Mary Elizabeth Jones Rives (Reeves) Hopper.

Albert Sheppard learned the blacksmith trade in Valley View. In that
farming community he married Ada Pearl Jackson on 30 Nov 1909, and immediately thereafter the newlyweds moved to Lubbock in Lubbock County, at which the Sante Fe Railroad had just arrived the previous month. Prior to this momentous occasion, everything had to be hauled by wagon from Amarillo, 125 miles north on the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad, or from Colorado City, 125 miles to the south on the Texas & Pacific Railroad.

Credit to Traces of Texas  on Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/TracesofTexas?fref=nf

[john k]

That would have been a real upscale shop for that time and place.   I wonder what else the line shaft drives?   I notice too the oxy/acetylene torch set is using bottled acetylene, when most shops were still using an acetylene generator, a big step up in modernity.   See he wheeled the torch set up close to that lathe for the photo, his two prized possessions.   I like the 227 painted on license on the back of that auto, and spy a buggy wheel atop the iron pile in the background.   That is one neat photo. 

[TJM]

277, not 227. Get on your game, man! 

It really is a neat photo, and I'd have missed a lot of those details had you not pointed them out. I didn't know they'd have bottled gas at that point (but that's why I'm here - as much a student of history as of tools and technique)

[leg17]

Gosh, the chuck wrench is in the chuck.


What did Solomon say?  "Nothing new under the sun"?

[john k]

I once met a man that had blacksmithed with his father up until his Army enlistment in 1917.   He attended a technical school in Kansas City to learn the new fangled  oxy/acetylene welding, and upon returning home had it painted  on the sign out front.   The Army found out he knew how to weld,  and he ran a Welding & Tool truck in France in 1918, then returned home to run the shop until 1970.    I can lay my hands on one -1-  Oxygen bottle, with a build date of 1904, which would have been the beginning of gas welding outside the factory.   277?   I am starting to mix my numbers, guess it comes from too many birthdays.

[rusty]

>Gosh, the chuck wrench is in the chuck.

Note also the gears on the wall left of the lathe. They are likely the thread drive gear sets for cutting different pitch thread in the lathe.....

That is a *very* fancy lathe for back then...

[Papaw]

Lubbock is way up in North Texas and was full of oilfield production. I guess that shop had plenty of work.

[turnnut]

John K.

   "YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY BIRTHDAYS,
    IT'S A BUMMER FOR THOSE THAT HAD TOO FEW."

Frank

[Twilight Fenrir]

Some day, when I get a separate building for my blacksmith shop, I will install a line shaft to power my drill press, band saw, power hammer (when I manage to find one), etc... Just because it would be really cool :3

[Plyerman]

Great photo! Seems mighty bright in there for not having any lights lit up. Maybe there was a big sliding door open behind the cameraman?

And I wonder what would have been driving the jack shaft? An oil fired steam engine?

[OilyRascal]

I like the contrast of the wagon wheels piled to the corner whilst the truck sit up front and center.

[john k]

I been looking at the big metal lathe too hard and missed the lathe dead center in the photo.   Or is it a lathe?   Wood lathe maybe?   I bet the photo was made in the early morning, with plenty of light shining in the east windows to the right, before his workers got there, and he shed his suit jacket to get down to work.    By 1916, the line shaft was probably ran by a flywheel type gas engine, outside the building.   A steam engine required a fireman to watch it, as was done in much larger facilities/factories.    I also tell you for all the romance of flat belts and line shafts, they are NOISY to be around, belts slapping, and  the open pulleys whirring.

[Chillylulu]

Great photo! Seems mighty bright in there for not having any lights lit up. Maybe there was a big sliding door open behind the cameraman?

And I wonder what would have been driving the jack shaft? An oil fired steam engine?

Big light source to the right and forward of the camera is evidenced by the shadows and dark sides of structure and drive wheels. Also look at the mans face and the close side of the small machine to the right.

Chilly

[rusty]

>   Or is it a lathe?

I think it is a grinding wheel (with no guard).
Notice how small the pully is ? it turns fast....

[Papaw]

I thought grinder also.