AWESOME shipyard machining photos

Probably a bit of overkill for a knife shop! That is some seriously
kicka$$ machinery
Ken.
 
Thanks for the link Nick. Those are great photos! Did anyone else notice the complete lack of safety equipment?
 
That's a really cool link. Thanks Nick.

I got a chuckle from the photo titled "LightMachineShop.jpg". Hahaha. Just goes to show how size is relative.
 
I can do the same with my SB9A and photoshop. ;)

Machiningfrwend.jpg


Thanks for the link Nick. Very Cool!
 
Mark Redmon said:
Thanks for the link Nick. Those are great photos! Did anyone else notice the complete lack of safety equipment?
Click to expand...

Yep, I was thinking the same. :eek:

My dad worked as a tool and die maker in the mid to late 50's for Allis-chalmers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allis-Chalmers_Manufacturing_Company

He had told me they would send a man home the first time he was caught without safety glasses on, the second time he was let go:eek:

Thanks for sharing the link, very interesting pictures. Just goes to show what man is capable of when he sets out to accomplish something.

Ken
 
Nick, those are just some awesome photos! I love BIG machinery (that's what she said). :)

Went out to a friend and former patient's shop the other day and took a tour. He's one of a handful of shops throughout the country that still do some of the really big machining of one-off parts. They do a lot of work for mills and processing plants across the country. Anway, Jimmie is a heck of a machinest from the old school who can do things manually that many struggle with in automation. Here's a couple of his larger machines; there's several more that I didn't get pictures of:

Sikes2.jpg


Sikes1.jpg


And few of his smaller lathes:

Sikes3.jpg


--nathan
 
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I love old photos like that but they make me sad too! :( We used to be the largest nation of industry, bar none.
Now so much of it has been farmed out overseas. It makes you wonder if we had to go to war in the capacity of what we did during WW1 and WW2 could we do it. I think it would be extremely hard as we no longer have the infastrucure in place in the US to do the heavy manufacturing!
 
Mark Redmon said:
Did anyone else notice the complete lack of safety equipment?
Click to expand...

I noticed that too. Though I did also notice no ties, rolled up sleeves, no dangling aprons etc. Tight fitting coats. I also noticed all the chips I saw were still pretty close to the cut. Predates carbide. Hell, may predate HSS? I'll bet everything there was so big, but turned so slow, that eye protection was a lesser concern than getting pulled into something. Everyone still had all their fingers, so they were doing something right.

Still, all the bare eyes made me wince. I had to get a steel splinter removed from my eye once and it was very unpleasant. I had a boss once who was an old school machinist who had a nasty scar right across one of his eyeballs, rendering him effectively blind in that eye. He had a mill in rapid that he thought was in feed, broke a cutter that ended up in his eye. I think he said it went through his glasses. Sometimes he's get worked up about something and that eye would start wiggling around - it took a lot of fortitude to keep a straight face. But I digress...

I'll bet that back in the day, safety glasses were regular glass. Probably great around wood etc, but perhaps trouble around heavy bits of metal?

I'm grateful to live in a golden age. I like having bullet proof glass between me and the work.
 
Dixieblade57 said:
I love old photos like that but they make me sad too! :( We used to be the largest nation of industry, bar none.
Now so much of it has been farmed out overseas. It makes you wonder if we had to go to war in the capacity of what we did during WW1 and WW2 could we do it. I think it would be extremely hard as we no longer have the infastrucure in place in the US to do the heavy manufacturing!
Click to expand...

Our navy is more powerful than the rest of the world combined. We'll do fine...
 
This picture is really cool to me as I operate a flame table on a daily baisis, I have never cut anything quite this thick however my thickest to date is 6.5 inches. This is just awesome to me. :cool:
Flamecutting1.jpg
 
The HAZ on that flame cut looks very small. I'd love to see that place in it's hayday, probably one of the only places you'll see big operations on that scale anymore is China.
 
HSS and carbide been around since the 30s, just braze-on carbide, no convenient indexable inserts. they probably used HSS most of the time, cheaper and easier to regrind.
 
I think you guys would be surprised by how much of this stuff IS still out there. I'm sure that many of those machines in the linked photos have been melted down and turned into $5 _______ in China. :foot: :o

However, there are many still making chips. The paper mill I worked at had a roll grinding shop with a lot of machines this size. There were 4 lathes that had 50 feet between centers. Not total length (which would still be giant!) but 50 feet between centers. That makes for a machine that is about 75 feet long.

They had a shaper you could park a 988 Loader on, and a planer you could drive a 3/4 ton pick-up under.

Not all of those giant machines have gone the way of the dodo bird. ;) :)

I agree about the safety gear. It's not unusual to see OLD school machine shops and blacksmith shops with zero safety gear.... but it seems most shops had implemented the stuff by the late 50's.

I don't know though, a friend of mine worked at the paper mill since 1968. He said for the first ten years NOBODY wore safety glasses, ear plugs, etc. It wasn't until I had been there for a year that they REALLY came down on stuff like hard-hats being a mill-wide requirement.
 
We have a large Lucas vertical mill and an American Pacemaker Lathe at work that we use to do work for paper mills. Both are dated pretty old, Ill try and snap a few pictures tomorrow.
 
Heck, if anyone wants a very nice very complete Flather 14" lathe (6 foot bed) i'm parting with mine. Flather used to be THE premier in american made machinery at the end of the 1800s =) Not big compared to those things, but bigger than most anything you see these days. in non-industrial shops.

Those photos are impressive though, that flame cutter is something else.
 
Oops, forgot something....!

Nathan, those pics are awesome! :) Cool you got to take a tour of your old patient's shop! How old of a guy is he???

That's the size of shop I need! ;) :D The Cincinnati mill you can see in the background of the first pic at your friend's place is a lot like the one I just hauled into the shop, just a model or two larger. :)
 
Yeah, Nick. He's got stuff tucked away in corners that most guys would kill to have in a shop. He's definitely sized for larger work in his shop. He's got a horizontal press that takes up an entire corner of his shop, and though I can't remember the exact tonage, it's in the 1000 ton neighborhood. He has an internal bore grinder than was originally used to work the chambers on 16" battleship guns.

It's definitely fun being around all those machines (and yes, a good number of them were in use...just wish I'd taken more pictures).

As for my friend, he's in his late 60's and he grew up in this shop. His dad originally worked heavily with the railroads (his shop is right on the rail line), but during WWII, they did heavy government contracting. Now he and his brother run the shop. Like I said, he's a heck of a machinest, but he was set back pretty hard physically. He contracted West Nile virus on a hunting trip which progressed to meningoencephalitis causing some significant central nervous system damage with paresis and spasticity. He can walk with close guarding using two walking sticks, but has some spasms like you wouldn't believe. He still runs his shop, but uses a scooter to get around.

Neat guy to talk with, and he has all kinds of stories. It's sad to think we're loosing some of these folks every day and the knowledge they carry often goes with them. Kudos to all of you who carry on the manual skill traditions!

--nathan
 
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