Fellows...........I am honored that you have inserted these "facts of machining" in this diary.
Your contributions give this diary some character and present an era that is totally foreign
to the people that have grown up with CNC, digital measurements and someone providing the proper
material for the "modern machinist" to make a show piece. Men who did not serve an apprenticeship
under a "hard boiled" old master machinist have no idea what the roots of their profession contain.
Overhead shafts, belts that clicked everytime they went over a flat surfaced pulley, the same shaft
system driving the drill press, the shaper, the lathe and if they were lucky a milling machine. Oh yes,
I forgot the forge that heated tool steel so they could form a tool bit from Rex AAA.
(Was that the most common tool bit material?) Then when carbide bits cost $50 each, everyone had to
smuggle a few home for his own shop. What memories !! They bring me to tears.
I don't ever see anyone with a boring bar turned upside down cutting a thread on the inside
of a piece of tubing with the chuck rotating in the direction opposite from normal.
Goats milk for the lubricant and white lead on the center of the tail stock.
I guess they don't have to do things like that now days.
Any mistakes in this piece shall go uncorrected. Our machinists for 1930 to 1946 had one duty and that was to
get things done anyway possible to support our troops whose ships and airplanes gave them an advantage that
helped end WW II. They made mistakes but they made them work someway. Function overpowered beauty.
I am honored to be surrounded by this audience and am willing to be corrected anytime by anyone..
FREUD
I'll check on the hinge on the chute tube and report back on it.