For The Traveling Gunsmith To Have On Hand

The Golden Age..... the age that put America firmly on top of the pile..... the age when machinists wore tops and ties and were Kings Of Industry....... the age that our revisionists are trying to wipe from memory..... the Age Of MEN!




sorry
 
Left large EW contractor around 2005.
We still had a few retired master machinists we would call in for special jobs.

Had a couple mills and lathes set up in a smaller room at 65F.
Nothing CNC.

Many of them had on a dress shirt and tie under their aprons.
Mostly cotton Chinos for pants since they WILL get cutting fluid on them.

Routine work for these guys was 0.0002 inch.

They really knew how to run those machines.
 
martin zuck said:
.................Of course it also depended who was the operator!
Click to expand...

Doesn't it ALWAYS???

I'll hire a good man on old equipment long before the hotshot on a new machine.

In my industry, construction, they say "Ya got's ta' be able to run a shovel before you can run a backhoe" and the surest way to get a completely bolluxed jobsite is to hire the guy with the new dozer on the new truck....
 
alinwa said:
Doesn't it ALWAYS???

I'll hire a good man on old equipment long before the hotshot on a new machine.

In my industry, construction, they say "Ya got's ta' be able to run a shovel before you can run a backhoe" and the surest way to get a completely bolluxed jobsite is to hire the guy with the new dozer on the new truck....
Click to expand...

You hit thr nail right on the head! Back in the early sixties after graduating from the Pennsylvania gunsmith school I went out and bought a brand new clausing atlas ten inch lathe. I could thread barrel shank and that was about it. In time I figured out it was not about what I'd learned but what I had NOT learned. Back then I lived next to an old gunsmith/toolmaker who turned out some really nice work on an old Southbend lathe that looked as if it had been dragged behind a truck. I could not understand how this was possible. Eventually I figured it out.
 
Thanks for posting that Pic. My Grandfather was a top Machinist for Esso Oil in N.J......When I was a child he would go through his beautiful wooden toolbox with the greenlined drawers and explain to me what the tools were and how they worked....I use that same box today in my reloading room & it is a prized possession. Your pic took me back to an earlier time with memories of a Most Special person in my life....:cool:

Regards
Rick
 
My Dad taught me the Machinist trade, the only place I have ever drawn a paycheck from besides our Shop was the two years I had to spend in the Army when I was drafted back in the '60's.

One of the things my Dad taught me from day one, (and I try to instill in the men I teach), is the most important aspect of Machine Shop work is to learn WHY you do things a certain way. You can teach anybody how to do something, it is simply a matter of repetition and following directions. The important thing to learn is WHY you do things. Once you have a general knowledge of why things are done a certain way, you can transfer this knowledge to other aspects of machining, and operation and function of machinery in general.

A while back, a customer asked me to assist in the alignment of a large marine gear to the Propellar Shaft and then the Diesel engine to the gear. This was a 3500 HP set. I not only showed his men how do do the procedure, but explained to them why you needed exact alignment of the output gear flange to the shaft coupling. Why you then aligned the engine to the gear in a certain manner so to allow for heat expansion in the verticle and horizontal. And then why you had to secure it all properly so there was no deflection in any of the criticle parts, and then making sure nothing could move under the normal operation of the vessel.


At my shop, we have no CNC machines. It's not because we would not like them, it's just that the type of work we do simply does not lend it's self to type of work performed on CNC machines.
 
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sign in my shop

The Man Who Learns How To Do The Work
Will Always Have A Job.
The Man Who Learns WHY
Will Always Be His Boss​
 
Would have liked to become a master machinist, but that era had mostly passed when I got into it. Unions did not want you to learn more than one machine, because that meant less total people in the work force and thus less union membership.
 
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