Shop Truths, Phrases, Tales; and Outright Lies

[Toolmaker51]

C-Bag related a situation and consequence I dread; more than anything that might happen to me personally.

I've not experienced loss of a co-worker by accident; some serious injuries and near misses, not any deaths. Family-wise we've had some. Worst probably, elderly couple gathering holiday decorations from garage rafters via ladder. He fell from top, landing directly on her. He survived a short time, the 'guilt' took him as well.

While in USN, we often did breakdowns of scenarios or actual reports, and one thing was common. Lack of awareness was usually first and experience second, equipment not often tagged as cause - as traceable back to the first two. Navy generally avoids phrase 'accident'. System named 'cause analysis' traces outcome from root, avoidable only until a certain and tangible point.
Carrier flight deck is supposedly one of most dangerous environments, my interpretation was that should be 'potentially'. It is so finely orchestrated, even incidents are minimal. I'd say mining, chemical plants, and certain fires would lead the way for 'potential'; because there is either no where to go, or the rapidity and spread cover available distance too quickly!

I appreciated that approach to safety right off; experience-based logic with acceptable/ manageable risks. DEFINITELY not the OSHA vision based on paranoia and insurance company style probabilities. Strikingly, today did a test reworking incomplete features in a laser cut plate, drilling 7/8" through 1/4" hot rolled. Had it tied down well, standing WTH out of way, envisioning the helix taking hold and peeling it out, yet I'll dance with a 48" lathe without much concern at all. Anyway, proof of concept says a bushing plate is the way to go.

In case it isn't clear; I'll reiterate personal appreciation for all contacts we cultivate here. I see two are present in this thread right now, three members and no guests. Yup, its fun too, coining words, tossing in our 2 cents, and all.
But the measure of sanity derived from a simultaneous front row seat and audience makes a considerable difference in my day!

[Toolmaker51]

PJ's brought up ISO.
I'll recommend 'my' calibration house, Long Island Indicator. Their site is most authoritative, definitive standard on which I rely. MIL-STD, AGD, DIN and all the rest.

Home page is 027 : Long Island Indicator Service : Sales, Repairs and Spare Parts

But what really sets them apart is at the bottom of 002 : About Standards and Specifications (Their statement verifies publicly, VERY publicly, a common reaction shared by a sizeable portion of our HMT community).

What has ISO got to do with it?

Not much. As we've all found out, ISO certification is a kind of smoke screen designed to give the illusion of integrity. We've had ISO certified companies send us checks that bounce. So much for any kind of integrity.

It is a membership in a fraternity of sorts and the membership dues are very steep indeed. $10,000 to $30,000 is not uncommon and then there are annual fees on top of it. Members of ISO are supposed to do business only with fellow members and that's how the organization maintains itself. It hasn't got much to do with the quality of the products but everything to do with red tape and paperwork. So much paperwork in fact that usually one or more staff member needs to be hired just to fill out the forms.

[Frank S]

The company I was with while in Kuwait pretty much had started out as a simple sales install and service company with a total staff of 20 .
It all started when they purchased a couple of my freight elevators and begged me to visit Q8 to supervise the install I thought why not after all I hadn't been to Q8 since late 91 while the fires were still smoldering
Anyway There I was with just about nothing to do their installers were top notch and could follow the somewhat meager installation manual I had hastily put together for the lifts prior to shipment.Their Client was the country's most prestigious Toyota body shop. the client's requirements for my lifts had changed from the time I had manufactured and shipped the lifts till the time the install was being preformed.
The client and 3 or 4 of his financial backers came to my hotel room along with the owner of the company who had placed the order with me to ask me if it would be feasible to modify my machines prior to the completion of the install.
Well I was thinking Oh sure, I'm over here supposedly for a 3 possibly 4 day install and now you want me to make extensive modifications my machines that took me weeks to manufacture. When actually what came out of my mouth was no problem, but it is going to be a little expensive to bring my machine shop and equipment over here.
Well couldn't you use a local machine shop and hire some men to help?the client asked Then Saad said that I could have my pick of his best installers The clueless 7 I called them, who incidentally later became and remained the core of my factory staff which grew to over 70 at times with 20 engineers during the 10 years we were over there
So now I'm thinking language problems I don't speak Arabic and no one in Saad's company who speaks English has a clue about mechanical or structural engineering terms.
But none the less the next day Saad's brother becomes my personal chauffeur we are on a mission like he has never heard of in his life I need to locate a jobber type machine shop and steel supplier a shop with a shear and break an industrial supply and some placer to purchase some UHMV or tough nylon as they called everything
Additionally We had to locate a suitable facility to rent where I could do do my fabrication
6 weeks later the 2 lifts had transformed from 3 ton cap. to 5 ton and instead of going from the ground floor up 5 meters to the mezzanine they went from the basement up 6 meters to the ground floor ( I got lucky there as I had made my hydraulic cylinders over-sized with a longer stroke than originally necessary because I had the materials in stock) with drive through capability while the platform was at ground level with numerous added automatic safeties and barrier guards.
This was in the late fall of 2002, before the bullets had started flying up in Iraq in early 03 my wife and I had relocated to Q8 with a 45 ft High cube container filled with enough of my equipment to start up a small factory.

[C-Bag]

TM51,

A flight deck on a carrier is a perfect example of a really dangerous situation that because it's drilled into everybody it IS dangerous, is more safe than you'd think.

Somehow it always seemed like there was something trying to give demo's or premonitions to make me aware of my surroundings. And I always took heed.

A couple of years before I got my first car I was having a snack in the kitchen after getting home from school and I started hearing this wailing. It sounded like something from a TV movie. It was followed by sirens so I went outside to see what was going on and I see paramedics and crowd down the street. I watched from our yard about 8-10 houses away, not wanting to add to the gawkers.

I found out later it was this older woman who was doing the screaming and running up and down the street. The neighbors called 911 and the woman would not calm down and nobody could figure out what she was screaming about. Finally somebody noticed her son's hand sticking out under the old POS car he was always working on in the driveway. He was sitting up under with no Jack stands and somehow it had come down on top of him folding him head between his knees. He couldn't get enough breath to yell but when his mother came out she saw him under the car and went hysterical. While they were trying to calm her down her son suffocated.

I had walked by him on my way home. Needless to say I'm paranoid of getting under anything that's not supported properly. And for the first 7-8yrs of being a mechanic I worked alone.

[Frank S]

I helped a friend of mine get started in an exhaust repair business. I even made his 4 post lift and tubing bender a few years later I stopped by and he had bought a 2 post lift . He had a car up on it and was really jerking on some bolts trying to break them loose. the car was rocking so bad it looked like it would fall off.
I spied the 4 extended height safety stands that had been supplied with the lift just filling space in a corner of his shop.
I hollered at him to stop and use those stands or I might just forget the number to 911 if that car fell on him.
But I'm almost finished besides those things are a pain to drag around for a 2 minute job.
OK then use the 4 post lift I gave you.
But it is hard to use on these front wheel drive cars.
Look I said you can use the safety stands a 1000 times and never need them but not use them only once when you did need them.
There is a good reason they have so many training drills on a carrier. You have almost 5 acres of open deck area with 100's of potentially the most dangerous activities on the planet occurring at the same time, save for possibly the mining industry. and offshore drilling platforms

[Toolmaker51]

I Expanded my 'personal' library...yours too; and yours, all the guys over there, and the members of tomorrow!


Just found the "Digital Public Library of America', currently listing 13,997,962 individual reference documents. Now, you might want endless shelves of such material, I enjoy and value print too. But often they are difficult to identify correctly, find, or afford. This is not commercial in the sense of Cramamazon, or roundy-round searches via Ibay.

https://dp.la/

My first search consisted of the following. This is what an apprentice-newbie-fng learns, or ANY accomplished machinist thinks before about opening Machinists Handbook.
Despite what some consider 'glaring' errors, you'll be hard pressed to find info deeper on the overall subject of serious one-off machine work than these publications. From NAVEDTRA (dept of Naval Education & Training) branch of NAVPERS (dept of Naval Personnel) MACHINERY REPAIRMAN 3&2 10530-E1 and MACHINERY REPAIRMAN 1&C 110531-B. The 3/2/1/C are enlisted paygrades of USN petty officers, so 3&2 are entry level. There are illustrations, charts, graphs Another poster on another site stated MR's not 'machinists' in the true sense. The reaction there was emphatic and proceeded with illustrating why they are; and like workers anywhere, show different levels of expertise. But the equipment, tooling, materials, and materials available, make most any of us drool.
1.]They open pdf. and printable - I'd suggest transporting file via USB thumbdrive to whatever version you have of a office supply or printshop.
2.]The cost of two-sided and collated print will be more than worthwhile; if saved in a proper binder or actually having it bound. 3.]Opt for paper heavier than standard 20lb printer-copy paper, to withstand hours of perusal, thumbing and certainty of dogeared corners.

And Jon; if you see this I'm campaigning; a forum section at HMT as a reference library. Not texts - accurate descriptions and links we find. I invite thanks as an endorsement, sort of a vote for who thinks this worthwhile.

[C-Bag]

Cool find TM51, but I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or? Signed up for DPLA, found the MACHINERY REPAIRMAN 3&2 10530-E1, it refers me to another site and says I have to log in to DL. It doesn't list or recognize my log in with DPLA? And the DPLA is not an affiliated "institute".

Signed,
Lost in Circular Clickyland

[PJs]

Cool find TM51, but I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or? Signed up for DPLA, found the MACHINERY REPAIRMAN 3&2 10530-E1, it refers me to another site and says I have to log in to DL. It doesn't list or recognize my log in with DPLA? And the DPLA is not an affiliated "institute".

Signed,
Lost in Circular Clickyland

Hey C-Bag,

Here is what I found. Went to the link (didn't sign up to DPLA cause I don't wanna), cut and pasted the MACHINERY REPAIRMAN 3&2 10530-E1 into the search block "enter". That takes you to the search finding page. Pick the link for "Machinery Repairman 3&2". That takes you to the detail page with Haithi Trust Partner/ U of Illinois contributor page. On the left side of that page is a link to the text. Right Click and open a new tab with the PDF in it...guess what its a google scan doc! Then to the Download full book PDF...and Whalah..."No Download with out being a member of that particular organization". Pick the why Not link...Then you can spend days reading why you can't and Eula after Eula about creative commons publishing and more importantly their Organization to donate to.

It is interesting that it is an 1981 edition which technically is still copyrighted material unless it was entrusted to U of IL. Aren't they provided for by the Public Taxation and Property taxes from We the People and now they require a Log In by a pubic figure (me) giving up my info to get in the door for Public information. I guess I am still Pubic! Now if there are ~14 million of these not so free docs how many other orgs will I have to join. Did I miss something too? ~¿~

Oh Bedangle me once again with the appearance of free....Honestly I just can't sign up for another give away nor indenture my fine son and his offspring for something that is under a creative commons, let a lone give away my address book...the best you can do is read it on line as far as I can see. Free is never Free...you have to work to maintain it...right?

Like the "Lost in Circular Clickland"...it's like reading the dictionary to me which becomes a MUGWUMP if you've ever done it.

Don't get me wrong I love old Navy manuals and Airforce too but if you hit the surplus stores you can get them for 50 cents usually, and they smell much better than a PDF. ~PJ

Sorry TM this just feels to me like another Data Grab and giant cookie drop...if you have Ghostery and s@@ behind some of the curtain! Lovely Idea though!

[Toolmaker51]

That's a good point PJ. I have the issue versions collected in service and they used to show up in book stores. Maybe more on the coast than here in the Midwest. Anyway the search and title bit worked fine; and that's info to conduct a buying effort with. I suspect there are other repositories for the same variety material. Google books is another, and pages alive enough that 'ctrlF' works. I have a new work in progress...

[C-Bag]

Just for giggles I went to Amazon and found the Machinery Repairman 3&4 book and when I saw:

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

Wow. I don't think I've ever seen that on any book I was looking at.

And a new hard bound vs was only $29, I figured double score. Thank you so much TM51, once again you have helped a FNGnoob get a clue. I'd never heard of this book and even if I did see it on a shelf somewhere(which I might have) I wouldn't have a clue what it was about. And while I probably would have been ok with PDFs I love being able to page through and hopefully it's not got the glaring problems (they warn of that in the write up) right where I need to get a clue