An excerpt found on a machinists FB group, by Robert Renz- I really loved this piece and thought I would share with y’all
“ When I grew up in my grandfather’s 1910 vintage machine shop, some things about both his shop and his friend’s shops stuck to my memory –
The old line shaft driven small town job machine shops had their own beauty - something we will never have with CNC and fluorescent lighting. There was usually a wood stove that would both take the morning chill out, and also heat water for coffee (and wait until you had coffee that had been boiling for an hour or so…). The same stove was used to heat lunches, warm water for hide glue, and dispose of oily rags. When it was time to start, the one motor in the shop was started, and the shaft and all the belts started rolling. The sound of the belts slapping was a sound that you looked forward to hearing, because it meant that you were living in a modern age. At lunchtime, the motor was shut down, and it was quiet except maybe for the shop radio. Cutting oil (often a heavy oil with some lard oil added) would drip onto the tool tip from a drip oiler with a fancy little petcock that was often nickel plated (I still have the one my grandfather used on his mill).
Taps and dies were frequently lubricated with bacon drippings from a small tin can, often an old snuff can, with a little brush. Parts were cleaned after machining with a pan of kerosene. When the kerosene became too dirty to use, the wood stove handled the residue just fine.
Lighting was never too good – machines were always located near a window, and a large shop would have some sort of windows in the roof – these could also be opened for ventilation in these pre-AC days. Often a bird or two would fly in to make the day interesting. There were usually electric lights hanging directly over a machine’s work area – there were sometimes on a lazy tongs for adjustability. The use of windows for general lighting also helped encourage work days that were normally limited to daylight hours, though the work days usually included Saturday mornings.
When the line shaft was oiled every morning, an apprentice would lean a wood ladder against the spinning line shaft, and climb up to oil all the many oil cups on the support bearings; then he’d do the same on all the transmission bearings directly over each machine. If you’ve ever wondered why a pump oil can has a little bulge on the tip, it’s so the oil can tip can be used to hook and open the cover of an oil cup. Oil came in several grades and weights, but your choices were very limited to today’s options. Lubricants were limited to straight mineral oils, though steam cylinder oil was commonly used for gear cases since it was a heavy bodied tacky lubricant.
There was usually a piece of wood, about 1 x 3” pine (or an old broomstick), near every machine. When the machinists engaged the machine’s transmission (the ceiling-mounted belt clutches used to select forward or reverse), sometimes the leather belt would hop off the big flat pulleys. Usually, this meant that the machine and the belt transmission were a little misaligned, but shifting machines (or transmissions) was a job usually saved for another day. The chunk of lumber would be used to help convince the belt to climb back onto the pulleys.
New machines were brought in a horse-drawn wagon, or sometimes in a chain-drive MACK truck with solid rubber tires. Unloading was either with block and tackle (if there was anything nearby that could carry the weight), or with ratchet jacks and blocking. Machines were rolled into the shop using hardwood rollers, Simplex jacks, and crowbars – sometimes using big wheeled crowbars called “Johnson bars”. New drive pulleys would be added to the existing line shaft by the millwrights – the pulleys were often split so they could be added quickly during the lunch break. Once a transmission was positioned over the new machine, leather belts would be added. The width and thickness were modified for the type of load, and the joint was either cemented or joined with an “alligator” wire splice. A smoothly sanded hardwood clutch handle was added to the transmission, and the job was done. Sometimes the drive belting would have to be lengthened if the wood floor under the new machine settled a little from the suddenly increased floor loading and the belt tightened too much (belt tension adjustments only required a crowbar to shift a machine an inch or two)
Though the machines had only 3-4 operating speeds, they all had a soft start feature since a good machinist would engage the belt clutch carefully instead of jerking it into engagement – besides, jerking the clutch lever could cause the drive belt to hop off the pulley.
Every shop seemed to have a cat and/or a dog. Both would usually be found snoozing close to the shop’s wood stove. The cats had to earn their keep by catching the mice that always seemed to stroll into the shop every fall, but the dogs seemed to earn their keep by picking up any leftovers from the lunch break.
As the old joke always said “Never paint the walls in the shop” – if you did, you would lose countless documents when the many machinist’s notes from years of work were lost to a paint brush. Documentation was often minimal, and many sketches on envelopes became part of the file- I have many of my grandfather’s old sketches on envelopes that were in turn used as bookmarks
