old techniques still in use?

In one of the Guy Lautard books, there is a story of some British soldiers in a Japanese POW camp. They finagled access to some basic tools and lathe, and did some work for their captors, in addition to making stuff for themselves.

Fearing losing access to the lathe, they built one from scratch. While not done entirely with chisels and files, the lathe and it's accessories are still a remarkable example of make-do craftsmanship.

Jon

One of the old Germans I trained under told me that after the war, the only machines left were worn out, so they made new ones with files so they could make more parts to build new machines.

No, flaking is just a way to make the surface carry oil so that lubrication is spread around properly. This is typically done to ground surfaces that are already flat and accurate, but too smooth to let oil work between them.

Scraping is the actual finishing of the surface, including flatness and fit with its mate. That's a whole different task, and it's not easy at all unless you've done a lot of it.

KG

When I was teaching auto Mechanics in Livingston Zambia in the early seventies, the students made piston rings for 2 stroke crop-duster motors from cast iron pipe using only a hacksaw and files. A few of the (previously seized) engines actually ran when they were finished, and almost all had respectable compression.

Then we were given a Sachs Wankel engine with the seals gone out of it. They filed the parts to fit and we actually got that engine to run. Without the counterbalanced flywheel, it was like riding a jackhammer trying to hold the enginestand down when it started up. The seals lasted all of about 3 minutes - but the guys knew how to file, measure, and fit by the time they were done!!!!

You gotta remember that what they were chipping was grey cast iron for the most part or cutting keyways in wrought iron shafts. Most cast iron these days is alloyed to one degree or another, a whole different proposition, and soft wrought iron isn't a current structural material. I've worked on some old tools made out of the old grey stuff. Very soft, you could cut it with a pocket knife. So chiseling parallel grooves in a surface with a cape chisel and peeling off the lands with a wide chisel to get a surface down to size probably wasn't the ordeal it might seem at this remove in time. Grey cast iron was the pine wood of the industrial revolution.

I've got an Audel's machinist's book from about 1905 that details those old techniques. Overcome by power tools and made obsolete by material improvements. It's nice if you developed the skills, but what are you going to use them on these days?

Stan

Actually the Omish carriage repairers can come to you in the US Don't know about Bankok. They're some of the few or possibly only Omish allowed to drive motor vehicles. Karl

The cast iron in my Duracraft drill press is like that. I chiseled off the lip at the top of the hole for the column so the head could be lowered. The down side of soft cast iron is that it didn't hold the threads for extra clamp bolts very well.

I bought a dumbbell to machine into pivot balls for the base of a hoist, hoping it would also be soft. WRONG!, only carbide would cut the stuff. The skin was only a little harder than the interior. In the winter I would have left the CI in the wood stove for a week.

When I replaced the rusted cab mounts on my pickup I used cape and gouge chisels to help decapitate some of the less-accessible rivets. Ford truck frame rivets definitely aren't soft wrought iron and I got lots of practice resharpening the chisels, as well as shortened reduced-shank drill bits that no longer fit a Darex. The factory manual calls for bolts one size larger than the rivets.

Cutting metal with a sharp chisel is slower but otherwise not much different from making a square-cornered door hinge or latch mortice. It helps if you can grind good straight flats on the chisel to guide the cutting edge.

Jim Wilkins

Please. Thats Amish, at least in PA where there are lots of them. ...lew...

Ed sez: "Rogers dates back to the 1830s. There are plenty of photos of their later production, up to around 1910, but there isn't much on the early days except the archaeological digs of their first plant. They unearthed piles of shop-made files in that dig."

Rogers is mentioned in the 1892 book, Modern Locomotives. The hardbound book is one of Lindsay's finest.

Bob Swinney

Well, they were the second-largest locomotive manufacturer in the US at one time, so they were well known.

Their machines were known for having a lot of power and endurance. They built the "Uncle Sam" and "The General," which was made famous in the Civil War.

-- Ed Huntress

Stan sez:

"You gotta remember that what they were chipping was grey cast iron for the most part or cutting keyways in wrought iron shafts. Most cast iron these days is alloyed to one degree or another, a whole different proposition, and soft wrought iron isn't a current structural material. I've worked on some old tools made out of the old grey stuff. Very soft, you could cut it with a pocket knife. So chiseling parallel grooves in a surface with a cape chisel and peeling off the lands with a wide chisel to get a surface down to size probably wasn't the ordeal it might seem at this remove in time. Grey cast iron was the pine wood of the industrial revolution."

Very good comment on the old ways and the "whys" associated with them. Excellent, Stan!

Bob (loves to see the BS cut thru) Swinney

Lew Hartswick wrote in news:t7OdncenUol4J4TVnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

I start using the version I heard in the movie 'Witness' with Harrison Ford, during one part you see a tourist group in the background and hear the leader say something about the Amish and pronounce it Aimish. basically Amish with a long 'A' in the front. After all it was in a movie so it must be the right way :)

Bill

============= Thanks for the insight and reminder. The old techniques make much more sense now. Also the reported depth-of-cut and feed rates for the shapers/planers, even with the slow carbon steel tool speeds. Operationally they were working with dead soft aluminum.

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

Asian shops tend to be this way, based on my experience in So. Cal. Small 1-5 employee shops. Larger shops tend to accumulate Some tools over the years, though even they seldom have a bench vise, and an increasingly large number dont even have drill presses. Not all that much second ops stuff that a mill cant do..maybe a cheapy ChiComm drill press with a countersink or deburring tool stuck in it.

Ayup..and I think Crom for those people, for they provide me with my bread and butter.

It's spelled with an A but the sound is like Au as in Author. ...lew...

Old Order Amish do not use modern technologies, more modern groups live much as we do, those in the middle can drive cars after they have painted the chromium flat black. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

That's Amish

Hey George, You and I are both "old techniques " and while we may not make more or less sense now, we'll get to watch the ride down.

I'm not sure that's a blessing but, in my case at least, I can stick with my standard line- "What the Hell did anyone expect".

Sorry for the HJ but I'm on the road at 4:30 AM and not usually back in the office before 8:00 PM and wanted to poke you and maybe Ed.

Two hours of paperwork and an hour of invoicing and checking bank records beyond that don't leave much time for Usenet.

Commonly known as Black Chrome Mennonites