Housecalls by Machinists (article)

Very cool company. I have worked with this company:

that does similar things. They make a lathe that clamps on the OD of a 'BIG' pipe - 7 feet or more - turns off the broken edge and puts on new thread. I thought these big ass pipes were welded together.

dean s

Very interesting read! That would be a very cool company to work for. :)

chem

From the article:

"In-Place grew out of the elder Eder's lifelong attraction to the sea and his love of engineering. Ralph's father owned a small manufacturingcompany in Milwaukee, and Eder displayed a technical bent early on, building crystal radios and model boats and airplanes, and fixing everything from gasoline engines to washing machines."

Uh oh. I suspect if they wanted to recruit new employees, this would be the place. Heck, we *build* gasoline powered washing machines!

Jim

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Maybe on some jobs. I gotta tell you I don't think I could get too worked up about 12 hour shifts stitching an ocean liner's crankcase. They probably get to do some pretty cool things, but I'll bet they are pretty tired and sore at the end of the day.

I was telling a five year old kid about my friend who built his own house from scratch. The kid's response was, "Well, he must have gotten pretty sweaty!"

Phillip, who's feeling his age today

That's one hell of a story! Given that I was younger, stronger and smarter I would be at that company's door, hat and resume in hand! Ken.

Neat article, touches on something I wonder about. I live on an island accessed by ferries (WA state ferry system). There are no "extra" ferries, when one breaks service is cut (e.g. 2 boats instead of 3 or 0 instead of 1) until it is fixed. (Major maintenance is done in the "slow season")

What is puzzling is how something breaks every week but no matter what breaks it is always fixed within half a day. Only exception I recall in 5 years was a broken rudder that required a couple days in drydock.

Anyone know what the repair regime is for a fleet like this? What sort of things break that put a boat out of service but can be fixed so quickly? What do you figure is the extreme limit for the kind of repair that is done in a half day, or a day?

Ferries in question are diesel-electric, ranging in vintage from a couple oldies built for the Golden Gate route (they're older than the bridge) to

1950's and 1970's (bulk of the fleet).

Bob

Mostly you have some old timer with nothing better to do but hang around where she/he lived a great deal more than half a life, doing whatever they can to justify their continued presence at the centre of their universe. When something breaks, the suggestion is, "well the last time that happened, we did so and so" Gerry :-)} London, Canada