The main shop area is lit by skylights and has a dirt floor with a wonderful smell of damp earth and oil. My grandfather had a garage that smelled that way.
The products are heavy steel rings used in oilfield operations. The rings on the left are alloy steel, those on the right are stainless steel. The steel rings had not been long out of the forge and were still very hot. They did not glow, but I could feel heat radiating from them standing 8 feet away.
Mike was busy moving finished rings to an outside storage area. For this he used a big forklift (on left) and a great big forklift (on right).
The final step is to run the red hot steel blocks through this ring mill to shape them into the rings. This is hot heavy work but Mike likes it. He is the kind of guy that likes to make "stuff".
5 comments:
Fascinating tour Bill, it's always good to see how everyday things are created, not that a huge steel oil rig ring is an everyday thing to me but you know what I mean! Also it's wonderful to come across smells that evoke happy memories.
I can't say I understood an awful lot of what you were saying but I'm sure the end product is terribly important to someone somewhere!!!!! I'd love to have a go at driving a forklift, that looks fun, but is probably a lot harder than it looks.
It was worth the trip. You got some very interesting industrial. And your text helped explain the process. Cool!
That was not for the timid!
I love this kind of stuff. Back when I was a real engineer I would jump at the chance when the suppliers offered factory tours. I just love watching stuff being made.
I've never seen a stainless steel forge. High tech stuff there Bill.
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