For Jackie

[Tucker65]

My hunting partner and his father own a machine shop. They kinda specialize in larger machining projects and do quite a bit of work for the dams on the Columbia river. Here's a few pictures of a big cable sheave they machined on an old Betts boring mill they restored and converted to cnc. I'm not sure what the capacity is of that machine but I remember when they were pouring the foundation for it, and big portion of the machine is below the floor level.

 

[Cecil S.]

My hunting partner and his father own a machine shop. They kinda specialize in larger machining projects and do quite a bit of work for the dams on the Columbia river. Here's a few pictures of a big cable sheave they machined on an old Betts boring mill they restored and converted to cnc. I'm not sure what the capacity is of that machine but I remember when they were pouring the foundation for it, and big portion of the machine is below the floor level.

View attachment 1541365View attachment 1541366View attachment 1541367

SO COOL!!!!!! I would Maintain that overhead crane that moved the part into place. Dirty work but I loved every minute of it...LOL

 

[jackieschmidt]

My hunting partner and his father own a machine shop. They kinda specialize in larger machining projects and do quite a bit of work for the dams on the Columbia river. Here's a few pictures of a big cable sheave they machined on an old Betts boring mill they restored and converted to cnc. I'm not sure what the capacity is of that machine but I remember when they were pouring the foundation for it, and big portion of the machine is below the floor level.

View attachment 1541365View attachment 1541366View attachment 1541367

Bringing a huge pre CNC Machine into the 21st century. That’s beyond cool.

Some years ago, a shop called Greens Bayou Engineering on the East Side of Houston did a lot of ship work, (back when they actually worked on ships in the USA),. They went bankrupt in the early ‘80’s and tried to sell off most of the equipment.

They had a Huge vertical boring mill that they used mainly for boring large propellers and tiller arms. It had around a 18 foot capacity.It probably pre dated WW-2. Like this big vertical, 2/3 of it was in the floor.

Nobody would buy it, not even for scrap value because of the cost of getting it out of there.

They finally brought in a crew with huge arc gougers and Lansing rods, literally cut it all to pieces. They then had to jack hammer the rest up.

A sad death of a old machine that did great service for decades.

I think a warehouse now sits where that facility was.

 

[SmokinJoe]

We had some of those old dinosaurs at Georgia Iron Works and had equipped them with 50HP custom made grinding heads to machine the high chrome and nickel chrome irons that our slurry pumps were made of, with hardness of about 700bhn. That was well before the days of cubic boron nitride that is used for single point machining of these materials nowadays on CNC equipment. Jackie, do you know of the Jim Bean dredge there in the Houston area? We made the pumps used on that outfit. They had 30" discharge and took 7,000 connected HP, I think 50,000gpm.

 

[Fuj]

If I can get permission, One of the closed iron works factory's
still has a Steam Hammer built here in Erie for hammering
drive axles on Locos. It's dang near 2 stories tall. Erie built
the Heisler Locos up until 1941. Probably did them also for
the Climax Locos in Corry Pa just south of us, Erie County.
Love that old old Iron.....

 

[SmokinJoe]

Can't open it.

 

[durand mortenson]

Can't open it.

will try later

 

[Fuj]

Can't open it.

Here ya' go.....

 

[durand mortenson]

Posted several car fotos with no problem now this. will get back to it later
Thanks
Mort

 

[durand mortenson]

This a rudder off of the carrier Midway having the taper rebored. The two guys in the picture did all the setup work. I ran this job on the night shift.
The machine is a large floor mill.

 

[durand mortenson]

Midway rudder repair

 

[durand mortenson]

Another view. Large work pieces came into the shop on a flatcar. Large overhead crane that ran the length of the shop was pretty handy. Just above the guy running the hone is a grinding machine. Spent some time there too.

 

[Kittitas George]

Very interesting, would like to see more of this, I've never been exposed to this type of work. I have assembled a few 'box cars' back 60 years ago. Please show us more !!!!

 

[jackieschmidt]

I have done repair work on a rudder not quite this large, it weighed about 18,000 pounds. It was off of a ship that had run aground down in Panama, compromising the taper fit that where the rudder stock plugs in.

We used a portable boring bar that cut a one inch taper per foot.

 

[jackieschmidt]

Very interesting, would like to see more of this, I've never been exposed to this type of work. I have assembled a few 'box cars' back 60 years ago. Please show us more !!!!

This is as real time as it gets. It’s 2:45 PM Monday, today.

We are at Elmwood Shipyard in Harvey Louisiana right now setting up to bore the strut tubes on a 2000 HP tug. I’m waiting on the night crew. We left my Shop this morning at 4:00AM

You can see the music wire we work off of, and my witness marks with which to align the boring bar.

This shipyard is pretty “rustic”. is pretty rustic.

 

[durand mortenson]

Very interesting, would like to see more of this, I've never been exposed to this type of work. I have assembled a few 'box cars' back 60 years ago. Please show us more !!!!

Will see what i can do. The Navy took photos of setups and the machining of things that didn't come thru the door everyday They would pass out photos of the project taken in the shop to whoever worked on it. I have two more I will look for that show the setup for the rudder.
Everything you see here is gone. It closed shortly after the Vietnam War

 

[perazziguy]

View attachment 1541042

Thought of Jackie Schmidt when I saw this.
Look at back end of tailstock

I think that is Jackie...

 

[D-4297]

Always knew there was equipment around like this , but never got a chance to see much of it . Makes that 12 foot Bed Crankshaft Grinder I ran look like a Bench-top toy .

 

[durand mortenson]

Jackie
The rudder I worked on had been welded inside so you could get a clean cut when done. The welding was done in a fairly even circular pattern. No one crawled in there. How did they do that?

 

[jackieschmidt]

Jackie
The rudder I worked on had been welded inside so you could get a clean cut when done. The welding was done in a fairly even circular pattern. No one crawled in there. How did they do that?

The rudder blade is hollow. What you see them boring is a huge cast steel frame that welds to the rudder blade.
Before they attach the frame, it is open on that forward edge.
The actual rudder stock will plug into the hole that they are boring. The lower square is where the pintos pin mounts.