Re: Gunsmithing Prereq's
The hands down best I've heard of comes from a friend who works at a really big job shop in Indianapolis.
There was a guy named Reggi. Reggi was pretty much only allowed to push a broom. Somehow/someway he convinced someone to allow him to run a big manual. When I say big I mean you literally ride the carriage!
Anyway He's loading a piece of stock about the length of a phone pole and several feet in diameter. It takes a gantry crane to position the stock.
He hits the hydraulic chuck, sets the feed, and away he goes. Everything is great until. . .
. . .the straps from the gantry crane wind around themselves and foul. He'd never cleared the rigging from the part. As Doug tells it the lathe pulled the gantry out of the ceiling and the whole world came crashing down. Luckily no one was injured/killed, but it sure made a mess.
Experience is never cheap and this is what labor laws, affirmative action, and unions gets you. That's just my humble opinion.
More you say? This is a personal experience. I worked for a certain gun plumber in COS for about a year. I was just a grunt entry level machinist, had nothing to do with guns yet. Anyways I'm running a Hardinge chucker making tie rod ends by the gross. I'd load up a 20' bar of 3/4 DOM tubing in this bushing/bar feed contraption I'd whipped together. There was no guard on it. Everyone KNEW there was no guard on it. (small shop with just a handful of guys)
Anyway the owner, a wee little man with a serious Napoleonic disorder and a rectal yeast infection to boot, is telling one of his "huntin an killin" stories where he's having sex with three women, stalking a world class elk, and sky diving all at the same time. He's wearing a big ol quilted flannel shirt cause he's too cheap to turn the heat on in the shop.(you could see your breath in the winter, no chit!)
So he turns as he's telling his little yarn and backs right up into that piece of stock buzzing along at around 1800rpm. The end of it catches that shirt under his armpit and rips it off his body in a millisecond. Now we have a 20' long, 1800rpm, 40lb Q-tip in the machine. As its picking him off the ground and tossing him about, (think Will Smith and the movie MIB where the woman has the alien baby in the car) he's screaming like he's being eaten by a dinosaur.
I'd asked him about fixing the brake on the machine about a week earlier and he said not to worry about it. Well I jam the thing in reverse (what a sound THAT made!) after taking about one little tick extra on the watch to debate whether or not to leave it run for a little while longer.
He's about 95% naked from the waist up now and his ribs look mighty tasty at this point. Well tenderized.
Moral of the story? Pay attention in a machine shop and maintain your shit.
FWIW none of us working there had much affection for the guy so the sympathy wasn't flowing all that well afterward. I did however make a guard the next day out of some 4" PVC and forever since it's been known as the "shirt shark" incident. Priceless moments. . .
Ok, I'm done.
enjoy the weekend.
C.
