Senior
Posts: 6819
Joined: Oct 2009
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I understand that, Tom. I recently received a small pocket type book once owned by a machinist beginning in 1934. It is a treasure chest of drawings, calculations, and other notations. It is a virtual diary of a man who spent his life in the trade. It came in a box full of tools and artifacts sent by a friend. My eldest son does the machine work now. He invented the ball bearing fan hub for my car, and since the tooling was set up, he made a few extras which sold immediately. At the age of 63, he is a genius machinist, and often makes or repairs medical equipment for the University of Iowa's huge hospital. He served an apprenticeship to learn the trade almost 50 years ago, a practice which has since virtually disappeared, along with the machine shops which once kept much of the USA running.
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