05-01-2009, 12:22 PM
1947 was a very good year for me, too, 
and, as outlined below, didn't make it hard for me to remember how those things were done.
Shortly after I started work at a steel plant, in 1966, there was a small lay-off. I was "lucky", with my 4 months seniority, to be transferred to another mill. While similar to my own mill, it was much older, with smaller equipment and smaller areas in which to work. It also lacked some of the mechanical niceties of the newer mill. I quickly learned that one of these areas was the mill basement, where scale from the ingot buggy was dumped. In the newer mill, the ingot buggy automatically dumped its scale into the mill "sewer", a flume for carry scale and scrap to a large pit, where it was loaded into gondolas by a crane with a clamshell bucket. In the older mill, the scale was dumped to the basement floor every time the buggy approached the roller line. The mills, of course, ran 24 hours a day, but in the older mill, the scale was removed from the basement only on dayshifts.
Enter greenhorn steelworker.
Sent to the basement to work with two burly Italians who spoke almost no English, I quickly learned that the mechanical wheelbarrows used to haul the scale up a long ramp to where it was dumped into a waiting gondola were very difficult to control, especially when a person weighed only about 155 lbs. While the machines were called wheelbarrows, they were more like hand-guided dump trucks. I estimated their capacity, very conservatively, at 1,000 lbs.
After a couple of minor mishaps, and no apparent improvement in my driving skills, (a fear of losing my job was added incentive, too), I managed, with lots of sign language, to appoint myself "Head Shovel Technician". My two new "buddies", when they realised that their shovelling days were over, must've felt that they got a promotion, as, under our agreement, I shovelled, they drove.
To the casual observer, I got the worst of the deal: based on that conservative estimate of the wheelbarrows' capacity, I shovelled between 15 and 20 tons of scale every morning. Anyone who knew me, though, would have realised that after two summers in construction, shovelling sand, gravel, and cement, and toting concrete blocks made this job, if not child's play, at least nothing particularly difficult.
I kept my job, and was eventually transferred back to my own department, where, among many other jobs, I learned to operate that scale crane.
Wayne
and, as outlined below, didn't make it hard for me to remember how those things were done.Shortly after I started work at a steel plant, in 1966, there was a small lay-off. I was "lucky", with my 4 months seniority, to be transferred to another mill. While similar to my own mill, it was much older, with smaller equipment and smaller areas in which to work. It also lacked some of the mechanical niceties of the newer mill. I quickly learned that one of these areas was the mill basement, where scale from the ingot buggy was dumped. In the newer mill, the ingot buggy automatically dumped its scale into the mill "sewer", a flume for carry scale and scrap to a large pit, where it was loaded into gondolas by a crane with a clamshell bucket. In the older mill, the scale was dumped to the basement floor every time the buggy approached the roller line. The mills, of course, ran 24 hours a day, but in the older mill, the scale was removed from the basement only on dayshifts.
Enter greenhorn steelworker.
Sent to the basement to work with two burly Italians who spoke almost no English, I quickly learned that the mechanical wheelbarrows used to haul the scale up a long ramp to where it was dumped into a waiting gondola were very difficult to control, especially when a person weighed only about 155 lbs. While the machines were called wheelbarrows, they were more like hand-guided dump trucks. I estimated their capacity, very conservatively, at 1,000 lbs.After a couple of minor mishaps, and no apparent improvement in my driving skills, (a fear of losing my job was added incentive, too), I managed, with lots of sign language, to appoint myself "Head Shovel Technician". My two new "buddies", when they realised that their shovelling days were over, must've felt that they got a promotion, as, under our agreement, I shovelled, they drove.
To the casual observer, I got the worst of the deal: based on that conservative estimate of the wheelbarrows' capacity, I shovelled between 15 and 20 tons of scale every morning. Anyone who knew me, though, would have realised that after two summers in construction, shovelling sand, gravel, and cement, and toting concrete blocks made this job, if not child's play, at least nothing particularly difficult.
I kept my job, and was eventually transferred back to my own department, where, among many other jobs, I learned to operate that scale crane.
Wayne