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Lindsay Technical Books calls it quits.

Sam Shublom

Aluminum
Joined
Oct 6, 2007
Location
Kansas City KS
I know many of you have bought reprints and publications from Lindsay Technical Books. I just got a new catalog and he says this will be his last. No more orders taken after Feb 28 2013.
 
What!?

Doesn't say anything I could see on the website. I guess I'll have to tell Her Indoors that my Christmas present list is going to be a bit more specific than normal:eek:
 
I just opened the mail box and saw the news myself. I am not sure that owning a book publisher is the right career for myself right now but I find it hard to believe such a unique company like this could just vaporize and go into thin air. I would almost think with the way the internet these days has allowed more and more people to explore and participate and get involved in very technical mechanical hobbies if interest would have grown for such a company in recent years.

I did note that in his retirement discussion he may have a staffer sell off the remaining inventory but that seems like a terrible waste for such a cool company like that. I really hope someone buys them up and keeps the business going. One other thing I should also note I have a feeling they are a wee bit under priced. Some of the books I have gotten from them have been some of the best ways to spend $12 a person can think of. I sure wouldn't mind paying a little more for some books to a future owner of the buisness especially if they are able to bring out some new offerings. The only other book buying resource that even comes close to Lindsay in terms of bang for their buck in technical material is the Lincoln Welding society books.
 
How many of his books can you now down load for free from Google books?

I think his market disappeared with the internet, but I agree that interest in the subject has grown with it.

I stopped buying his books a long time ago, in part because I think I had them all ... LOLROF

Vince
 
How many of his books can you now down load for free from Google books?

One of the books I purchased from Lindsay was "Accurate Tool Work", it predates the jig borer and discuss how jig making was done on the lathe. The book is now a free download on google books. Several of the other books I purchased were reprints from Machinery which is also on google books now. Hard to compete with free!
 
Well like many of us in the same generation never lost their love for reading. I'd rather read a good book than watch the drivle that they put on the tv. I've bought some of the Lindsey books every so often. Guess I'll have to make another contribution to the retirement fund. Frank
 
Oh gosh. Another sign of the decline of American Machine Technology.

I just finished starting up a power plant in western Virginia - the entire building framing AND the boiler drum (and who knows how much of the rest of the boiler) were made in CHINA! I know about the boiler drum because of 160 welded nozzle stubs attached to the drum fully 75 percent of them were defective welds - and couldn't pass the first hydro inspection. Thank our lucky stars for ASME requirements - otherwise we would have never found the issue! The drum ended up being ground out/re-welded IN PLACE and then heat treat/annealed in place (a bigger job than the welding for sure.) Chinese quality?

Almost everything seems made in China today. Walmart used to be Sam Walton's Pride in America store. And had an American flag displayed prominently somewhere near the cash registers. Now it's Chinamart. No flag.

Sad days we're coming to methinks. I have my handbasket ready.

I wonder what my children will do for a living?

Joe in NH
 
Oh gosh. Another sign of the decline of American Machine Technology.

I just finished starting up a power plant in western Virginia - the entire building framing AND the boiler drum (and who knows how much of the rest of the boiler) were made in CHINA! I know about the boiler drum because of 160 welded nozzle stubs attached to the drum fully 75 percent of them were defective welds - and couldn't pass the first hydro inspection. Thank our lucky stars for ASME requirements - otherwise we would have never found the issue! The drum ended up being ground out/re-welded IN PLACE and then heat treat/annealed in place (a bigger job than the welding for sure.) Chinese quality?

Almost everything seems made in China today. Walmart used to be Sam Walton's Pride in America store. And had an American flag displayed prominently somewhere near the cash registers. Now it's Chinamart. No flag.

Sad days we're coming to methinks. I have my handbasket ready.

I wonder what my children will do for a living?

Joe in NH

Joe if it makes you feel any better the loss of steam drum manufacturing in the USA had a silver lining. When Alstom sold off the steam drum line here's what they put in its place;
http://www.waldrich-siegen.de/fileadmin/download/newsflash/WaldrichSiegen_012011e.pdf
Waldrich Seigen.JPG
On June 24, 2010, Alstom inaugurated
a new manufacturing
facility in Chattanooga, USA. At
their new facility, Alstom will manufacture
steam turbines, gas
turbines, large turbo-generators
and related equipment for the
North American power industry.
The business activities include
production of new turbines as
well as the retrofitting of existing
turbines with leading edge technology.
The Chattanooga facility is equipped
with three state-of-the-art
WaldrichSiegen ProfiTurn machines.
These include the largest
horizontal lathe ever built, type
DH 7000/350 x 25.000 allowing
a turning diameter of 7.000 mm.
This machine accommodates
workpiece weights up to 350
tons.
WaldrichSiegen exemplifies the
high-precision manufacture of
machine tools. With efficiency
and ease, the supplied Profi-
Turn lathes machine the world’s
largest steam turbines, Alstom’s
ARABELLE™ 1,700 MW.
To guarantee precision machining
and obtain accuracies within the
µ range, the headstock is equipped
with a double x-axis, which
provides for minimal deflections
on the x-axis travel distance of
3.600 mm.

In all reality the truth to the matter is that with USA emissions laws and low natural gas prices the chances of us building a lot of steam drums in this country is pretty slim, when I was working for Alstom in 2008-2010, right before the bottom on the natural gas market fell out they were putting the finishing touches on the last 3-4 new big boilers they had on the books for US orders, of those only one of them which was a CFB actually had a steam drum. The rest of them were all going with supercritical units that don't need one.

So while China is building 100+ boilers a year many with drums still in them, the US going forward may not be building any, so I think it was a good decision and I think getting the steam turbine mfg plant in its place left this country with the better end of the trade. Here's some good photos for those interested from my book "Combustion" of the making of these steam drums.
steamdrum.JPGsteam drum mfg.JPG

At the same time though the plant at least as of when I was through it back in 2009 still makes lots of water walls, headers and large patten assemblies so they are making the parts that are in demand, and get replaced on a regular basis. While headers, water walls, and plattens go all the time, I have never heard of a plant replacing a steam drum! I don't know what things are like today as I have been out of the industry 3 years now, but I know there were many customers who went with the Chinese parts, many sold by an old name USA company and lost all of their savings in the first few outages due to early tube failures, only to come back to Alstom's Chattanooga plant.

By the way on the Chinese boiler quality I don't understand it. When I was at Alstom they hired a real good engineer who was a pleasure to work with who had come from TXU where he worked as a customer's engineer at the Chinese "Bomb Factory" that was his name for the plant. I think its more formal name was Harbin Boiler works, but I could have the wrong plant. None the less he told me it blew his mind he said it was all the simple things that the Chinese didn't do that made all the difference. Apparently according to him the Chinese have 3 boiler codes, #1 is Chinese Boiler code (aka. stay the hell away!:eek:) #2 Chinese version of "ASME Code" (see #1) #3 Chinese ASME code with customer's rep watching each part through production!

In this guy's time at the plant I think he counted about 10,000MW of steam boilers going out the door to give you an idea of scale and how hard of a time it is to compete with them. None the less he was saying stuff like heat treating a header, the Chinese would have a huge header over 100ft long covered in thermal blankets, with 1 thermocouple monitoring the whole heating!:nutter: Apparently it took quite a fight to get them to tear it down and put in more sensors. He said it blew his mind that on a part likely worth $1million that they weren't willing to spend the money on the added thermocouples! On the other hand he said their welders were some of the best he ever seen who did beautiful welds, only to have the factory cheap shot the finishing touches. He said the sad thing is the difference between doing it right and doing it the Chinese way wasn't too much. It is just unbelievable especially with the government spending so much money on that stuff that there is no real effort made to do it right.

At any rate, sorry for hijacking the tread. I hope a few people enjoyed it.
 
"Probably more a sign that Lindsay is just ready to retire."

Either way, the world loses out on a vast collection of weird technical stuff. I'm going to put in a BIG order before he shuts down, I guess.
 
...So while China is building 100+ boilers a year many with drums still in them, the US going forward may not be building any, so I think it was a good decision and I think getting the steam turbine mfg plant in its place left this country with the better end of the trade....

History has shown many times that what the U.S. mourns as a catastrophic loss may leave us in a stronger position. Some historians say that Pearl Harbor forced the War Department to reconsider what was was a good mix of warships.

After the war, the Japanese generals were being debriefed, and one question our military wanted answered was "Why didn't you destroy the fuel depot at Pearl Harbor?". The Japanese didn't think it would matter, they were focused on the ships. But those ships can't move without fuel...

The genuine blunder of any nation desiring to compete against the United States is relying on our secondary educational system to educate their leaders. It's not that we won't do a good job; we will. It's just that outsourcing education seems to me to be a terrible blunder.

The best generals on both sides of the Civil War were West Point grads.

Winning WWII left our industrial complex smug and self-satisfied, and Deming had to go to Japan to find sympathetic ears for his statistical process control.

I would not be surprised if some Japanese historians consider Douglas MacArthur, Joseph M. Dodge and Edward Deming a more than fair trade for the devastation wrought upon Japan.

Don't worry about outsourcing industry, worry about outsourcing education.
 
Apparently Lindsay must have made a profit at his book printing venture, so maybe someone will step up to the plate and create a business that will fill this gap.

Yesterday I made my final Lindsay books order. I think of all his books the Tales from the Oil Country are my favorites.
 
Holy Cow, could you guys be more off topic. Pearl Harbor? Chinese boilers?

No wonder the guy's retiring, getting emails from you bunch of yokels is like sitting on a stool at the local VFW! Haha, I'm just kidding with you guys.

This Lindsey fellow, it's probably hard to compete with free, I don't know how his books got posted apparently free for the taking, but I think it stinks. How do we know this isn't part of a bigger conspiracy to dumb down the masses, cut off all ingenuity and useful knowledge to the common man, all the while getting them used to tracking devices using apps powered by the same multi-national government funded corporation posting those "free" online books which used to be available from our good buddy Mr. Lindsey? I love all the forums and the online resources that technology affords, but if we put our knowledge and resources online, which is controlled by a corporation, leaving nothing to print, this could be very dangerous. I have always wondered what books may have gotten burned in Alexandria's Library...
 
No really sad news for me.
I have bought a few Lindsay books and booklets. 50% of them were wasted money. Completely outdated and useless articles collected and crammed into a book.
Just a few of them were really excellent.

Yes, I do like old books! Often, they are way better at explaining the principles behind tools/machining.
And yes, I absolutely prefer the printed matter over synthetic photons from a LCD hitting my eyes.


Nick
 
Thank you for your comment adammil1. It's obvious you still have a thumb on the heartbeat of American boiler building.

And MichaelP may have identified the successor to Lindsay in www.youroldtimebookstore.com. They already seem to have a number of Lindsay's more desirable selections.

The free market king is dead - long live the free market king.

Or something like that.

Joe in NH
 








 
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