Machine shop video

Here is a video of a cool machine shop. Joe in NH will like the Pratt & Whitney shaper which would make 6 known.
Shop Tour 4: Walter Clements - Line Shaft Machine Shop - YouTube

Every time I follow a link like this to youtube, I look up and two hours has passed. Follow this link then to another one like it then to maybe an old engine of some kind being started ending in some women's beach volley, funny how that works.

He makes my stuff look downright modern

I guess I don't understand this. It's like a museum except no one can see it. What's the point of that?

Neat lineshaft shop, well done and functional. Interesting to see Keith Rucker.
But the video is a bit draggy for the content.

The planer is a great looking machine & has a cool back story. Very fortunate that one did not go to scrap. Walter mentions that his dad expected to see a planer in any "real" shop and had one, but dad apparently forgot to pass down how to set the clapper, lol. It is fighting the tool on the backstroke in the video. (set over the wrong direction). (Ooops, see correction below - I was registering the opposite feed of what is actually going on)* Planer and shaper tool geometry could be improved.

*Edited: I went back and studied the P & W shaper, and the planer when they were cutting, and I was mistaken about the clappers. What looks wrong to me is the orientation of the tools, and the planer is actually cutting out, away from the center towards the edge. I had not caught that the first few times through. So, clapper orientation is correct; tools ought to lean a little the other way to reduce digs, and cutting with the more vertical edge of the tool would generally be more effective. To be clear, the top of the clapper should be set over away from the direction of cut. The machines in the video do have this set up though looking at the tooling (without the machines in motion) suggests otherwise to my eye.

I am envious to think of having the time and space to make my old collection of machines look that clean, organized, and capacious, though.

smt

ewlsey said:

I guess I don't understand this. It's like a museum except no one can see it. What's the point of that?

Click to expand...

He says that he uses the machines to restore other antique machinery, just like I do in my shop.

ewlsey said:

I guess I don't understand this. It's like a museum except no one can see it. What's the point of that?

Click to expand...

It is on YouTube. Everyone with an internet connection can see it.

I guess I don't understand this. It's like a museum except no one can see it. What's the point of that?

Click to expand...

mach2 said:

It is on YouTube. Everyone with an internet connection can see it.

Click to expand...

Not everyone lives their life (or assembles a period machine shop) simply to pleasure others.

Sometimes you have to please yourself first.

Be glad he thought this important enough to post for us a video.

Just saw the video - the large lathe he calls "Shepard Lathe & Morse" which I don't believe was ever used in its time - but looking at the video I can confirm that the lathe was "somewhat" rebuilt - to include later parts. The carriage/saddle appears to be from a later lathe as is the "top" of the tailstock (possibly the whole thing.) So his calling it Shepard Lathe & Morse may not be entirely inaccurate.

Heh - he confirms my diagnosis (Ed Battison's observation actually) regarding the Pratt & Whitney shaper being "later." He also mentions knowing our Ray Ferguson (Timekiler) who is a frequent contributor to this board.

Heh2 - "If you don't have a planer in your shop - you're not really a machine shop." I concur with that description EXCEPT a later shop might have a milling machine to do the "planar" surfaces.

Nice well rounded tour. He explains each tool and then followed by showing the machine actually in motion.

Joe in NH

Thank you for this!
What a marvelous Thanksgiving Day present!

Great visuals, and one hell of a shop.

Lee (the saw guy)

Honor and Pleasure

I'm planning to make a trip to Walter's Saturday exercising visitation rights to "our" P&W shaper. Besides he really has the shop cleaned up. In my opinion, it always looks great, much cleaner and better organized than my shop.

Walter is an outstanding person. Contributes greatly to preservation of old iron. Besides his shop, as he mentioned, a planer at Tannahill, in McCulla, AL.

And not just machine tools. He has restored many a steam engine, repairing and correcting weak designs in process. The Corliss steam engine at Soule' in Meridian, MS, which he cares for and exhibits during the November show.

Our meeting was due to the first showing of my FLASH exhibit, in 2011. He missed that tractor & engine show, only one he has missed at that venue. Some of his colleagues, informed him of the machines in my exhibit. It took him 2 weeks to locate me, and after a phone call, arrived in just over an hour for a visit and viewing of my exhibit.

My exhibit is a missed "link" in many peoples understanding of machine tool development.

He is knowledgeable, and shares this knowledge of old printing presses. Turned on TV to catch noon news in Huntsville, AL, and they were interviewing an author about a new book on printing. The author credited Walter, with information Walter had shared.

Walter served as a firefighter, which drives the firefighting items seen in his shop. He has restored some fire trucks also.

You should see his board drawn prints, he exhibits on wall of shop. Truly art to real machinist.

It has been an honor and pleasure to meet him and share our common interest in old iron.

Walter hangs out here and will likely read this unsolicited post. Monetary compensation may be accepted, especially large bills, however not over $100!!!

Ray

Walter Clements use to have an engine house at one of the places he lived, where he had many operational steam engines. His main engine was a 1905 Watts-Campbell Corliss engine which is now at Meridian, Mississippi as timekiller refers to.

Here is a video of it in operation at the Soule' Steam Festival with Walter operating:

Soule 2 Corliss Engine - Bing video

timekiller said:

And not just machine tools. He has restored many a steam engine, repairing and correcting weak designs in process. The Corliss steam engine at Soule' in Meridian, MS, which he cares for and exhibits during the November show.

Click to expand...

And not just machine tools. He has restored many a steam engine, repairing and correcting weak designs in process. The Corliss steam engine at Soule' in Meridian, MS, which he cares for and exhibits during the November show.

Click to expand...

I thought I saw a green steam pump on a bench around the margins...

Fine minds think alike.

So do shitty minds - but we won't talk about that preferring the higher judgmental road always.

In the Bing Video above, Walter seems to be in attendance (with his bib overalls and always facing the engine - a good operator he.)

Joe in NH

I'm 99.99% positive Walter was at Auburn when I went down to pick up the Rocketdyne engine for the museum around 1994-95. The rocket engine was in the engineering shop and he gave me a quick walk through of their machine shop, as I was just getting into machine work.

Great video and a nice collection of machines. Not everybody can run a full on museum, but he does say all are welcome... close to a museum as you can get in that case. Same as my shop. Also like the fact that it is not this perfect laboratory grade squeaky clean shop with outlines of every tool on pegboard. Looks about like mine would, if I knew somebody was coming to make a video, lol. I imagine most of the time it looks exactly like mine... an organized mess.

The "planer" that ended up at Tannehill and mentioned in the video (and confirmed herein) appears to be a first generation Putnam - made in the old shop and while it was still a "fancy" machine. Here's a pix online.



How's that for "bright" work? How do they keep it like that in Alabama? I have dehumidification in my shop in the summer - and everything tends to "brown" in time, even at less than 50 relative humidity.

Joe in NH

That's not a shop, that's an air conditioned museum. Also, no hands on it, so no rusty hand prints. That museum is where that 1880s Steptoe and Sons shaper I had the museum ended up. No idea what they ever did with it, but the guys that took over ours would have scrapped it without a second thought.

Mike C. said:

I'm 99.99% positive Walter was at Auburn when I went down to pick up the Rocketdyne engine for the museum around 1994-95. The rocket engine was in the engineering shop and he gave me a quick walk through of their machine shop, as I was just getting into machine work.

Great video and a nice collection of machines. Not everybody can run a full on museum, but he does say all are welcome... close to a museum as you can get in that case. Same as my shop. Also like the fact that it is not this perfect laboratory grade squeaky clean shop with outlines of every tool on pegboard. Looks about like mine would, if I knew somebody was coming to make a video, lol. I imagine most of the time it looks exactly like mine... an organized mess.

Click to expand...

In 1979 I was a young lad of 15 and my sophomore physics teacher was an old Rocketdyne employee. We spent 8 weeks studying rocket theory. From the shape of the combustion chamber, shape of nozzle, design of turbo pumps, most with sample parts to hold in our hands. It was a fascinating class.

Been a long time ago, but I think that one was an S-3D, Jupiter/Juno engine. It was on a stand and somebody had started a cutaway of it and lost interest. We brought it to the museum and started cleaning it up. One of the guys that volunteered in restoration had a friend who was big into amateur rocketry (not those Estes toys, I mean BIG rockets) and he started working on it in earnest. Unfortunately, shortly after that was when the new administration came in and I left. They pretty well shut down the restoration shop and I have no idea what ever became of that engine display.

Mike C.
Walter was a pilot also. He told of a plane he flew, that cars on interstate traveled faster.

Ray

I have been in that situation, myself. Flying a C-152 from Montgomery to Cullman on a solo cross country into about a 25mph headwind. Not all the cars were going faster, but most of them were!

YouTube is a portal to another dimension.