Craftmanship...

[John Parry]

A good friend of mine met me in the pub tonight with a mechanical tale of woe. In his hands he carried an alarming looking piece of gear - the top was a square socket fitting, then there was a threaded shaft that was sheared halfway down, and at the tip was a lethal looking diamond shaped tip - about an inch long.

The socket was about 7/8th of an inch across, the shaft about an inch wide. But the shaft was a casting, and it's thread was also an inch. 45 degrees as you looked at it.

The whole thing was out of an ancient machine for popping holes in the top of roofing slates. Over a hundred years old - at least. Why would anyone want to use slates for roofing a house these days? Conservation Area - can't use anything else, despite their being totally un-biogradable. They do look nice though!

This is a local craftsman, who just wants to get his show on the road again, and can't afford to send it away for somebody like Rolls Royce to apply their metallurgical skills.

After much discussion, it was agreed that the shaft would be sent to a local turning friend to replicate that, and that the point would be taken off the old one and attached to the new shaft, because nobody knew anyone with the old blacksmithing skills to re-forge the tip.

In my naiivety, I asked why he couldn't just drill the holes. Turns out that each hole cut out by the old machine took 5 seconds, the slate itself being used to drive through the slate beneath, with a quarter turn of the handle that fitted onto the socket. Each hole drilled by a power drill took five minutes, and the drill burnt out within half an hour.

Progress hey?

Regards - John

[Deleted]

John:

Doesn't surprise me at all. Pretty much the story of society today. Everything is designed to be thrown away when broken--and that's likely to happen sooner rather than later. My parents bought a new Frigidaire refrigerator in 1953. It served faithfully for then and later as our garage icebox until about five years ago. It was still working but periodically popped a breaker so we retired it. This year we bought a new refrigerator for the house--a "green" model. The salesman said it has a life expectancy of FIVE years.

[mickeyobe]

"Why would anyone want to use slates for roofing a house these days? Conservation Area - can't use anything else, despite their being totally un-biogradable. They do look nice though!"


John,

Slate roofs last for a very long time. The slate shingles don't curl up or rust. Their surface finish does not rub off and raccoons and squirrels can't chew through them to become unwelcome guests on one's home.

In the 1940's my family moved into a house that was 50 years old. It had a slate roof. That roof is still extant today.

Drawbacks. They are so expensive.

Mickey

[PeterW]

John,
These machines are still being made, but with a brass not cast iron thread, by a company in Staveley near Kendal. I don't know the company name, but the telephone number is 01539 822499.

Occasionally they put some on ebay as Buy it Now. This particular listing ended last month, but have a look at
cgi.ebay.co.uk/roofing-slate-holer-tool-drilling-boreing-slates-/170456417054

PeterW

[John Parry]

Thanks for that Peter

According to my friend, the thread on that machine is too shallow - it takes a couple of turns to bore the hole, the slate gets stressed and tends to break. Not my pigeon!

Mickey - Everything has to be bio-degradable. When I was a lad, you just hoped like hell that things would last!

Regards - John

[PeterW]

John,

When I was a lad, you just hoped like hell that things would last!

They did, too. Years ago Valerie used to collect old kitchen equipment, a lot of which we've still got, including a hand-driven Spong bean slicer with a patent date of 1892 cast on it.

A couple of weeks ago I saw some nice fairly young scarlet runners in a farm shop and bought some as a change from the ubiquitous frozen "green beans" in the supermarket.

I topped and tailed the beans then got down the old bean slicer, gave it a wash and scald out and clamped it to the work top. It coped with a large bag of beans in no time, and took only a couple of minutes under a hot tap to clean out.

Not a bad performance from a 118-year-old piece of kitchen equipment, and quicker from start to finish than dragging the all-purpose electric thingy out of the cupboard and rooting through the box of attachments to find the slicing head and cutters, let alone cleaning it all again.

PeterW

[mickeyobe]

I have shelves full of articles of exquisite craftsmanship.

They are those beautiful old mechanical cameras many of which are approaching or have passed the century mark.
They still work as they did when they left the skilled and caring hands of the craftsman. Most of them have required no repairs during their long lives.

I wonder how my beautiful Pentax K100d which rolled off an impersonal production line two years ago will perform in 100 years.

Gundlach Korona 8x10 circa 1898 and Universal Minute 16 1949


Mickey

[photax]

Hi Mickey !

A beautiful camera ! I am also fascinated by the quality of these old wooden cameras and as you say they are working properly without repair, even they are 100 years old. I found this in my collection: a heavy handmade wooden slide-viewer from the early 1930`s, made by a viennese master cabinet maker. At first sight this unique piece looks like Bakelite.

MIK

[Deleted]

Beautiful!

[mickeyobe]

MIK,

A lovely, practical and original design.

Mickey

[seele]

John, the old slate borer was made during the time when slate roofing was common, and it must have been the ultimate in its design evolution. These days, using an electric drill would be less good, because it was not specifically designed to do the job. The new Kendall-built one could very be a re-discovery of the same idea but without the benefit of knowing how it could be better by modifying the design appropriately. So, in a sense, it would be unfair to say that the modern tools are less good, because the situation nowadays does not encourage the perfected tools to be known to all, by not being made continuously, and in common use.

[Robert Ross]

I guess it amounts to what goes around..comes around. We are constantly in pursuit of better,faster,cheaper. When we finally realize that what we started with far surpasses where the modifications took us, we will be older but wiser.................

Robert

[alexkerhead]

Things made as good as 100 years ago can still be found and bought that are made these days. But you will pay the same with respect to inflation as they did 100 years ago for the same item.
Now though, people see something that can do the same thing for 1/100 the price they just get it instead. 100 years ago you only had a few expensive options.
Those beautiful wooden cameras were NOT inexpensive items. You can get a camera that is as good these days, you just can't get it at wal-mart.

Take my wrist watches for instance. You can buy $20 watches all day and gripe how they dont last more than 10 years. Well, my 100+ yo watches are still working. Why? Because they costed equivalently 25-50 times more than the cheap ones we see now. I am wearing a watch right now made last year built as well as one made 100 years ago. I paid $300 for it. For 1/10th the price, you get 1/10th the watch.

Regarding refrigerators, buy a top of the line independent built unit for $8K and it'll last 50 years too.

Please don't compare apples to oranges, quality is still available, but you have to pay for it. Just like people did "back in the day". Barring inflation people paid 10times more for things back then that were 10 times better than the cheap crap we compare it to today.

Sorry, just a little devil's advocate rant there. Cheers!


Edit: To add to my argument.

They had cheap stuff back in the day too, but it didn't survive to show that there was a lot of it then too. Only the good stuff survives, so it gives a false feeling of only good stuff was made back then. I cite dime store knives and $1 pocket watches as examples. I have some from the 1930s and 40s. They are JUNK and don't run.

[daveh]

There is certainly merit in that argument, akh.

It is also true that some things are cheaper now and more reliable that what was previously available. While we all would enthuse over a Bugatti, I presume, but I certainly wouldn't want to have to use one every day.