Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Gears are cool

The precision, the angles, the intricacy.















As a kid my Grandfather owned his own machine shop. He came up through the depression and by the time I met him he worked in a factory repairing the machines. Over the years he was a welder, a wrought iron worker, a mechanic, a carpenter, a plumber and what ever else was needed. Working through the depression meant you worked at and where you could. 

Being in his shop as a child was amazing, everything moving, table circular saws, band saws, jig saws, electric hack saws, drill presses, damn big cast drill presses, metal benders, metal rollers, metal and wood lathes, blowers and bellows for metal forges. For a child it was a place of wonderment. The walls were lined with boxes and drawers and drawers and cabinets containing every piece of hardware and fixture you could imagine. It was like a industrial wonderland. 

But...while that was great to watch and work with, (when you would allow a 8 or 10 year old to help), I was more enthralled in two places he would take me, one was Welles Machine shop in Old Mystic, where the ceilings were lined with axles and pulleys all driving belts driving tools. A metal kingdom of machines surrounded by years of oil soaked metal filings. The second place, to me, was a wonder...

A grist mill. A wooden water wheel, except this was a drum design instead of an upright wheel. The drum wheel sat in a stone lined well fed by a stone line stream, inside the building were gears, giant wooden gears, with pins and holes and teeth all turning in a slow creaking, grinding, popping,motion, the air filled with the smell of ground corn. 










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