Pictures Of the Factories

[mrerick]

The floors of these machine shops were often formed with a surface of maple wood blocks placed vertically (with the grain running up and down) on top of a reinforced concrete base.

I worked for several years at IBM's factory site in Poughkeepsie, and the floors were built this way. They are remarkably stable.

I don't think that I've ever seen an article about Luger factory manufacturing engineering or machining similar to the Colt M1911 article. I believe that there is documentation of the process steps and labor costs. The new book on Mauser by Gerben (Vlim) and Mauro contains some of this material, but it's not for Lugers.

BTW, my grandfather was a Swedish machinist working around 1900 to 1950 in Chicago. He made industrial sewing machines for a company called "Union Special". We had a small machine shop in the basement where I grew up, so some of this is definitely in my genetic makeup...

He was rather clever in spacial conceptualization, and made a number of special tools that helped him improve the speed and quality of his production. As a result, he worked continuously through the American depression in the 1930's. The machines were still in demand, and he was simply better at producing them than his co-workers...

This is one of my favorite photographs...

[ithacaartist]

Originally Posted by mrerick

The floors of these machine shops were often formed with a surface of maple wood blocks placed vertically (with the grain running up and down) on top of a reinforced concrete base.

I worked for several years at IBM's factory site in Poughkeepsie, and the floors were built this way. They are remarkably stable.

End grain flooring is very stable in horizontal orientation, understandable if one recalls that a board will swell and shrink or crush in thickness/width, but not appreciably in length. There is one exception, though. The shop floor in my high school was constructed this way, but fell victim to a leak in the roof. This swelled up the pieces, which had nowhere to go but up, causing a giant hump in the matrix. I don't remember for sure, but I think it calmed down as the material dried out again. But then it would have been loose because the grain is crushed in the vulnerable orientations by the compression and does not recover its full dimension after that.