[TheForge] Line Shaft Driven Factories

[RIES NIEMI]

Snohomish Ironworks is an intact line shaft driven shop- its not exactly a
factory- the grandson, who runs it now, is more of a fabricator, and down
the middle bay he has a large hydraulic ironworker and a couple of mig
machines, which is mostly what he uses. On either side there are line
shafts, and nothing has been touched or even cleaned up since at least the
40's, so there are operating lathes, drills, mills and a big planer off the
line shaft. 

But even in the Northwest, its not very unique- I recently sold a line shaft
lathe, and in the process ended up finding out about 3 or 4 other line shaft
shops around here. Most of them are not job shops, they are specific
craftsmen who use them for their work, but my guess would be that there are
at least 100 shops as complete as Snohomish Ironworks around the country.