[TheForge] Line Shaft Driven Factories

Thu May 8 20:03:00 2003

There was a nice shop on the bay on the way to Hollis Alaska on Prince of
Wales Island.
It had about an 8" dia water line from a creek up the mountain that ran
everything by hydro power. Even had a small generator for lights. All of the
equipment was line shaft driven. It was a boat shop.
Darrell

http://www.machinemaster.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "RIES NIEMI" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 3:26 PM
Subject: [TheForge] Line Shaft Driven Factories

> 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.
>
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