[TheForge] Line Shaft Driven Factories

Fri May 9 12:02:01 2003

I spent quite a bit of time on Prince of Wales Island a few years back and
though I asked, nobody told me about such a shop.

Do you have more specifics on the shop's location? It's mostly just
curiosity now as I don't expect to ever get back there but nothing's
impossible.

There used to be a line shop in Seward AK. the Seward Machine Shop. I
happened to be doing a job in the locale and heard the shop equipment and
tools were for sale and soon to be auctioned. I looked up the fellow
handling the estate and got to take a tour.

It was a very complete shop started in the late oughts or early teens. It
stayed in the family till the old man died, his kids had no interest in it
so it got sold off. The old man built about half the equipment himself
seeing as Alaska was so remote at the time. He had a number of steam tools
converted to compressed air and a home made pneumatic car lift to name a
few.

Anyway, what really got my attention was the smithy, I ended up taking home
about 500 lbs of various tools, mostly set hammers and tongs. The one thing
I wish I could've taken but had no place to put it was a 1,200+lb anvil,
Fisher as I recall. The other real roadblock to taking it home was the
charming way the old man had built his shop, it started small and he kept
adding on. No biggy except the only way out was across a turn of the century
wooden floor over a full basement, running through a maze of . . . stuff.
One piece of stuff being a dump truck.

Yeah, there was a dump truck parked on a wooden floor over the basement.
(one of the basements actually) I thought that was scary enough but AFTER he
showed me the basement(s) we climbed up on the mezanine and I discovered it
was full of scrap steel.

Frosty
------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Darrell" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 3:59 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Line Shaft Driven Factories

> 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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