[TheForge] forging questions

[jerry Frost]

Sounds like a logical etymology to me. While I like knowing the etymology of
words it's a pursuit in reality, not really valuable except on rare
occasions. We speak a living language so being understood means using the
currently understood terms. the only other term I've heard for a street
fitting is a "close" fitting. Frankly I think calling the things "close"
fittings is a better choice, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the
connection. 

One of the things that makes etymology fun for me is listening to folk try
and figure out where a term came from. For instance my Father told me, "one
off" meant a single product "off" a production line. He defined a production
line as a facility that produced numerous single type products using more
than one process. What I'd call "stations." For instance: Material
receiving, Material cutting, Processing x ?, product finishing, product,
packaging and or shipping.

We unloaded sheet metal, steel and aluminum mostly on the left (as viewed
from the shop) side of the roll up door in Dad's shop where we racked it.
Next station was the square shear, you slid a sheet endwise from the rack
and laid it on the stand to feed to the shear. The next station was the
second shear directly behind the first one where we made the second cut into
square blanks. the next stations were the circle shear or punch press which
were in the center of the shop. All these stations were about two full paces
apart from the catch box to the input side of the next.

Once the blanks came from the circle shear they went to the spinning lathes,
again on the left wall. There were two spinning lathes on the left wall.
Across the back wall was the machine lathe and die stock and storage. The
office hallway door was in the back wall.

Up the right hand wall were another 4 spinning lathes most often used for
finish work and where I did my spinning. I: trimmed, sharpened corners and
rolled beads on the first lathe and polished on the second or last lathe.
the final stations on the right side were the heat treat - cryo- area and
packaging / shipping. Dad avoided storing finished parts as much as humanly
possible, they were pure red ink till they were in the customer's hands.

So, even though everything moved in a U it was a production line and Dad
would get people who wanted ONE thing spun, usually antique car parts,
bullet headlights and hub caps mostly. I don't recall him spinning any.
Seems once folk heard the price they decided to look elsewhere. Stopping a
production line for ONE part is expensive, really, REALLY expensive. I
remember him spinning a propeller spinner once but the die was on the lathe
and aluminum blanks cut and right there. The job in the shop at the time was
drop tanks for jet fighters so all he had to do was use a small blank to
make a perfectly serviceable prop spinner. He still charged stupid much for
it to discourage repeats.

So, I'll buy the origin of "one off" as being a derivative of "one of a
kind" but the logic for "One off a/the line," makes sense too. I've been
there, grew up working the line.

Gee, wasn't that a memory lane digression?

Frosty

-----Original Message-----
From: TheForge [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of CGRAF
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2015 3:30 AM
To: mspencer at tallships.ca; Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: Re: [TheForge] forging questions



On 5/18/2015 12:54 AM, Mike Spencer wrote:
> Never heard of one them.  Google tells me all but now I wanna know why 
> it's called that.  Why'zit called that?
>
> - Mike


 From an anonymous source on yahoo answers:

  Nobody seems to get this right. I was a plumbing contractor for years and
would often pose this question to blank stares. I marveled that no one in
the biz could figure it out. Here's the real answer: Such fittings are
correctly called "st" which, because of the obvious and apparent
abbreviation stands for "street". But actually, it stands for
"spigot"...because in old drainage fittings (cast iron and clay) fittings
were either hub (bell) x hub (bell) which is a regular fitting...or hub x
spigot (for close work without a nipple in between two fittings). "Spigot"
was abbreviated "st" which eventually morphed into "street" and that my
friends...is the real story

  Sounds like a logical morph to me.
Rather like "one off" when we mean "one of a kind"

Mike Graf