Case of the Missing Pineapple Solved

by F.C. Tabor

After graduating from Navy Metalsmithing School, we fledgling weldors (years ago, "Welding Engineer magazine tried to differentiate between the machine "welder" and the operator "weldor" by spelling the two differently had the notion that we were ready to tackle anything from a rowboat to a battlewagon when it came to welding. When we got out on a high seas with the fleet, we soon discovered that a lot of items we encountered had not been mentioned in trade school books.

At Pearl Harbor I was assigned to a repair ship that went to Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. We fixed anything except major damage. Above water-line repairs were done alongside our ship, and a floating dry dock was available for bottom work.

On one of our "alongside" jobs, the other welder and I decided that it would be easier to let "Old Man Pacific" be our ground lead. Why spend the effort dragging a ground cable over to the repair job, when water is such a good conductor? So, we just pulled over our stinger and proceeded to do the necessary welding, that is, until the skipper spotted the missing ground, whereupon the proverbial material hit the fan head-on and splattered wildly in all directions. When the captain's long, drawn out scream had finally died away in the tropical breeze, he explained that, even through sea water made a dandy ground, the returning electrical energy had an electrolysis effect and would slowly eat holes in our hull. As the old adage goes, "Live and learn . . "

Some of the things we fixed would not take a prize at a metal craft show, but they filled the need. On one project, a mine sweeper skipper pulled alongside and asked us to install extra shelves in a food locker that was one deck down at the bow. Access to the locker was by a "porthole" on the main deck. It was a round entry way a little smaller than your regular street manhole. After we had the pieces cut for the shelves, we discovered they wouldn't go through ~ Manhole in the deck. The only thing we could do was "roll" them enough to get them below, then hammer the shelves flat again for installation. That was a real fun job in close quarters So much fun, in fact, that several cans of pineapple disappeared from that pantry to quench our tropical thirst.

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* Originally published in Northwest Metalworker

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"Fire him! No, you hired him YOU fire him!"

He's a Gorilla! He breaks everything he touches!

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THE SHOP GORILLA

The Shop Gorilla leaves a swath of destruction behind him. They can break anything including anvils and wrecking balls. The Shop Gorilla is the guy that drills holes in the table of a brand new machine and is the guy that tightens the valves on your welding equipment so that they never close right again. The Shop Gorilla treats all your tools like public property and never provides his own. The Shop Gorilla only knows how to tighten bolts one way (until they strip) and tighten vise handles with a pipe or sledge hammer.

Shop Gorillas are especially dangerous in blacksmith shops due to the fact that there is ALWAYS a bigger hammer and there are often irreplaceable antique machines.

The Shop Gorilla never tells you when a tool is broken and needs to be replaced and often hides the broken tool so that you may be finding the things he broke years after he is gone. The Shop Gorilla breaks so many things that even YOU forget how many of your tools he broke. The Shop Gorilla could never possibly pay for all the things he breaks and is the reason that many famous "Life Time Guarantees" do not apply to commercial use.

The Shop Gorilla costs you money in other ways. They are often "parts scrapers". The more expensive the material the more mistakes they will make. The Shop Gorilla will miss-measure that expensive piece of stainless, brass or tool steel and cut a whole batch of parts too short OR too long. . . Yes you can save the material cut too long BUT it will probably leave you short. The "part scraper" in our shop would spend a week or more machining a VERY expensive piece of stock only to wreck it at the last step. AND when they break that expensive drill bit, cutter or saw blade it will be embedded in a valuable piece of stock.

The Shop Gorilla does not always look like an oaf. They are often normal friendly folks and come in every size, age and race. Shop Gorillas are incurable and will never do enough for you to be worth the damage they do. Shop Gorillas think "finesse" is a fancy word used only by snobs and creeps. If you identify a Shop Gorilla in your employ get rid of him as fast as possible.