1936 Chevrolet manufacturing - Master Hands

[dlockhart]

When auto workers were also skilled workers.

[Scott Douglas]

Thanks for posting that video. It really gives us an appreciation for today's modern assembly lines. The sound track is a little overly dramatic, IMO. I can't imagine how noisy it must have been working in some of the those areas of the assembly line.

[Scott R]

Watched this with my son, we were to the portion with the open hearth furnaces and continuous casting when he said, "what are those guys doing?" I said to him "those aren't guys, those are MEN."

[dlockhart]

Originally Posted by Scott R

Watched this with my son, we were to the portion with the open hearth furnaces and continuous casting when he said, "what are those guys doing?" I said to him "those aren't guys, those are MEN."

Nice.
I know my cope from my drag. Long ago I worked in the pattern shop of a foundry to pay for my education. Being the young guy I was tasked with getting the samples poured and retrieved from the foundry. We marked the sample molds with chalk so they could be pulled from the conveyor before getting mixed in with the regular production parts. I used a long steel hook to break open the sand molds and latch onto the parts. I would end up standing in the middle of a pile of hot sand and still faintly glowing castings. I only caught my jeans on fire one time.
The guys that were on the furnaces and pouring iron all day and night were the MEN.

[Nickshu]

Originally Posted by Scott R

Watched this with my son, we were to the portion with the open hearth furnaces and continuous casting when he said, "what are those guys doing?" I said to him "those aren't guys, those are MEN."

Well said!

[Chocaholic]

Agreed. Last summer I visited the Ford Piquette Plant in Detroit with my son and my dad. It's where the Models A, T, etc were first produced. Henry Ford's office exactly as he left it all those decades ago. Amazing experience to say the least.

[herr_oberst]

The tooling boggles the mind. Engineering those machines and processes along with designing the cars, it's a wonder anything gets built.

I liked the guy adjusting valves. He looked like a hotrodder!

Some of those jobs - can you imagine the boredom of putting a rivet in a plate, waiting for the press, all day, every day? How insignificant it could make you feel? Putting food on the table had a much much higher cost back then!

It's easy to see why unions were such a vital part of the industrialization of the US. Plenty of opportunity in that factory to take advantage of the workforce.

(Note to self: remember this, you have an easy life.)

[gsxrken]

Also interesting to note the age of some of the men. Some skilled labor there that is probably gone forever. Almost nothing is as vertically in-sourced as the old autos were.
I've heard most of the Chinese workers engaged in smart phone assembly have never seen one completed.

[Oh Haha]

My Dad's father worked at Fisher Body until he died in 1963. My Mom's father was an engineer at AC Sparkplug and retired from there in 1968. One did the labor, the other did the designing.

My Dad could have gone into the shop when he got out of high school or returned from serving in Korea. I asked him why he didn't and he told me didn't want to be a "shop rat". He could have retired with 30 years in mid 80's.

It's much different now inside the plants with many tedious tasks handled by robots. The workers also switch to different work stations so as to not be stuck doing the same thing for a shift.

The men who work in the foundries have it better now but it is still a hard job. That smell stays with you for a while.

[Dantilla]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

can you imagine the boredom of putting a rivet in a plate, waiting for the press, all day, every day?

Then again, he may have been raised on the farm, where from five or six years old had to rise at 5:00am to begin the day that didn't end until dark.

He may be thinking "What an easy job this is. Sure beats pitching hay in direct sunshine all day then scooping poop out of the barn before bed"

We really do have it easy today, don't we.....

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Dantilla

He may be thinking "What an easy job this is. Sure beats pitching hay in direct sunshine all day then scooping poop out of the barn before bed"

We really do have it easy today, don't we.....

Yes, we do. But if I had the choice between working in a factory of the 1930s and pitching hay and scooping poop, I'd choose the later. The mind killing, soul destroying repetitive work of an assembly line would drive me insane.

I was about to turn this off about halfway through. There were too many shots of random wheels turning without any context. It got interesting when they got to the foundry though.

[Chocaholic]

At the Piquette Ave plant, it was divided into large rooms with a giant gravity sliding steel door in between each room. The doors were held open with common rope. Why? If there was a fire in one room, the rope would burn quickly and the door would glide shut protecting the adjacent rooms. Every wooden stanchion was beveled vertically to reduce their potential to catch fire. Just amazing. This was around 1908.