Re: First Job in Piping (or engineering)?

>Any other funny personal experiences? Too embarrassed? Send to me
>offlist and I'll post them anonymously.
A colleague of mine graduated in metallurgical engineering in 1942 and found himself working at GM helping with production of .50 cal machine guns. At that time heat treating was done in a bath of molten lead, and as part of his orientation he worked in that area. To get him familiar with the operation the foreman gave him a hammer that was wired to a stick and told to keep it immersed for a couple of minutes and let it cool prior to a hardness test. He was warned carefully not to move the hammer around much because if it came loose, they'd have no choice but to shut the plant down for a day while they fished it out. Since war production was critical a shut down would have been very serious. In goes the hammer but when he pulled it out the hammer was nowhere to be seen. Norm gulped and turned around to try to explain before being marched off to face the firing squad, at which everyone started to laughing and snorting. The hammer had been made from lead especially for seeing the expression on the new guy's face when it vanished.

Christopher Wright P.E.    |"They couldn't hit an elephant at
chrisw@skypoint.com        | this distance"   (last words of Gen.
___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)