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Old 03-15-2018, 09:11 PM
Ron Covell Ron Covell is offline
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I just finished reading the new book by Bill Longyard - Metalshaping, the Lost Sheet Metal Machines #7 - continuing the series started by the late Tim Barton.

This is a weighty book, on many levels. At 255 pages, it covers an enormous range of historical material about not just metalworking machines and processes, but the people behind them, and how the political and economic forces of the times could make or break certain innovations.

I really enjoyed learning the backstories of some of the major 'names' in our industry, such as Eckold, Fischer, Budd, Quickwork, and Klenk, and the surprisingly complex development of seemingly simple items that I took for granted, like Clecos and POP Rivets!

The book starts with sections on Micro-Cars, Bubble-Top Cars, and Pedal Cars, which I have had a long interest in.

Another section covers 'Coordinated Measurement', detailing how technologies first developed for architecture and shipbuilding were modified and improved to suit the budding automotive and aircraft industries. Mass production would have been impossible without precise and rational methods for describing complex shapes.

There is a lengthy section that covers the battle between the older metal-over-wood body construction, and the later all-metal construction that has long been mainstream. It's not hard to understand that if a corporation made a huge investment in forested land, woodworking machinery, and had a huge force of skilled wood craftsmen, they could be reluctant to switch to a newer technology, and there was an enormous amount of mis-information published at the time (fake news?) to try to keep their market share.

If you want to deepen and broaden you knowledge about the history of our trades, I think you will really enjoy this book!

Ron Covell
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