Seems the drafting machines I used in class were always K&E. Ever notice that drafting supplies and equipment were, almost always, either of German manufacture, or made by US companies founded by Germans?
Steve
Bingo. In my Industrial Drawing class we had K&E everything except the stools we sat on. I absolutely loved it, and did not imagine how soon all of it would vanish into museums.
I took it during the ‘68 summer session, and as it was at the peak of the bloody stupid Vietnam War madness, with Nixon menacing in the background, coming in from political demonstrations to Industrial Drawing was gloriously soothing and reassuring.
I still own an almost full set of equipment: long T-square, compass, protractor, divider, variety of set squares, french curves, and a drafting table that lives in the kitchen where I use it to knead bread.
I still do draft some designs by hand, but mostly I just treasure the lost world the tools still represent. For soothing reassurance I tend to watch painstakingly careful restorations of extremely abused complex mechanisms before heading to bed. The first of these two is beautifully narrated, making it possible to believe that you understand each step of the intricate disassembly, cleaning and repair, reassembling, and tests. The second is gorgeous but totally silent, as it was done by an expert watchmaker as an expression of horror and everlasting hope over Israel-Palestine.
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My aunt built her retirement home around 84. She moved all her darkroom equipment, which had not been used since the 50s, into the new house, and put it all away, again. Twenty years later, when she decided to move into a retiree apartment, she tried to sell all the darkroom stuff to the one decent photography shop in Kalamazoo. “Nope”, they said “can’t give that stuff away”. So all the darkroom equipment went to the dump. If she had taken that stuff to the shop in 84, instead of stuffing it into the new house, she probably could have gotten something for it.
Steve
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I’ve also gone down the rabbit hole of restoration videos. The algorithm sends me videos without narration – just a symphony of shop sounds – a cantata of hand tools tapping out pins, hacksawing through bolts, files and rasps and sandpaper – the abstract polyphonic drone of sandblasters, welders, drill presses and dremels. It’s oddly compelling.
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That was absolutely gobsmackingly gorgeous and nuts.
Metal shop in my schools sucked. I did it, and built an electric motor from sort of scratch, but mostly was trivial and no real training.
This is close to religious ritual: that which was dead shall, through the power of love, live again!
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I know engineers who think they can fix anything. Even stators that rotate.
And some manage to get electrocuted.
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That was my favorite one too!
Mike