[BITList] Lathes and Asbestos

[HUGH]

Tom,

This thread started with your message about new ways of producing C/EOs. I had started a response but got sidetracked onto looking for photos.  As I recall, it was 10 years to Chief's, barring failures.  That would have made me 26.  As things were, I had Second's and Part A Chief's by age 25, so not much difference.  However, the whole process proposed looks like a conveyer belt to me.  Do this, then that, then another, in predetermined doses, with an Approved stamp at the end.  We had graduate apprentices in industry going through such a scheme - a lot of the time they were seen as bloody nuisances by managers and foremen on whom they were thrust for the regulation 6 months at a time, the theory being that they would absorb a wonderful range of skills hitherto not available to standard apprentices.  I was offered one to detail pipes from my arrangement in Scotts.  I declined the offer, pointing out that I could hardly be expected to meet a schedule date for the drawings and educate some clueless lad in the mysteries of pipe detailing at the same time.  The chap and I had no common ground on which to base a technical conversation - he was a bird of passage on his way to higher things.  So I did my own detailing, boring though it always was.  One such went on to get a PhD in marine engineering and was shunted to "Special Projects".  Scott's didn't do projects, let alone special projects, but he got an office downstairs anyway.   A few years later, the chap having gone on to pastures new,  I got a phone call from an old friend and ex-colleague in PAMETRADA.  He was in a quandary.  They were to expect Dr So-and-so, but who the hell was he, and what did he do?  Should they put out a red carpet, or what?  I told them he was a nice chap (he was), and quite tame, etc. I hope all went well.  One of his compatriots at Scotts became Prof of Aeronautical Engineering at Glasgow, and still is unless he retired.

Hugh.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090306/f6920a0e/attachment.shtml