Greetings!

July was steaming in Saltsburg! 

Big Boy came to town! 

Big Boy rounding the Horseshoe Curve by Steve Smedley

Union Pacific Railroad sent their Big Boy No. 4014 across the country to help mark the United States’ 250th birthday with a celebration of the crucial role that our rail infrastructure has played the nation’s history. Big Boy No. 4014 is the largest running steam locative in the world. It was one of twenty-five 133 foot long, 600 ton engines commissioned by Union Pacific in 1941. No. 4014 was refurbished in 2019 to mark the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad. 

Big Boy No. 4014 via Union Pacific

Big Boy left Sacramento, CA on May 10th and celebrated Independence Day in Philadelphia, coming by way of Buffalo and Scranton. It began its return journey due west on the 6th, running the world’s famous Horseshoe Curve between Altoona and Johnstown on the 11th. Plumier sent a contingent of eager trainspotters to witness the historic march of Big Boy at a stretch of rail outside of Derry, southeast of Saltsburg. The iron beast went by with teeth-shaking momentum, scattering encroaching onlookers with a defensive mist of water and steam. It was an awe-inspiring site! 

Big Boy and trainspotters by Cody Sobel

A quick trip to see an American treasure, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, just 40 minutes from Saltsburg.

The big event of the month at Plumier was our first dedicated machining class! 

We have long proclaimed the necessity of basic machining skills in complex turning and their benefit to just about every other craft. The complex turner may not see themselves as a machinist, yet they are striving to operate a fairly complex machine. Many of the greatest jewelers use machine tools, yet no jewelry program in the country teaches machining. Watchmakers are taught mechanics, but are rarely taught how to make parts in their formal education. While we have long recognized this gap in craft education, we now finally have the space and resources to begin addressing it. 

To teach our first Basic Machine Shop Practices class, we brought in former Plumier intern Daniel Ravizza. Daniel has incredibly deep and diverse experience in the machine shop, from the home shop to the job shop and from industry to academia. He now teaches machining at Pennsylvania College of Technology, and, lucky for us, has summers off, allowing him to come out to Saltsburg for the week long class. 

Class began Monday with a routine that would continue for most of the week. After introductions, Daniel began with a formal presentation, starting with metrology and how to properly use a micrometer. Students were then challenged to use a range of mic styles on test objects and gauge blocks to ensure proper form and interpretation. David also demonstrated how to read vernier scales, which still have their place in the world of digital calipers. Daniel and David also used this as an opportunity to cover some of the history of precision. 

Then David gave a lesson in drafting, an essential skill and starting point of every project for even the hobbyist machinist. One cannot make parts to tolerance if they cannot define these tolerances. The drawing is also crucial for determining an accurate and efficient order of operations, possibly the most valuable skill in machining. 

Continuing with foundational skills, Daniel began demonstrating the first project of the week, grinding a simple, right hand lathe cutting tool out of a high speed steel blank. Once again, this lesson is in the crowded running for most valuable new skill of the week. Armed with a basic comprehension of cutting geometry and a simple bench grinder, the novice machinist can make their own cutting tools with just a little trial and error. This skillset gives you a better understanding of how the lathe works and opens up a world of custom cutters, saving the beginner hundreds in carbide insert tooling that will most likely perform worse on their lighter machines than good old high speed steel. It can be an exercise in humility at first, but, with enough time spent honing the skill, it can change the way you approach making things. Introducing your freshly ground cutter to a work piece and being met by perfect chips never gets old. It is one of the superpowers of the workshop! 

With the exception of testing cutters, very few chips were made on Monday. Some students made it to the mill for a lesson in tramming, but almost the entire day was spent on the foundations of measuring, drawing, and cutter grinding. 

Like all Plumier classes, this class was shaped by an instant sense of community. These bonds between students and instructors began forging on day-one, and were fully welded by evening.

We shared a special treat on Monday night. Lauri, our guest from Sweden, had quickly befriended just about everyone in Saltsburg. This included Dave, the new head chef at the Point Street Tavern, a friendship which was undoubtedly fostered by a shared love of cooking for others. Dave volunteered to cook for the class on Monday night when the Tavern was closed. Lauri organized the dinner and assembled all of the ingredients. Dave came over in the afternoon while the class was still working and got to work himself. He prepared a beautiful meal of an incredible spaghetti Alfredo with a sauce that could have been eaten alone by the spoonful. It was the plate was completed with chicken, sautéed mushrooms, and cheesy toasted bread. The meal not only fed the hungry class, but allowed us to work right up to dinner without worry and then sit to share in the day’s triumphs and commiserate on the day’s challenges.

Thank you to chef Dave for the the incredible meal! 

The sun was setting but the day was not yet over. One just never knows what wonders await them next while at Plumier. Just when we thought the day was done, Kara, the owner and operator of the Point Street Tavern came by to see the party and invited anyone who could still muster the energy to come see her homestead. Before we knew it, we were petting horses and donkeys and watching ducks and chickens running around the property set in the beautiful Allegheny foothills of Saltsburg. It was the perfect way to end a long day in the shop and a real treat, especially for the city-dwellers among the group. 

That was only day one!

Tuesday morning began with another formal lesson and then it was on to the machines. Students began work on their projects in earnest. The central project that most students chose to pursue was a sanding block designed by the miniature tool maker Paul Hamler. Tom Vitagliano produced a run of them for what the students would soon learn is a bargain price. One of Tom’s models served as the reference for the class. Check out both of their Instagram’s for more. 

The project offered a range of lessons including squaring stock on the mill, locating features, drilling and reaming deep holes, tapping, slitting, as well as opportunities for creative machining operations on the lathe when a milling machine is not available. 

Referring to their drawings from the previous day, students broke up into groups to divide and conquer the many operations that the project offered. One group teamed up on the Bridgeport while another went to the Southbend 9” to do as much of the project as they could on a lathe comparable to what they may have at home. This points to one of the main challenge of a class like this. Each student comes to class with a different level of experience and a very different setup waiting for them in their home shops. Most students had access to some kind of lathe, and very few had access to a mill let alone a full Bridgeport format machine. The goal of the class was to teach fundamental skills along with building confidence problem solving on machine tools. We aimed to find the right balance between cookbook and choose-your-own-adventure. While the latter can at times be as unsettling as Goosebumps, it can offer more value to the student when they are faced with a project back in their own shop without an ideal setup or instruction. Since this was our first class of this nature, it was hard to know where the line was. Thankfully we had a great group of students and we were grateful for their feedback throughout the week. With instructors keeping an eye out for anything unsafe, students were given some room to fumble through operations together, learning and teaching each other at their own pace. The lack of cookie-cutter setups and step by step instructions made these first two days more difficult, but confidence across the group grew dramatically by Wednesday. 

We were treated to another special dinner on Tuesday night. Kara invited everyone back to her place to barbecue and sit around the fire. Once again, Lauri took charge of the planning and teamed up with member Robin to assemble to the perfect summer cookout spread. Thank you to Kara and Brandon for their incredible hospitality! 

The pace of the week never slowed. Each day brought new lessons and fresh challenges. The class faced each with enthusiasm. While everyone may not have been working off the same exact page at the same time throughout the week, by Friday they had all just about tackled the same lessons through the different paths they had charted. This class was a good reminder that “beginner level” does not necessarily mean lower difficulty. Machining is hard. It is a constantly humbling craft even to the experienced machinist. Just like the pursuit of precision itself, learning machining is a constantly moving goalpost. We chose to play on a pretty wide field for a beginner class and our students breathlessly chased after every lesson we threw at them. Even if all they took home was how to grind a working lathe tool and how to measure how wrong their part is, then the week was a success. But, I think we can confidently say that both students and teachers got much more than that from the this wonderful week in July. 

Last summer's interns were reunited as Spencer came out to particiapte in the machining class

Dan has been very busy, both finishing and asembling a new clock movement and working on restoration projects.

After the machining class ended, we took a Plumier field trip into Pittsburgh to visit the Carnegie Museum of Art. This expansive museum thoughtfully blends the historical and the contemporary in both the exhibits and the building itself. It also pairs local with international and fine arts with industrial arts. The result is a labyrinth of visual stimuli with fresh inspiration around every turn. 

Naturally checking out the beautiful radiator in a room full of the treasures of antiquity

Look familiar? There's one just like it in our own front-room musuem.

The art museum shares a building and an admissions ticket with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The creativity of mankind and the wonders of the natural world are physically joined by hallways just as they are conceptually linked through inspiration in the mind of the artist. 

A theme stood out across the museum. Dispersed throughout the art exhibits were striking depictions of Pittsburgh’s industrial history. This follows a long tradition. In the grand staircase of the 1907 section of the building, 360 degrees of mural panels titled The Crowning of Labor by John White Alexander alternates between industrial and heavenly scenes. The white wings of angels mirror the billowing fumes of smoke stacks. The workers of Pittsburgh are presented as heroes of their day, toiling for the city’s bright future. 

Portion of The Crowning of Labor, 1907 by John White Alexander

Rolling Mill, 1983 by Cynthia F. Cooley

War Bride, 1940 by Clarence Holbrook Carter

Though industrial history is often overlooked and easily lost, it cannot be missed in Pittsburgh. While some cities have outgrown their industrial past, paving over it with modern office buildings and converting a few holdout structures into micro breweries and luxury condos, Pittsburgh and it’s surrounding counties shrunk into deindustrialization. The population has been cut in half from its peak in the 1950’s. As the lifeblood of it’s industry and the muscle of its labor force left, the bones of empty industrial buildings were left behind, standing as monuments of a bygone era. The population has begun to stabilize in recent years, even showing signs of growth again. As Pittsburgh and Western PA enter a new era, it is essential that institutions like the Carnegie museum continue to share the industrial history that build the city, and that built much of this country. 

Allegheny-Ludium Steel Mill, Pittsburgh , 1948 by Raymond Simboli

Pittsburgh at Night, 1926 by Aaron Henry Gorson

We swung by the Frick Pittsburgh Museum & Gardens before heading back to Saltsburg

We managed to fit one more field trip in the month, taking clock student Dan Batty to the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors (NAWCC) in Columbia, PA, where they have an incredible museum, restoration shop, and educational facility. 

We also swung by the incredible clock shop of Plumier member Bob Desrochers, who does top-end clock restoration work. 

In a shrinking trade like clockmaking, it is invaluable for a young craft person to make these connections and build relationships in the field. It is also immeasurably valuable to the craft and its future to build this network of craftspeople, especially including the next generation. While less tangible and harder to see from the outside, this community networking may be some of the most important work that we do at Plumier towards the preservation of lost craft. 

It is hard to say goodbye to your new friends when camp comes to an end. Lauri Vaher’s six-week Concentrated Learning Experience has come to an end. Since the moment he arrived in June, Lauri has felt at home at Plumier and in Saltsburg. As you have read in the recounting of this month’s happenings, his new friendships have not been limited to the Plumier community. The Point Street Tavern has become Saltsburg’s own Cheers for Lauri. He will be missed by the whole town! 

After a stop in Estonia to visit his family, Lauri is now back in Sweden getting ready for the new school year at Malmstens Linköping University where he teaches furniture design. He will continue his research into the history of complex turning and his exploration of ways its principals and patterns can be applied to modern design and new mediums. Part of his goal is to connect craftspeople and academics to create new avenues of exchange collaboration, something he is uniquely equipped to pursue. We are very excited to see what comes of Lauri’s work next! 

We took Lauri out for one more authentic American meal on his last night

It can sometimes be easy for those of us involved so closely with Plumier to forget what it was like before we were a part of this community and to forget how rare of a place this really is. Seeing the effect of Plumier on someone like Lauri, who traveled so far to take part in it, is a strong reminder of this reality. Once again, the often lonely, individual pursuit of a lost craft brought someone to our beacon-lit crossroads. In search of information and hands-on experience in complex turning, Lauri found that an much more at Plumier. He found new friends and joined a growing community. He takes home with him new knowledge, new connections, and fresh inspiration which he will continue to foster and share as a champion for craft education and a friend to fellow craftspeople. 

Estonia is a small country with under 1.4 million people. There has been a civilization of seafaring people there since ancient times and shipbuilding is deeply engrained in the country’s cultural identity. This skill has sent many Estonians abroad for work, especially in times of hardship at home. In explaining this history, Lauri shared a popular quote in Estonia from Earnest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not: “In every port in the world, at least two Estonians can be found.” With an amiable ambassadors like Lauri, it may not be too long before it can be said that there are at least two friends of Plumier in every great craft institution in the world. It is through this network that we will collaborate to build many safe harbors for lost craft. 

Lauri will be missed, and we very much hope he will return before too long. Until then, friend—terviseks!

Sincerely,

David Lindow

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