Newspapers / The Badin Bulletin (Albemarle, … / Sept. 1, 1920, edition 1 / Page 7
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badin bulletin PAOI SlTlN power was off, the nice yellow tarry smoke would fill up the department to such an extent that on several occasions Leypold, after biting off a nerve tablet, put his eating tobacco in a by-standers’ pocket, usually J. D. Black’s; also when the power was on, and the exhausters pulling, similar accidents would happen outside in the yard to A. G. Smith and Seaford, or whoever happened to be around. It was finally learned that the Electrical Department were using this smoke screen for obtaining tools, cigars, chaws, and for other nefarious purposes. So forthwith two two- hundred-inch exhausters were ordered, ^nd installed with gas washers to con nect to the main stack flue, and the forties” were banished to the scrap. It niight be noted here that they were a source of frequent fires also, and orders spares and replacements kept Ram say busy lots of times when he might ^■ve been playing tennis. The baking department was getting ^11 this experience with green carbons shipped in. Later calcined coke came m, and gave the crushing, mixing, and extrusion departments something to think about; and when it comes to crush es you’ve got to hand it to Ed Biddix. e took that four-roll relic from Mas- sena and actually crushed coke with part it—and what he could pick up here ^nd there in the way of spares, new rolls, new gears, and so on. It has been dying or four years, has one roll in the grave ^i&ht now to hear Ed, and still he can crush coke with it if he has to. He oesn’t have to use it though, because e has a bang up new four-roll crusher outfit up on the hill back of the carbon plant. This plant is equipped with the ^■test and most up-to-date equipment. ;^t least, that is the theory; but as the lant was designed on a dark and stormy night, built in a fog, and has operated a cloud of coke dust ever since, no one knows exactly what Ed has up there. Sometimes from little remarks Ed lets ^^op you get the idea that maybe the plant is using a little more oil than it should, and perhaps a fuse blows out now and then and thus the R. & M. is all shot to pieces. But it is hard to say ex actly, because Ed never does talk much ^hout the Four-Roll Crusher Plant. Tee! Hee! r)efinite data is difficult to obtain con cerning the evolution of the mixing and extrusion department from the chrysalic cocoon stage to its present butterfly existence. It is known, of course, to a certain extent what was put in in the landscape gardening in the business section way of equipment—presses, mixers, pumps and so on. But when Broadwell stirred this inert mess of equipment up with a long pole and asked for results— he got ’em—but not what he expected. As intimated above, the early stage of operation is a kaleidoscopic haze of coke dust, leaky steam lines, bursting gaskets, cold slugs, hot words, the hair raising spectacle of an accumulator going up, up, up with the pumps cut out, high pres sure lines gone blooey; and slowly sink ing through the whole whirl was the Ap parent Green Density, sounding bottom at forty fathom. It is thought that this attack of vertigo was the reaction re sulting from the efforts of the depart ment to get Jersey out of the carbon plant. He came there early in 1916 with a diseased Werner Pfleiderer self-dump ing mixer, driven by two dozen pulleys and belts, with a motor concealed some where, a flock of lining forms, and one wrench. The sand blast was on the out side of the building, through no fault of his. He left for Building 30 by request (the extrusion department’s) early in 1917, with a full kit of tools; but they allowed it was worth it. The fog finally melted away in the de partment, to reveal the map of R. E. Lee in charge, trying to keep order, operat ing, his sanity, his Sovereign Cigarettes, and getting away with it all. He has had his ups and downs, like all of the other boys, and comes through smiling most of the time. In 1917 he was pre sented with an Elmes Press by Mr. Moritz as a token of his esteem. This Press is supposed to make ten slugs grow where but one bloomed before. The Mechanical Department was unable to make it operate, and succeeded in mess ing it up thoroughly. They put on a weird rotating device, which included a clutch, a ten-horsepower motor, one of the old Comant reduction gears, and a Morse Chain Drive. Farmer Scott’s suggestion of hitching a mule to it, and rotating it like a sorghum mill, was much simpler and just as practical, but was entirely disregarded. The Press was left in a wrecked condition until taken in hand by Mr. Allen, in 1919. He looked it over, decided that the manufacturer probably knew as much about the press as anyone, and put it in working order along the lines originally recommended. And sure enough it worked, and it is working every day. It has been moved from its original position to a platform between the two Jumbo Presses, being now fed by a belt conveyor from a dis charge hopper in the mixing room floor. The department suffered a mild at tack of atavism in the spring of this year, when the Research Division install ed one of the old French Pan Grinders for experimental purposes. Bob also re verted to type, and became a sure enough cave man during the proceedings. His hair and whiskers got long and fuzzy, and his deep throaty growls could be heard from one end of the plant to the other. Mrs. Lee says that he insisted on raw meat at all times during this attack. His was an exceptional case of dual per sonality. In most cases, the patient, when normal, remembers nothing of his other self; but when Bob was shown a
The Badin Bulletin (Albemarle, N.C.)
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Sept. 1, 1920, edition 1
7
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