The Little Shop Around the Corner

Several responded to our previous post saying it was good to see where Mom and I do our work. Well, at this time we're still learning to do our work, and I suspect that will continue for quite a while.

This picture was taken from outside of our building. I was standing behind a rack loaded with huge steel rods. The window behind Mom, when she is at her desk, is the one just above the end of that huge stainless steel rod with the yellow end.

To the right you can see the entry and the stairwell.

In the next picture you can see what is on the other side of the stairwell. That is where Wilhelm Schäffer has his machine shop.

We haven't seen him use any of these large steel rods. For most of his work he brings huge steel blanks in through the big door on pallets. One pallet may contain only two blanks, because they are solid steel more than two feet in diameter and up to 6 inches thick. He transports two or three pallets at a time in the Blue van that is barely visible in the first picture.

Once inside the shop, the transformation begins. They are loaded onto special indexing vices and clamped in place. The are machined in "Five-axle Lathes." That means that there are five points of rotation to handle the metal stock or the cutting tools.

The next picture was taken at the end of the process and shows a solid turbine to be used in a Rolls Royce jet engine. Here it is still attached to the vice.


After being removed, it was taken to a testing center where it was measured by lasers to assure it was within tolerances of less than 1/1000 inch for every measurement, and even tighter on many. Each one is then photographed, and packed in a special Rolls Royce Shipping container for shipment to England.

Another machine in the shop is used to put the finishing machine work on cast aluminum parts. This one is set up to do six before anyone has to touch it. Each one is precisely accurate. They do about 300 of these a week.

Here is Mr. Schäffer himself, showing off some of his work. These are more jet engine parts, and he has a big cutaway drawing of the engine in which they are to be used in a couple of places on the walls.

These are more samples of his precision work for jet engines. Mr. Schäffer is a very congenial man. He is not from here, he came from the South - where I worked 45 years ago as a missionary. People here say he speaks with a strong dialect, but he is the first person that I was able to understand after we arrived. We are now getting to understand a lot more of what the local people say, but it was really difficult for a while.

The first time I talked with him, I told him that my great grandfather had been a blacksmith. He immediately understood that, and recognized the importance of that work. The smithy's shop was one of the most important places in towns or districts for hundreds of years. We should all be proud of our heritage. It impressed Mr. Schäffer right off, and we have had a very pleasant relationship ever since. He owns the whole building where we work, and he employees quite a few people. One is the designer that does the work of creating the computer descriptions of the processes the machines use to create the products. He is another interesting fellow. I've been in the shop often enough that most of the people there know me.

This view from our stairwell shows a number of barrells filled with aluminum shavings from the shop. They are next to a dumpster filled with steel that has been cut off in the machine processes. Even though there is a recycling business right across the fence, they don't get any of this stuff as it is far too valuable. It is all picked up by metal dealers. We've seen them load it out several times already, and it reminds me of the old story about the old man and the boy who saw a piece of a horse shoe on the road as they were walking. The old man suggested that the boy pick it up, but he didn't think it was even worth stooping over for, so the old man picked it up himself. After a long, hot walk, they arrived in the town, and the boy wanted a drink, but didn't have money to buy it. The old man quietly walked to the smithy and sold the scrap of iron for enough to buy not only a drink, but also something to eat.