Shop Truths, Phrases, Tales; and Outright Lies

[Frank S]

The other day a thread conjured a memory of when I was doing contract work at the Caterpillar rebuild shop. I don't now know which thread it was because often simple off had phrases will trigger these
Working there I often was charged with the task of building up pins or shafts and the bearing locations they were used in then line boring them hence my avatar
I couldn't possibly carry every machine or piece of equipment on my welding rig even though it was a double frame Ford F350 cab 10 ft bed 14,000lb rear end powered by a 1160 V8 cat with a 10 sp Road ranger and a 2 sp Spicer auxiliary transmission. I kept my Victor 16/40 lathe a homemade welding rotator and a homemade annealing / heat treat oven in their shop.
One day I was out on a field service call for the company while back at the shop this guy I will call "T" thought he wanted to draw some of the much higher pay rate that they were paying me So he took it upon his self to weld up a few pins on my rotator. "B the shop manager asked him what he was doing ( All of this I learned the next day when I returned) T said he needed some of the higher pay rate because his wife needed a root canal done. B told him that they would see at the end of the day but did he realize that the equipment he was using did not belong to the company. Yeah but I use a lot of frank's tools all the time and he has never said anything, besides I've watched him and I know everything there is to know about welding these pins and I can run any lathe ever made.
That should have been a HUGE red flag to B but he blew it off since T was a fairly good welder good enough to have made it through the last 2 contractor layoffs.
Skip to the next morning 6AM B and I open the shop before we even turn on the lights he says I think you may not want to see what happened here yesterday.
What's up I asked. Now B was the type of man who would not say a foul word even if he had a mouth full of excrement
Well for starters the owner nearly fired my *** yesterday for something I let T do using your equipment. But he didn't only because he had sent me out on a service call as well so no one was here to supervise the other welders. All of you contractors are professionals anyway and only need me to assign them to a job.
So what went on with T he uses some of my tools all the time I never allow him or anyone to use my machines but heck I have special tools that even the company mechanics borrow from time to time.
That's just it T was building up some pins.
Good that means all i have to do is anneal them them today and tomorrow I can turn them.
No they will have to be welded again and that is why T will not be here anymore and a new chuck has been ordered for your lathe
By now the lights have made i to full brightness but My only response to hes mention of a chuck was WHAT!!
then I saw the abomination of the work that T had tried to do. there were 6 4 inch diameter 18 inch long pins laying around the lathe that looked like they had been machined in a shredding machine no dogging lugs welded on the end of any of them. I always welded a lug on 1 end then use a dead center in the chuck and a live center in the tail-stock. but T hadn't he had tried to chuck up on the welded surface the chuck key handle was "S" shaped the chuck would not open there was a years supply of ruined carbide inserts scattered on the floor a pile of chips and thick razor spring turnings just about buried the lathe and to top it off the 1 of the 30 amp fuses was burned out