The most devious, insidious machine I ever came across was in the big veneer plant in Vancouver. It was called the Strander and it could break a man in no time.
Three dryers and the Strander. The Beast. Two hours at each dryer station where you were tied to a machine doing incredibly boring work and once per shift you did two hours on the strander and it was not at all boring, it was war.
The strander took the dried sheets of veneer and cut them into long strips (strands) and fed them into the press where the laminated beams we made were produced. The press required a constant feed during the process or the beam could be ruined. These are structural, engineered beams custom made to specifications, weighing several tons and worth tens of thousands of dollars each.
The infeed to the Strander consisted of two operators pulling sheets off a stack each – and when I say sheets they may be full size 4x8 sheets or any combination of narrower strips stacked in a 4x8x4 pile – and place them on conveyors going into the machine. When they are in random sizes you have to pull them off in the exact reverse order they were stacked or they get all tangled and ripped. It’s like a pile of thick damp paper.
But the strander is hungry and will not wait for you, silly mortal. It requires its constant feed and you must lay the sheets on one after another, slightly overlapping them – that is leaving no gaps. The strander senses gaps you see and the strander worries not enough food is coming in so the strander speeds up. And you have to feed faster and if they are narrow strips you have to go really fast or you leave gaps and the strander goes faster yet. And now you got one tangled and there’s another gap and holy shit you hear the motors wind up and the belts start to scream past and pretty soon the whole thing is going to crash to a stop and a siren will go off and the boys will have to shut down the press and remove the half-formed beam before it catches fire, the system will be down for hours and men with clipboards and ulcers will want to know why…it’s a bad scene.
Eventually I got moved to another job where I was free to roam the plant, but in return I had to relieve the operators during their three 25 minute breaks. One night somebody didn’t turn up and since I loathed the driers I volunteered to do a full 12 hour shift on the strander. It was an ordeal, a marathon with the dryer boys rotating through one strander spot and me working the other one by myself all night. About 3am the new guy, out from Nova Scotia and only three days on the job found himself in strander #2 across the deck from me in station 1. Nobody had told him what he was in for, and really he wasn’t ready to be up there with the big boys yet as became apparent when he was heard to scream out “For God’s sake what do they want from us, we’re only human!” at one point. After two hours he rotated back to a dryer, finished his shift and was never seen again. But I plugged away from 7pm to 7am that cold rainy Vancouver night, me and the beast battling it out and in the end I was master and the beast trembled under my skill. I also had a four inch long shard of timber up my wrist that had to be removed up at the hospital later, but I was a legend.
Three dryers and the Strander. The Beast. Two hours at each dryer station where you were tied to a machine doing incredibly boring work and once per shift you did two hours on the strander and it was not at all boring, it was war.
The strander took the dried sheets of veneer and cut them into long strips (strands) and fed them into the press where the laminated beams we made were produced. The press required a constant feed during the process or the beam could be ruined. These are structural, engineered beams custom made to specifications, weighing several tons and worth tens of thousands of dollars each.
The infeed to the Strander consisted of two operators pulling sheets off a stack each – and when I say sheets they may be full size 4x8 sheets or any combination of narrower strips stacked in a 4x8x4 pile – and place them on conveyors going into the machine. When they are in random sizes you have to pull them off in the exact reverse order they were stacked or they get all tangled and ripped. It’s like a pile of thick damp paper.
But the strander is hungry and will not wait for you, silly mortal. It requires its constant feed and you must lay the sheets on one after another, slightly overlapping them – that is leaving no gaps. The strander senses gaps you see and the strander worries not enough food is coming in so the strander speeds up. And you have to feed faster and if they are narrow strips you have to go really fast or you leave gaps and the strander goes faster yet. And now you got one tangled and there’s another gap and holy shit you hear the motors wind up and the belts start to scream past and pretty soon the whole thing is going to crash to a stop and a siren will go off and the boys will have to shut down the press and remove the half-formed beam before it catches fire, the system will be down for hours and men with clipboards and ulcers will want to know why…it’s a bad scene.
Eventually I got moved to another job where I was free to roam the plant, but in return I had to relieve the operators during their three 25 minute breaks. One night somebody didn’t turn up and since I loathed the driers I volunteered to do a full 12 hour shift on the strander. It was an ordeal, a marathon with the dryer boys rotating through one strander spot and me working the other one by myself all night. About 3am the new guy, out from Nova Scotia and only three days on the job found himself in strander #2 across the deck from me in station 1. Nobody had told him what he was in for, and really he wasn’t ready to be up there with the big boys yet as became apparent when he was heard to scream out “For God’s sake what do they want from us, we’re only human!” at one point. After two hours he rotated back to a dryer, finished his shift and was never seen again. But I plugged away from 7pm to 7am that cold rainy Vancouver night, me and the beast battling it out and in the end I was master and the beast trembled under my skill. I also had a four inch long shard of timber up my wrist that had to be removed up at the hospital later, but I was a legend.
3 comments:
Is this back in the days when your hand looked like you'd taken a hammer to it for a few hours, then left it in the snow to die a horrible frozen death?
yeah, pretty well
I was scared just reading this.
Post a Comment