Echoes from the Oil Country (American Machinist Memories), Volumes 1 through 5, originally published in American Machinist magazine in 1901-02. Republished by Lindsay Publications, Bradley, IL, 2005. Each book is 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 paperback. Please note all five books are new, not used. I have sold dozens of these sets to old engine enthusiasts, especially at Cool Spring, Rough & Tumble, and Sistersville, and they keep sending their friends back to get their own. The first volume of 1901 articles published is really about the third volume in the series, because that was the first bunch of article Lindsay had. Echoes from the Oil Country Vol 1, 64 pages You discover how Osborne got to Petroleum Center in western Pennsylvania: oil country. He'll tell you about meeting the owner, the room he stayed in, and the machinery all over the shop floor. Then it's out to repair a 9x12 steam engine pumping oil out on a "lease", details of the work of the joint turner, crack pot inventors, and more. You have to let Osborne "tell" you about his ride in a buggy sitting on top of twelve cans each filled with 26 pounds of nitroglycerine! They were on their way to shoot a well. Osborne will tell you what they did after the first attempt was a dud. I'm here to tell you, these weren't no Fourth-of-July fireworks, Jack! And the ol' man talks about shrink fits, why the mill engine wouldn't work, and about his being sure he could design a better steam engine than he could buy, and the lessons he learned from the experience. Pouring nitroglycerine in preparation for shooting a well. Echoes from the Oil Country Vol 2, 64 pages The second volume includes stories of repairing governors, hiring good men, fixing pumps and eccentrics (engines not oil men), bad Babbitt metal, running an old worn out lathe, and more. My favorite would have to be sending Charley out to the repair the steam engine at the nitroglycerine factory. Charley, convinced the factory would explode at any instant, was so nervous it's a wonder he didn't wet his pants! This edition gives us a complete collection of Echoes articles from the very first in July 1900 through June 1902. This paves the way for the compilation of Volume 4 which will be the best yet because by 1903 Osborne's column was probably the most read portion of American Machinist Magazine. When Charley was told to go over to the nitro-glycerine factory and fix the engine, he wasn't exactly tickled to death over it. Of course he wasn't expecting to find anything very hard to do about the engine. Indeed, he knew very well that they purposely used cheap stuff there, so that when the factory blew up the loss would not be great. It was this idea of loss that bothered him; believing that the stock of good mechanics was not any too large, the thought of having the shop and the world get along without one of the best of them rather disturbed him. Then, on the other hand, he had often thought of the nice things the neighbors would say when that calamity did take place. A man who has never had any fun with a direct-acting steam pump, or had one of them have fun with him, has not had all the variety there is in life. Almost any one of these pumps can do more different things, and do the same thing in more different ways, than any other piece of machinery I ever ran across. If a man's head swells up so that he begins to think he knows it all, it can furnish the experience that will help to reduce it.... Brown was evidently in a hurry, and that pump was about 400 feet higher up than we were, and the day was very warm. I went up with him, and to see how she was, I turned on the steam. The pump started right away and took hold of the oil in good shape... I put things together and started it up and returned to the shop. Brown was there almost as soon as I was and reported things at a standstill. I climbed the hill again, turned on steam and the pump started as before. Brown did some very emphatic cussing and acted as though he wished it hadn't. Again I tore everything apart and did not find any trouble, and when assembled she started as before. I began to question Brown about the source and quantity of his whiskey, but he declared he had sworn off months before. One of the jobs greatly disliked is repairing the acid pumps. These pumps are used to pump sulphuric acid, large quantities of which are used around the refineries for treating the oil. The fumes of the acid make a man think he has caught a hard cold, while the acid puts holes in shoes and clothing, and if it is the new acid it eats into the flesh, while the spent acid leaves a clinging stink that anyone ever around an oil refinery will be slow to forget... Osborne's shop apparently built and sold corn shellers as a side line to the machine shop business. Idiots, then as now, would buy a sheller, take it out and abuse it, and come back complaining that it broke: "And so you are bringing the corn sheller back, are you? Don't like it, and think it not any good, eh? Tested it and found it not satisfactory, and so return it? What kind of a test did you have that bent this handle and pushed this side out? A hemlock knot got mixed with the corn, and both of you were pulling, and your backs were so much stronger than your minds that you didn't stop to see what was the trouble. Now, I didn't make that thing to shell hemlock knots, and you can hardly blame me because your colt got loose in the barn and upset things and broke the hopper off. When I get it fixed you can come and get it, and I will send the bill for it, and for the repairs, to your father. You might kindly mind to test it the next time with a wedge and beetle, or try to use it as a stone crusher. A few drops of oil might keep it from squeaking some. I see you never used any yet. It will be ready for you day after to-morrow. Good day." Echoes from the Oil Country Vol 3, 93 pages Shortly after the first oil well was drilled in Western Pennsylvania in 1859, there was a rush to secure leases and dig more wells. Wild and wooly boom towns like Pitthole and Oil City sprung up over night. And the hills were covered with primitive wooden derricks powered by jury-rigged boilers and primitive steam engines. And scattered among the hills were numerous sawmills, tanneries, breweries and other small industries. W. Osborne was machinist in the late 1800's when a machinist was much more than someone who stood behind a lathe or milling machine. Osborne was a man who fixed machines, and these articles published in the earliest years of the 20th century recall some of the crazy experiences he encountered. Pouring nitroglycerine in preparation for shooting a well. These articles are great reading. They're told in a conversational style that readers a hundred years ago raved about. It might have been the most popular running column in the magazine at the time. One reader of American Machinist magazine commented that Osborne's "Echoes" was the first article he would read each week and was disappointed when an article did not appear. You can read about Osborne being sent out to a hotel when the engineer couldn't figure out why the steam pump would not draw water from the lake. How he helped the boneheads at the brewery when they incorrectly hooked up a new-fangled bottlewasher to the overhead line shaft and proceeded to break scores of bottles. You have to read about the amazing trip to the sawmill through ice and snow to repair the steam engine. When he got there, the crew had removed the head but the piston was tight. Well, no wonder. It used "Dunbar" packing. After he got that fixed, he babbitted the crosshead in thunder and lightning with snow coming down so hard he thought it was night. He even had to steal rosin from the local fiddler to use as flux for his babbitt job. Or the explosion and fire from a gas well. And the rattle snakes. About hating red tape, and the machinist who was almost fired because of the way he cut threads. About how Osborne made a fool of the nasty owner of a printing press "that needed repair". Or his experiences of water annealing tool steel. Or having to make emergency repairs to a lumberman's locomotive. (It was first geared Shay he had ever seen, and what a wild ride he had on it!). You get many more tales of having to fix an oil well steam pump, about a mysterious early engine found in the woods, about making emergency repairs to the machine shop boiler so that a well casing could be threaded, the wretched smell in the tannery he was called to and more. You also get a tale from a reader about John Peatie who retired from repairing steamboats in Chicago in the 1860's, retiring to a farm in Wisconsin. When the castiron bullwheel broke on the threshing machine, his son was going to drive 200 miles in a wagon to get it fixed. The old man searched for and found some sand for a mold, located clay near the creek to line a homemade cupola made from well brick. He fired with a fanning mill powered by a horse on a thread mill. And the next day a new castiron bullwheel was ready, right there on the farm. Talk about ingenuity! That was back when a machinist was a machinist. I liked the story about how Osborne found that a vibrating line shaft was 4" low at one end. So did the owner fix the hangers? No! He sent his workers out with jacks and they jacked the corner of the building up 4" to bring the shaft in line! That blew Osborne away! Echoes from the Oil Country, vol 4, 175 pages This is the biggest and best collection yet, and covers July 1902 - November 1903 Biggest: almost twice the size of the first three collections. Best: In an eight part series complete with photographs he describes the process in detail of forming a partnership with several men, getting a lease, and hiring crews to erect an oil derrick and drill for oil. And because he provides photos of the boilers, engines, sand reel, derrick, tools, nitroglycerin shack and the wagon, and more, you'll swear you're standing right there with him! In my opinion, these eight articles alone are worth the price of the book. But you get many more. Some are the usual bizarre tales of repairing steam engines with cylinders lubricated with tallow, of nut-case inventors who were going to get rich, fish sucked into the water pump, the steam engine that blew up because it froze, and much more. Other stories are lectures to machinists about how the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence, and how to improve yourself so that you are more valuable to your employer. Echoes from the Oil Country Vol 5, 64 pages More tales from Osborne, covering October 1903 to January 1905. Same interesting lessons and experiences that make us appreciate what "the ol' guys" could do with simple tools, lots of hard work, and the ever-essential imagination. You get stories with titles like- a drilling wrinkle for the lathe, misled by reversing work, trouble with brass castings, a general utility boring bar holder, laying out an oil derrick, moving to the new shop, melting gray iron chips in the cupola, patternmaking in the small shop, reducing friction, introducing gas engines into oil country, a visit to the machinery hall at the St Louis Exhibition of 1904, and more. Imagine you were saddled with the responsibility of moving lathes without damage from the second story of a large frame building to a new building half a mile away, using jacks and timbers, horse and buggy, and unpaved roads! Osborne pulled it off. Tune into the arguments and discussion by Osborne and others about the experiments of remelting the enormous piles of gray iron chips created by machine tools. Only a couple methods could be used successfully, otherwise the new iron would be difficult, if not impossible, to machine. Get Osborne's humorous observations on the hicks in the sticks when faced with getting a gas engine running and keeping it running. The ol' one-lungers could be a bit more cantankerous than our modern engines, but some oil men looked down on them as some kind of devil machine. Osborne learned 'em otherwise. During this era Osborne was elevated to shop boss, and as a result, wrote many articles on business management that had little to do with machinery. The date and titles of those articles are listed here, but not reprinted.
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