Hi Folks,
I feel like I am miss out on lots of good learning opportunities by not being physically closer to the Calgary area. I'm in the deep south area of Alberta and think there must be some active home machinists in the Lethbridge area????
DPittman
Welcome -- I just joined recently too. I was born in Lethbridge. Very nice people. Now that I am older and have lived in Calgary most of my life I remember that a smaller city was much more relaxing. I'm sure some home machinists from Lethbridge will emerge from this forum soon. I had to smile when I saw your post because when I was little my uncle owned a business downtown (now Stafford Dr & 4th Ave) called Heinitz Printers & Stationers Ltd. As a kid I wondered through all these old printers in the back room when all the staff left. They even had Linotype machines. Every one of those old time printers was a machinist out of necessity. They ALL had machine shops in their garages because they had to make their own parts and repairs for the presses, Linotypes, ruling machines, etc. Some of them ended up in museums around Alberta. If you ever get a chance there is a great documentary on iTunes called
Linotype: The Film. They were one of the most complicated machines ever invented, and operators were very often machinists. My uncle's print shop had a small repair shop in it, but mostly the old timers just took parts home to fix them. These guys were in their 80's and 90's and machined parts for these things like it was the only thing keeping them alive. Great memories. Anyways, welcome aboard!