Hey Jason, I used to run your big Cincinnati!

[DubMFG]

Hey Jason + Fireball tool friends,

The title is true - the first machine shop I ever worked in was Carr’s Machining, under master machinist Shane Carr. It was in the final years of his business before everything eventually went to auction. Just the two of us in a roughly 25k square foot machine shop filled with bed grinders, welders, CNC and manual machines, jig grinders, you name it. We had a 25ft gap bed lathe that could swing 7ft - as well as three overhead gantry cranes. We would fly machines around the shop with the crane when we needed better access. A tool hoarder would be an apt description of Shane’s collection, and it was an incredible place for a young, keen machinist to start.

One of the old K+T’s

All the machines were painted with Carr’s red by Shane’s daughters every summer when they were out of school. It was a fun place to be in the summers! Though the heat in full carrharts was a lot to deal with.

They don’t make box ways like this anymore

One of my first jobs at Carr’s was shoveling quarter-sized steel chips out of the Cincinatti - filling garbage pail after garbage pail with hundreds of pounds of still-hot steel. It sure made me feel like I was earning the knowledge I gained just from being around all these amazing tools. I initially walked into the shop and just begged to be allowed to sweep up. I was maybe…19 years old?

Shane’s big hobby (and one of my jobs) was designing and building ride-on locomotives with a 12" gage width. This was one of Shane’s steam machines -

I have a ton more to say and show about these machines, if you ever want to chat - let me know. I actually moved to Nelson BC, and am in the process of moving my own shop up here this summer, would be happy to come down to Spokane (only a could hours south) and chat about it. I worked as a writer for a huge YouTube tech channel (LTT) for a few years, so I’m no stranger to either shops or filming.

You can pull my contact email from Discourse
or Colin (@dubmfg) • Instagram photos and videos

Thanks for reading! Happy to answer any questions below.

[DubMFG]

Some more pics:

Mid shop - one of the many turret drills

One of the smaller lathes (heh)

Big boy Carlton

Lots of gear cutters

Beautiful little Moore jig borer, plus you can see the waste oil burner we used to heat the shop in the winter.

[Fireball_Filmmaker]

Tagging @Fireball_Jason because this is too cool

[LarryFahnoe]

That’s an amazing shop @DubMFG Colin, thanks for sharing the photos!!

–Larry

[Stuarts_Shed]

That’s phenomenal - very cool indeed.

[Fireball_Jason]

I really like seeing the history of the milling machine. Is sad that such a great collection of equipment gets separated. The mill has the easy life in my workshop and its well taken care. Thanks for sharing the photos and machine shop.

[gkuhns]

I enjoy LTT and I’ve spent way too many hours watching those videos. @DubMFG I didn’t realize you had left. You were in a number of videos and were fun to watch. This is wild running into you here. Thanks for sharing your story.

[Knick]

I see a ladder to the waste oil burner, I had a shop with one back in the 90’s and it also had to be played with. If was good if it was running continuous, but if it cycled off it did not always like to restart.

[andy_van]

great video, PS why not add an air ratchet on top, aka as a power drawbar?, would make changing tools easy; also having compressed air connected would allow an air nozzle to allow you to blow off chips, and aid in tidying up after a cut, or an air ratchet (speed gun) to aid in assembly and removal of work from the table, to ‘nut run’ the fasteners