| | A little about myself.
I guess you could say I am a 3rd generation Toolmaker. My grandfather was a blacksmith for the coal mines back during the great depression.
My dad came of age in the early 1950’s. After hearing there was factory work in the north he left home hoping to make a better life other then the mines. He managed to find a punch press operator job in a stamping plant called Thompson Products. Because of his experience working with metal in his dad’s blacksmith shop he was giving the opportunity to enter their Tool & Die apprentice program.
In the early 1960’s I was at the ripe old age of 5 when Thompson Products landed a contract with a government defense contractor called Union Carbide in Oak Ridge Tennessee Thompson decided for logistic and security reasons they would build a smaller shop in Oak Ridge.
This was our ticket back home.
My dad didn’t only return to Tennessee with a new skill he returned with a new dream. To have his own tool shop.
He worked in Oak Ridge doing defense work by day and working in his own shop at night. This shop a 24x36 building became the most fascinating play ground a kid could have.
Well to make a long story short I spent the next 15 years or so working in this little shop next to the house as my father’s apprentice.
After my dads death I could not for some reason bring myself to go back into that shop. So I pad locked it and for the next 7 years I just wondered from job shop to job shop never spending more then a few months to a year at the same place.
It’s hard to explain, it’s like I was looking for something. I would be at work and start to think there is nothing more I can learn here it’s time to go. I would pack up my tools and go.
Until 1989 I was hired to work at an automotive supplier Magna International. I have been with them now for the past 20 years designing building and trouble shooting automated robotic assembly tooling.
Now that I only have a few short years till retirement I have a dream..
About 2 years ago I cut a very rusty lock off a very rusty door and walked into my dad’s shop for the first time in 27 years.
For the past 2 years I have been removing rust spreading paint and sweeping dust getting ready to live my dream my dad’s dream.
But not like him because I have too but because I want too.
D.Duncan Check them out. www.magna.com | |
