Old men that I worked with. cool stories.

[alley cat]

Hello everyone. Wow I've not been here in a while.. think I last logged on back in 2011.. A lot has been going on. My mother passed away this past November. I'm fixen to start building a tire hammer..I really like the one Trip made and has for sale on ebay.. and I built this page where you can see some jobs my dad and I have done over the years. And I guess the real reason for this shameful plug is I wanted to share some stories about some of the old men that I have had the privilege of working with and learning from. You can check out the link on my profile if you want to see my website.nothing fantastic..those scrolls on the opening page where all bought from Kings supply..and my father did it when I wasn't around..we we're mad at each other at te time..He should of used collars haha..but no It's all good we love each other.  But here I'll just copy from my mentor page these following stories ya'll might dig it..heck you might of even known these old cats.

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I have been really fortunate to have been trained by some really wonderful teachers.

I worked several years under an old man named Bill Sherry. And at one time in his life he was a supervisor in the construction of the world famous “Reunion Tower”. Every time I see that big ball in the Dallas Skyline I think about Bill Sherry and how sharp that old man really was. He didn’t really need a calculator for anything. He was the calculator, and he even worked into his late 70s!

Another thing I would like to say is that I met Bill while working at another shop but when that shop went belly up. Bill and my father really took to each other like two peas in a pod and so naturally he went to work with us.

Not many companies would give an old man like Bill Sherry a job once you reach a certain age. The usually thing is to put someone like that out to pasture like some old horse. But no we loved that old man and he greatly enriched both of our lives! Not to mention quite a few ingenious jigs he taught me to make. Naturally we did the heavy lifting haha. But more than a few times I had to chastise Bill for trying to lift something way to heavy not that he wouldn’t try when I wasn’t watching. But no we would just let him come to work whenever he took a notion

A few years before I met Bill Sherry I actually worked for an old man named Joe Nestro. He was a Russian immigrant and his family had ran Dallas Iron works for over a hundred years. After hours we would hang out and talk shop and he would tell me about WW2 and when he fought in the “Battle of Bulge”,Just how tough the German tanks really were and he would also tell me about his father running the shop during the Great Depression.And how he would have to send the men home because he just didn’t have any work for them,He would tell them “Go home.. You are wearing out my brooms.” But no he still kept his full crew on and didn’t lay anybody off. That had to of been very hard.

I really feel very fortunate to have known both of these men and to be train by such masters is truly a very great honor indeed.

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But yeah I'm not telling a tenth of the story to be honest.  Bill was really really sharp.. xxxx yankee! He was from Pittsburgh he had been a lumberjack He had even worked for Joe Nestro's brother and they were old friends.. Back in those days..you didn't have Hilti core drills .. If you needed a hole in the cement to put up your guard rail you got out your hammer and star bit chisels and got after it! Joe Nestro could do a 4" inch deep hole 2" inch's in diameter in under 10 minutes!  What I really liked about Joe's shop was they might of had an old buffalo iron worker but almost all bending was done by hand in the forge..I'm talking everything from up to 2" solid.. occasionally like on a grand-staircase if he just had to he would go get the junior channel iron rolled  but any hand rail and almost all things we built we cold bent it on site..or took small stock and bent that then matched the radius with cardboard and then transferred that over to molding cap rails and the channels it required.. It was a trip and a honor know these men.. I'm a lucky guy!