Download - Royal Australian Navy

MOBI – A Look at the Past
This is the second in our series of articles taking a humorous look at
they way we used to train techo’s. Reprinted with the kind permission of
the author, ex WOETP4SM ‘Sandy’ Freeleagus.
WORKSHOPS
Our workshops were old aircraft
hangers fitted out with
workbenches and shapers for
fitting instruction and lathes of all
sorts (centre lathes, relieving,
turret and capstan lathes),
grinding machines, andhorizontal
and vertical milling
machines in the turning
workshop.
The fitting workshop consisted of
long metal benches back to back
so you worked facing someone
with a safety gauze between each
bench. During our chiselling jobs,
the frame around the gauze
became a score board – hit your
hand, fingers or thumb with the 2
pound hammer and you put up a
mark with chalk – do the same
and draw blood – chalk up a
mark with a blood spot on it.
There were some quite impressive
scores around indicating some
quite unimpressive chiselling
abilities. Naturally, all of this was
done in winter so a smack on the
thumb hurt just that little bit
more.
When we worked in the turning
'factory' on the lathes, a favourite
pastime was, each afternoon
when we knocked off and
cleaned up our lathes, we'd angle
the coolant liquid nozzle up in the
air. When the civilian instructor
powered down the factory by
throwing the main switch to OFF,
everyone would turn their coolant
pump motor ON. Next morning
when the instructor came in and
threw the main switch to ON, he’d
be subjected to up to thirty
fountains of coolant spurting
away up into the air. This bloke,
for some reason best beknown to
himself, didn't bother to break
the main switch immediately to
turn off all the lathes, instead
held rather run around madly to
each individual lathe and turn
them off one by one. By the
time this exercise was
completed, the deck used to be
aflow with coolant. At least the
floor wouldn't get rusty with all
the lubrication it received day
after day.
If during the day we decided we'd
like a break of 20 minutes or so,
NAVY ENGINEERING BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2003
we'd all turn off the individual
main switches of each lathe, turn
on every conceivable accessory
on the lathe, then on a 'ONE,
TWO, THREE - NOW!!' all hit the
main switches at once. This, we
found, would blow the main
power fuse for the factory which
would take some 20 minutes to
replace. They woke up to this little
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