Life history of my work and projects Part 1a
Prolog;
This will not be written in a regular CV outline to do so would be too restrictive. It also would not serve my intentions, nor could it possibly portray 1% of my accomplishments.
I am going to write it as a brief autobiographical summery. It is my theory that it will be much more comprehensive for any one to read.
I might however include an in depth and possibly technical description several of my work projects. I will not however include any of my inventions that I have in the works or a description of any of them for copyright and patent protection purposes, other than possibly a very brief note about some of them.
The list includes over 300 Ideas that I have, and I am currently researching, as well as modeling.
My experiences;
The older I get the more important I find that I should commit to a more permanent media as many of my experiences and things I have done.
This will be a very lengthy and often times boring and even maybe to some of the younger readers unbelievable that is if this is ever read by anyone other than me
I am well aware of the fact that many of the things I did before the age of 6 have been forgotten by me I do however have sketchy memories of some things earlier than age 6.
For instance I quite clearly remember my first visit to a dentist just before my 4th birthday where I saw a photo of an airplane that had 4 engines and a man standing beside it. I told the doctor that I could make one of those He laughed and said that I got to see. So on my next visit I carried with me a model of that plane not a plane flat cut out of card board but rather one that had a cylindrical shaped body that tapered to the rear the wing was hollow as well thick at the front edge and thin at the rear the engines were made of paper spools like those you find in the center of toilet paper. Complete with propellers cut out of heavy cardboard. I had colored the markings and windows as best as I could from memory.
When I gave it to him he was so amazed that he had a glass case made for it.
20 odd years later I was showing my young daughters many of the places where I lived as a child. We happened to drive by the DDS office I had been to as a child , I told them I made a cardboard model of an airplane for the doctor there and the story of it. So we stopped for them to look not figuring the plane would still be on display after so many years. There it was on a special shelf in the main lobby incased in glass with a small note stating of its origin and reason for being there. You see his son was the man standing in that photo the plane was a DC3
I remember when I was 3 or 4 I took an old trash can and mounted it on the rear of my tricycle to imitate the little delivery truck that brought us milk each morning. There was also a little girl who lived across the street from me about my age we played together much of the time in my back yard because we had this huge tree that grass would not grow under, she and I were continuously making things like a play house out of a cardboard carton from a big chair or the little sewing spool racers using a large sewing spool a pencil and a rubber band. Sometimes we would build dirt roads around the tree.
Another memory of something I made this time with the help of my father was when I was 5. It started out on my 5tf birthday when he and I were at our houseboat that he had built. He and I had gone there for a week to fish and be at the lake. The lake was very low from lack of raid so he parked on the shore near the gangway that led down to our houseboat. It was a very steep climb down we had been there a couple of days it had started raining almost as soon as we arrived so we spent most of our time inside fishing through the opening in the floor, and building my model of that house boat, it was to be an exact scale model using 4rows of 5 1qt steel oil cans to represent the floats under the main houseboat. I learned how to solder using a heated copper to seal the holes in the ends of the oil cans I nailed and glued the wood pieces together. We painted it the same colors and when it was finished I wanted to play with it in the water but it was late at night, by the next morning the lake had risen so high that the water was getting dangerously near our car. It was so high that the gangway was actually under water so we had to take our small boat to get to shore. I had to leave my boathouse there and after we left my dad’s boathouse got washed away/ I never saw my toy model again. As we left we stopped at Mr., J. O. Jones’s bait shop, why do I remember his name? Because I bought a baby runt pig from him for a penny on that day. We lived in the city but had a large back yard so I kept it there until it started to grow too big. Then we took it to my uncle’s place where we later moved nearby. That pig that I bought for1 penny grew to over 600 lbs. This is memorable only because of what happened at the lake and has nothing to do with anything else. Also for my 5th birthday I got a tinker toy set the big one that came in around tube about 6inches in diameter and30 inches long. I built every thing with that crazy set of wooden dowels and spools. From bridges to tall building frames to funny looking vehicles. And I still had much of it when my sister who is 12 years younger than I am was old enough to start playing with it.
My mom used to tell me stories of how my dad would take to the garage where he worked and place me on one of those furniture moving blankets then give me an old distributor or carburetor and some tools like a screwdriver and pliers, and tell me not to get off of the blanket or else. I don’t remember any of this naturally so I must have been less than 4 years old. Can you imagine giving a 2 or 3 year old those things let alone a screwdriver today?
When I was 6 we moved to my grandfather’s farm. I learned to drive tractors and other farm equipment before I was old enough to start school, and since my father was a mechanic I would help him all the time repairing cars, trucks and farm equipment. By the age of 10 I could overhaul an engine by myself and rebuild a standard or automatic transmission.
For Christmas when I was 7 I got the Master engineer’s Erector Set. It had thousands of small nuts and bolts, hundreds of perforated steel girders, brass pulleys rubber o ring belts wheels electric motors perforated flat sheets of metal crank leavers spool drums hundreds of small angle brackets, and much more. It came at the perfect time because I had long since out grown the tinker toy set and it had been relegated to the back of my closet. In a few months I had even saved up some money and bought the Supper Master Builder’s Erector set then combined every thing together I made towers and cranes and oil derricks just about any thing that could be assembled form the tens of thousands of parts. I believe that had I been a year older when I got it I would have already been too old to play with such a thing though.
When I was 9 I plotted off 1 square acre of land, I cleared it of brush and scrub trees using one of our tractors, since all the others had their own chores take care of I received no help to do this. I had read the old farmers almanac to learn of the correct planting times and soil preparations for the items I wished to plant, as they were not items that our farm was producing. I had learned how to test the soil for the alkaline and acidic content from my grand father, based on my findings I tilled in compost of a varied mixture to hopefully achieve good fertile field, after planting I wanted to try to capture and retain as much moisture as was possible. As no irrigation to that field was possible, I had read of a method of trapping moisture by covering the rows with a clear plastic. I told my grand father of my desires so he contacted the county extension agent and was granted a small amount of money to fund my experiment, providing that I kept daily records of soil moisture, plant growth, size, propagation and yield. As I was only 9 years old this took me the whole day every day through out the summer. At night I would sit and write my reports, I must have written dozens of pages by the time harvesting started. As the plants grew in height I had to keep raising my coverings until it resembled more that of a green house that any thing else. Many of the items were early producers like Radishes, carrots, lettuce, 10 verities of hot peppers, cucumbers, onions, and the like. Some came off a little later; the tomatoes came of both early and late as I had planted 3 verities of them. There was so much to harvest each day that my grandfather allowed some of the workers to help me as long as it was known that the responsibility for the project was mine. All during the season as we would remove items I would replant. Since I had planted more than a month before it was normal in our region I had crops to be delivered to the local market before any of the other farms in our area. I actually had 3 pickup loads go to market 3 full reeks before the market season opened. By the end of the season my 1 acre plot had produced enough to repay the money my grand father had received and to pay for a tractor. My average totals were close to 28% higher than many of the farms in the county per square acre. Using only the natural dew fall and that of the rains every drop of moisture that fell on that acre stayed on that acre. One thing that helped was that year we had a higher than average summer rain fall. In later years my father and I did a similar planting in another field planting only yams and peanuts for the peanuts we had to get a special allotment as our farm was not a registered peanut farm. By the time I was 16 I had all the agronomy and agriculture I ever wanted
I had become a very veracious reader by age 10; I read every thing from the BIBLE to mechanics magazines. I read every issue of Popular Science, Popular mechanics from the 1920’s up until that time. I had read many books on how things were made like the principals of steel construction, many fiction and non fiction books. One particular book was titled 1001 things to do. I read that one when I was in the 4th grade. Many of the things init looked like fun to make so I made a radio from a toilet paper roll with copper bell wire wound around it to act as the tuner a pair of razor blades a lump of coal some nails a safety pin and a piece of wood to mount it on when I connected an ear phone to it and scratched around on the coal then slid the tuner metal along the coil I could listen to a local strong radio station no battery or any thing else. That lead to my constructing things from the book like an electric motor made out of a sewing spool with some wire and a couple of nails embedded in a piece of wood. I made a quite accurate triple beam balance scale from 2 rulers and a yard stick and some string. I made a small steam engine; this was one of my favorites from the book. For it I had to do a lot of cutting, filing, and drilling to make the metal parts, I made the small boiler out of several lengths of copper tubing pushed through a pair of metal discs that I had drilled dozens of holes in then I soldered them to the discs and fashioned a pair of end caps then soldered them to the discs over the tubes. In the caps one had a fill neck with screw on cap in the screw cap I had made a simple relief valve by using a spring from an ink pen and a BB with a small hole drilled in the cap for the BB to seat against and a piece of copper tubing soldered centered over the hole with a small hole drill in the side to insert a nail to hold the spring in place, the other end just had a small piece of tubing coming out of it I placed a metal jacket around the whole thing with a place at the bottom for a fire or heat source and the top the exhaust. The engine was a simple slide valve one piston single flywheel. It wasn’t very efficient as I had no piston rings on it just a small piece of leather cut round and screwed to the end of the piston. It leaked a lot of steam around the valve and piston but it would run for 3 minutes on a single filling of water. I must have made dozens of those items but those 4 came to mind.
Up till mow in my life I have read close to 30,000 books in so many different fields it is close to impossible to list. I have started writing several novels of my own that should I ever decide to publish may do well, but one never knows what the reading public is going to find intriguing enough to want to read. One of my novels is close to 100,000 words at this time some of the lesser ones are around 20,000 words.
When I was 11 years old I started hanging around a local Blacksmith welding machine shop on the weekends and after school. Pretty soon they had taught me how to operate a drill press and a coal fired forge. I learned how to weld and braze using an oxy-acetylene torch and electric arc welders by the time I was 13 I could weld well enough to pass a pipe test. I worked there 5 and half years the first 3 or so years I was more or less just a helper but they taught me every thing that they did there, after that I took on many jobs on my own with only advice from time to time from them.
I bought a small motorcycle when I was 12 with some of the money I had been earning, it was a Honda 50cc since it was less than 5 brake horse-power I was not required to have a license to ride it in Texas at that time but could not take it out on the large highways due to its top speed of only 45 MPH.
I had helped my dad several times rebuild engines and sometimes he would hand mill the blocks or the heads a few .000s of an inch to increase the compression and yield more horse-power. So even though I needed my motorcycle to get to work every day, I decided to have a go at the engine to see if it could be increased in power a little. I did this in several stages so that if anything I had done turned out to cause it to have less power I would know where I had messed up and try to repair what I had done. First I bought a second carburetor and modified it by drilling out the passage ways and the Jets it was used so if I messed it up I was not out much money, and could just use the original one. Right away after I had installed it I noticed the bike would accelerate quite a bit faster but the top end speed had not significantly changed much. I drove it like this for a while and everything seemed to be fine so I bought a head, cylinder, and piston with ring set and the head gasket, I set about modifying the head by opening up the intake and exhaust valve passages. Since the head gasket was just a .040” thick copper ring I just reused the old one after softening it up by heating to red hot and quenching it in water. I had learned this little trick from a man who owned an airplane this is what he did when he was overhauling the engine in it.
I had gained a little more power but still it would only run about 55 MPH a gain of 10 MPH so far. So the next thing I did was to make a head gasket out of .015” copper. I still had the old gasket and the new one if problems arised. This gave me enough power to start off in second gear and go directly to 4th gear if I wanted, but still not much noticeable increase in speed. But I had started to notice the engine was heating up a little so I thought maybe if I reduced the back pressure in the muffler it might help some. So I took a long rod and welded a drill bit to it then drilled out the internal baffles a little more then I fashioned a duct to force air around the cylinder of the engine and into the air breather. These 2 things not only helped to cool but added a few more miles per hour to the top end speed. By now I figured that I had added enough power to do a sprocket change, unfortunately my bike already had the highest speed sprocket set that was made for the little bike. The combo was a 13x48 tooth set so I thought I might just make my own rear sprocket. So I started out with a plate of steel that was the right thickness. And with a little work laying out the proper pitch diameter I made a 40 tooth rear sprocket by drilling around the diameter. Then it was just a matter of taking a torch and cutting between the holes allowing the teeth to be the proper length above the center line. I then ground and filed it until it looked correct and the chain passed smoothly around it. I drilled the center and the mount holes then shortened the chain.
Now the bike would run about 70 MPH and felt as though it had plenty of power so after a while I made another rear sprocket this time a 36 tooth, this was about as small as I could go due to the size of the mounting bolt circle, but the bike would run almost 80 MPH, So cursing at 65 it did just fine. It would actually out run most of the Honda scrambler 90cc bikes around town. But even though it had about 10 horse power since the identification tag said less than 5 brake HP I never got hassled. This was over a course of about 10 weeks that I did this,
When I was in the 6th grade I had bought one of those 50 in 1 electronics kits from radio shack for the school science fair I had modified it to be a transmitter then connected the microphone to the needle of a hand cranked Victor-Rolla phonograph then tuned a radio in another room that was connected to the school’s Pa system and played records on it.
When I was 14 I built several things for my self like a mini bike motor scooter that I gave to my younger sister, a tractor that had 3 transmissions a trailer for my father to pull behind his lawn tractor. All of which were completely my design.
After I turned 15I started driving my car to and from work mostly and I would take the welding truck out to the oil rigs and do repairs on them I did my first weld on a live natural gas pipeline when I was 15.
I had also learned to drive truck and had driven tractor trailer rigs many places although I was too young to have the proper license.
I was on the volunteer fire department and drove the fire trucks to the fires many times.
When I was 16 I designed a cattle squeeze Shute that is still being built the same way I made the first one. During that time I rebuilt almost every kind of oil field equipment there was, like mud pumps building new brake drums for the draw-works (really big winches) built up the teeth on the ring and pinion gears on rotary tables and dressed them back to original size. Built change over subs. Built trailers for hauling livestock and trailers for hauling oilfield equipment, bumpers for pickup trucks, mounted winches, stretched truck frames, forged out plow shears, just about anything that could be associated with a farming and oilfield community. When I was 16 I cut and spliced my first truck frame to make the truck longer. I did not make the drive shaft for it we were able to buy one the length that we needed.
When I was 14 for a while I worked part time at the local western Auto store. For maybe 6 months I would install the washers and dryers in people’s houses. I mounted and balanced tires that were sold did inventories just general work,
I had left school for the last time before I was 15 I had managed to be pushed up a couple of grades started the 9tth grade when I was 12 almost 13 made it till the mid term exams and was exempted from all of them. This allowed me to help out more around the farm for those few days, so I just failed to return after wards. I went back the following year to see if I could put up with teachers that didn’t know as much about what they were trying to teach me as I already knew, again I left at midterm. One final time I thought that I would at least try again. This time I had to take 2 of the exams after those I never returned even though I only needed 4 more credits to have graduated. Even though technically I was still a freshman I had only one freshman class the others were junior and senior but due to a state law I would not have been able to graduate that spring and would have had to spend 2 more years in school irregardless of the fact that I would have had enough academic credits to graduate I figured my time would be better spent actually learning something, after all I had read every book in our schools’ small library
I left the blacksmith shop where I had worked for over 5 years to pursue something else. I went to
So I went back to
When I reported for my qualification testing I was told that there would be a minimum of 12 tests and depending on how we did some of us would be taking additional tests.
Out of 100 guys when we started I was still taking tests after all but 5 had dropped from the roster. They finally just stopped testing us and I was told that my scores were higher in most of my tests than any one had ever done. This could have just been the officer blowing smoke for all I knew.
But he said that I had my CHOICE of any MOS (military occupational specialty) with the exception of Officers candidate school, due to my not having gone to collage.
I made 4 choices with Mechanics being my #1 choice, What happened was after I finished my basic training I got all 4 choices and a few others as well. I received my GED just before I graduated from Basic. A full year before most of the kids I had started school with. Over the next almost 6 years I spent so much time in one school or another, between those times I went to more than 20 countries on TDY (temporary duty) sometimes to places and doing things that even today I can and will not put to words, Much of this never was officially put in my military 201 file for reasons that need not be discussed, but often I was conscripted to give some very advanced training to some already well trained personnel.
Here is a list of some of the schools or training classes I attended while in the Army
Basic training @ Ft Polk La
Advanced infantry training@ Ft Polk La
Advanced wheeled tactical vehicle repair @ Ft Polk La
Basic Line-man and wire stringing@ Ft Polk La
Advanced long range reconnaissance sniper school, @ Ft Polk La
Advanced Field construction engineering@ Ft Polk La
Advanced Heavy vehicle towing and recovery @ Ft Polk La
Basic& advanced chemical and biological field decontamination @ Ft Polk La
Advanced field & heavy artillery repair @ Ft Polk La
Total time spent at Ft Polk La 1 year total time in schools 1 year @ 12 to 16 hours per day
Total times assigned temporary duty from Ft Polk to south
The Longest time I was away from my duty station; I’m not at liberty to tell.
While stationed at Fr Polk my first permanent duty assignment was as a wheeled vehicle mechanic in the 64th Transportation training brigade for the first 5 weeks, then the sergeant that ran the welding shop of the motor pool received orders to
One of the