We cheat a little this week with a video from the past, drawn from the really great Prelinger Archives (available at Archive.org).

The video is “Industry on Parade: A Pictorial Review of Events in Business and Industry,” produced weekly by the National Association of Manufacturers.
(0523 PA8202 Industry on Parade: Outgoing Cargo, Workhorses of the Harbor, Refresher Course)

All break-bulk, not a container ship in sight.

Play/Download

(8.4 MB) 64Kb MPEG4
(19 MB) 256Kb MPEG4
(110 MB) MPEG1

Thanks to the Internet Archive for making EVERYTHING available.

So do you know what the chief flavoring ingredient is in most pretzels? No, not the beer your drink while eating them. It’s malt (or as the case may be, malted corn syrup). And it’s a sodium-solution baked on that gives the pretzels that nice brown coloring.

Phil Bernas, technical manager of Herr Foods, guides us through the Nottingham, Pa., plant in this week’s Cool Stuff Being Made, explaining all the twists and turns and extrusion into metal dies of pretzel-making.

Pennsylvania is the land of snack-making, and Herr’s got its start with potato chips in 1946. From the company history:

The Herr Foods story began in 1946 when 21-year-old James Stauffer Herr bought a small potato chip company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for $1,750. In 1947, the business moved into a vacated tobacco shed on the Herr family farm. As he learned more about the business, Jim Herr developed new and better cooking processes and a delicious snack food became even better. As demand for Herr’s^® Potato Chips grew, so did the company.

Today the family-owned Herr’s employs 1,500 people who manufacture and distribute more than 350 snack products nationwide.

Thanks this week and most weeks to Pennsylvania Cable Network for sending the underlying video

America’s national security combines man and machine, or as in today’s feature, personnel and projectile. In this week’s “Cool Stuff Being Made” video, we get a tour of the Chamberlain Ammunition manufacturing facility, contract operator for the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant. Robert Mitvalsky, Operations Director, walks us through the manufacturing of a 120 millimeter mortar round for the Army — the process goes from smelting to machining to coating to testing.

PCNTV, which provides the video, tells us more about the plant:

During the Vietnam War, this Scranton facility produced almost every 175 millimeter shell used by the Armed forces. Today, the ammunition plant specializes in 155 millimeter and 8-inch projectiles.

The Scranton plant was established in the early 50s by the U.S. Army in the former rail shops of the Erie Lackawanna Railroad. The plant was equipped with steel billet heating furnaces, heavy forging presses, heat treating, machining, and painting equipment. Since its inception, it has been operated under contract with the U.S. Army, by private contractors.

As you plan your next hunting trip to Montana or Mongolia, please remember to start in Adamstown, Pennsylvania, home of Bansner’s Ultimate Rifles — manufacturer of highly accurate, custom-made, big game rifles.

In this week’s video, Mark Bansner highlights some the detail-focused smithing, from finishing the barrel to manufacturing the stock to assembly.

We won’t pretend to know much of anything about precision rifles, but this still strikes as pretty darn impressive — the description of the “Ultimate One” rifle:

Bansner’s Custom S/S Action - Spiral Fluted Bolt Body

Lilja Precision Stainless Steel Barrel Fluted by Bansners, Your Choice of Caliber and Barrel Contour.

Jewell Trigger Tuned to 2 1/2 lbs.

Bansner’s “Slim -Line” Muzzle Brake with Thread Cap

Talley Custom Q.D. Bases and Rings (1″ or 30mm)

ALL Metal Coated with our Durable Polymer ‘Ti’ K-Kote Metal Finish

High Tech Specialties, Inc. - Fiberglass Synthetic Stock, Fully Pillar Bedded, Free Floated for

Unsurpassed Accuracy, Pachmayr Decelerator Pad Installed and Fitted to your Length of Pull, Your

Choice of Custom Textured Paint. Stocks available with or without cheekpiece or “Sheep Hunter” model.

To the fine people at Pennsylvania Cable Network, who supply the videos, we say, “Thanks and good hunting!”

First organized labor argued for the Employee Free Choice Act by claiming union membership is the path to a better life. Card check would simplify the creation of a union. And that was the argument.

Realizing that they were getting hammered by the truth that the Employee Free Choice Act would eliminate secret-ballot elections, labor unions then turned up the rhetorical heat. When someone pointed out that card check would destroy the secret ballot in the workplace, labor responded, “Liar! Liar! You’re a liar!” And claim that card check would allow the unions to still call for an election, even though in any realistic world organizers would never demand a vote they might lose. (This Shopfloor post explains why.)

So when ads started running in Minnesota about the Senate candidate Al Frank’s support for killing secret-ballot elections, the Minnesota DFL (the Democratic-Farm-Labor Party) filed a complaint with the Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings (Star-Tribune story). The party claimed the ads by the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace — to which the NAM belongs — and the separate Minnesotans for Employee Freedom violated state law against disseminating false campaign material.

But the DFL didn’t even bother trying to argue why the ads were false. They just claimed it.

Administrative Law Judge Barbara L. Nielson has now dismissed the complaints. From her memorandum accompanying the order of dismissal to the complaint against CDW.

For purposes of a prima facie determination, the Complainant must detail the factual basis to support a claim that the violation of law has occurred. Here, the Complainant has not alleged with any specificity why the statements at issue are factually false. The Complaint merely asserts that the statements are false and “contrary to the facts,” without providing any further information.

The dismissal of the complaint against the Minnesotans for Employee Freedom is available here.
CDW’s news release is here.

Labor strategy summarized: Deflect, deceive, bluster, abuse, litigate.

Lose.

(Hat tip: Michael D. Brodkorb)

When a personal interest and home business grows, and grow, and grows…

What does Christmas look like to you? It was the late 1960’s and Joyce Byers, an amateur artist with a degree in fashion design, was disappointed in what she was seeing in the stores: aluminum tinsel trees with garish blue lights. She was looking for holiday decorations with warmth that showed respect for timeless traditions and her own memories of Christmas.

“A scrap of fabric, part of my mother’s old fur coat, some hair from the kids, a coat hanger, some plaster and paint. The first ones were made with simple things that I had around the house,” says Joyce Byers. “I dressed them in plaids and made them cheerfully singing because that reminded me of Christmas.”

And today…

Together, the family now oversees a team of 180 artisans in Pennsylvania who handcraft those same creations that started out on the dining room table many years ago. And although the Carolers are sold in thousands of fine gift stores around the world, the company still holds to its starting roots: producing a quality product, at an affordable price, and dedicated to serving its customers and the community in the spirit of Christmas.

That history comes from the company website of Byer’s Choice of Chalfont, Penn., a manufacturer of handcrafted gifts. In this week’s Cool Stuff Being Made, Bob Byers, Jr., company president, gives us a tour of the production process, manufacturing that helps create limited-run gifts with a lot of personal, handmade touches.

Time to be ordering for the fall!

Thanks, again, to the good people at PCNTV for the underlying video.

OK, let’s start with the basics as explained by Herb Johns, product manager for Lafarge of Lafarge North America: “Cement is not something that you walk on. It’s not something that you drive on. That’s concrete. Cement is a powder that you mix with water to make a paste to glue sand and stone together.”

In this week’s episode of Cool Stuff Being Made we see what goes into making cement, starting at the quarry and going all the way to the loading of the trucks — three minutes to load 25 tons. There’s lots of processing in between — crushing, etc. The element that’s often overlooked but is clearly essential in the manufacturing is energy…heat to process the rock. Thirty percent of the fuel used at the Cementon, Pa., facility comes from scrap tires, which hold the equivalent of two gallons of oil a piece. And a lot is used: 33 million tires a year.

As Lafarge’s website explains: “Lafarge is the largest diversified supplier of construction materials in the U.S. and Canada. We produce and sell cement, ready-mixed concrete, gypsum wallboard, aggregates, asphalt, and related products and services. Our products are used in residential, commercial and public works construction projects across North America.”

And, yet again, our many thanks to PCN, the good people at Pennsylvania Cable Network who supplied the original video.

* Speaking of energy, from a Lafarge news release datelined Bath, Ontario:

Today, Lafarge North America Inc., the country’s largest cement manufacturer and Performance Plants Inc. (PPI) a Kingston-based biotechnology company, announced a multi-year agreement to grow and develop clean energy biomass grasses and woods for use as fuel at the Lafarge Cement Plant in Bath.

For Lafarge, the joint project is part of the company’s ongoing public commitment to reduce its carbon footprint including the use of renewable and local fuel alternatives.

“The future of the environment, our business and the communities we serve depends on reducing the need for fossil fuels to run our operations,” said Robert Cumming, environmental and public affairs manager at the Lafarge Bath Cement Plant. “We’re proud to team up with Performance Plants who has extensive knowledge in biomass technology.”

From earthenware to ceramics to a full range of stoneware, tableware and giftware, the Pfaltzgraff Company has nearly two centuries of high-quality manufacturing behind it. Like so many Pennsylvania companies, Pflatzgraff began in the minds and muscles of German immigrants, and today…well, here’s what the company website says:

The Pfaltzgraff family immigrated to the United States in the early 1800’s and set up a small potter’s wheel and kiln on their modest twenty-one acre homestead in York County, Pennsylvania. The brand has remained in York ever since. The earliest Pfaltzgraff market was defined to be “as far as you can get with a horse and a wagon and then get back home the same day.” Today you can find Pfaltzgraff products in department stores, gift and specialty stores and our own Pfaltzgraff and Farberware factory stores from coast to coast. In addition, Pfaltzgraff products are available on this website, and through our popular catalogs.

In today’s “Cool Stuff Being Made” tour, Fred Botterbusch, vice president for manufacturing, takes us from clay to cup at the Thomasville facility, one of four manufacturing operations in the York, Pa., vicinity. For cups? It starts with the handle.

To our friends at the Pennsylvania Cable Network, we say “Danke” for the underlying video for this factory tour.

And to the all the good people at Pfaltzgraff, we say good luck and best wishes on your bicentennial. 2011 is just a few years away.

Changing, adapting, improving and innovating is a constant process — and constant demand — for many manufacturers, and Matric is a prime example of this principle. The company Matric Limited began in 1971 with a customer-oriented philosophy focused on providing quality products for radio hobbyists and technicians, has repeatedly expanded its facilities and products to manufacture electronic circuit boards, keyboards and electronic remote devices.

In this week’s “Cool Stuff Being Made” tours, the company’s sales manager, Kirk Byerly, walks us through process of manufacturing an electronic circuit board — including the use of a variety of high-tech machines run by skilled employees. The company makes products to order, e.g., printed circuit boards - electronics wireless products, fieldbus products, software and 3D modeling.

The company’s website is www.matric.com, and there’s a good company history here.

Have we mentioned what a good group of people there is at PCN, the Pennsylvania Cable Network that provides the videos for this series? Well, they are.

This week we head to Broomall, Pennsylvania to climb the spiral staircases of “The Iron Shop,” an 80-year-old family business and the leading manufacturer of spiral staircase kits. The New York Post did a nice feature on the company this year, so allow to excerpt.

Spiral staircases don’t only look good, they also save space — and can even make you money.

So says Allen Cohen, President of The Iron Shop, which sells do-it-yourself spiral staircase kits online.

Cohen also runs M. Cohen and Sons, which creates glamorous staircases for companies, residences and shops like Gucci’s new 56th Street and Fifth Avenue location — a grand concoction of bronze, steel and glass that debuted this month.

For an average Manhattan loft, a spiral staircase can cost as little as $2,000 and take up 32 square feet.

That’s a lot less than the average 80 square feet that a regular straight, boring staircase takes up.

By saving 48 square feet, Cohen calculates, you’ve just increased the value of your apartment by $48,000 — since the average Manhattan apartment runs $1,000 a square foot.

We see part of the Gucci stairway in today’s video. Allen also gives us a tour of the facilities,  showing us the incredible power of compressed water (and garnets) to cut through metal, as well as the high-quality efficiency of robotic welders. The Iron Shop also builds its own custom machinery to make the metal products to the customer’s demands. But still, forging and old-style riveting are used, so you get a mixture of Old World practices and modern technology.

To the Pennsylvania Cable Network, we say THANK YOU for shooting and sharing the video.