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From the Web: Death of manufacturing greatly exaggerated; entire city to be built on stilts

  1. How can you tell it’s an election year? Politicians turn out in droves to tour manufacturing facilities and, in doing so, garner favorable press.

    Among the more recent such events receiving media coverage is that of Ohio state Auditor Dave Yost — up for reelection — who toured the Hickey Metal Fabrication plant in Salem, Ohio. Commenting on his visit, Yost said, "The death of manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated." He noted that during the past four years, "I've had the chance to get around the state ... we've still got world-class manufacturing here in Ohio."

    Hickey is doing well. It employs approximately 150 people, including about 50 recent hires, at its four manufacturing plants and just added a second shift last week. More hiring is expected with a 12,000-sq.-ft. expansion at the Salem Parkway facility. According to company President Leo Hickey, the company is looking for another 15 to 20 welders, CNC machinists and laborers, and two management-level people.

    The danger in these visits and the ensuing coverage lies in the possibility that lawmakers could come away with the idea that U.S. manufacturing is more robust than it really is. And while Ohio may have some world-class manufacturing and business is booming at Hickey, the state overall isn’t doing so well economically. In businessinsider.com’s ranking of state economies, Ohio ranks No. 35.

  2. New York City’s Hudson Yards project, reportedly the biggest real estate development in U.S. history, is not being built on land. Instead, it will float above the streets of Manhattan on an advanced network of steel beams, concrete, and tunnels.

    Proposals for the Hudson rail yards’ development have come and gone for more than half a century, with idea proponents such as Sonny Werblin of the New York Jets and George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees, each of whom lobbied to give their teams new homes on the Hudson. In the mid-2000s, Mayor Bloomberg campaigned to construct a giant sports complex at the yards. All proposals failed, until now.

    The Hudson Yards city-within-a-city scale exceeds the Freedom Tower and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, and according to fortune.com, what’s not well appreciated is the fact that the city is being built not on land, but on elevated platforms.

    ”It will sit on a gigantic roof fully covering one of the world’s busiest railroad yards, and the trains will keep running, uninterrupted, below the new mini-metropolis just as they have for decades. Building this city on stilts is the most challenging engineering project in the annals of Manhattan real estate since the construction of Grand Central Terminal at the dawn of the 20th century, and one of the most advanced in all of U.S. commercial real estate development.”

    It’s a challenge as well to the fabricators providing 90-ton, custom-made steel beams. “’We had to rebuild an entire facility in Virginia to build the columns, including retooling their welding equipment,’” said Jim White, who is supervising the entire platform project. Only half-a-dozen cranes in North America, and only one in New York, now deployed on the site, are big enough to lift them. The workers call the monster crane “Joanie.”

  3. Working women soon will outnumber working men in Canada, where, today, they comprise approximately 48 percent of the labor force. They already outpace men in completing post-secondary education. However, they still lag in certain areas of education, training, and employment, notably skilled trades.

    Column used to support Hudson Yards platform.
    Photo courtesy of Fortune Magazine.

    ”These are among the occupations that offer pathways to good jobs and the kind of middle-class standard of living that now seems to be out of reach for most young adults lacking any type of post-secondary qualification. According to Statistics Canada, working women make up just 3 to 7 percent of enrollments in registered apprenticeship training programs in the construction, electrical, industrial/mechanical, metal fabricating, and motor vehicle and heavy equipment trades.

    ”Employers, educators and unions need to do more to encourage young working women to consider skilled trades occupations and to create a supportive environment for those who choose to follow this route.”

  4. Following his passion, Dave Byron, Little Suamico, Wis., sold a powder-coating business several years ago and now pursues full-time his passion for cutting, bending, shaping, and pounding metal to build iconic cars from scratch.

    "’I have always loved the classic lines of early Indy race cars, older Ferraris,’" said Byron, who has created reproductions of quarter-midgets and has been working for a client on a post-World War II-era Crosley T bucket with supercharged engine.

    Byron works with Baileigh Industrial, a Manitowoc, Wis.-based supplier of metal fabricating equipment. He recently demonstrated what could be accomplished with a power hammer at a metal shaping seminar for 40 students from around the U.S.

    ”’In the past, a lot of cars were formed with just a (hand-held) hammer,’ said Byron, 53. ‘This machine has taken a lot of the physical labor out of it and we can work much quicker.’"

    Acknowledging that the multi-hammer has brought the ability to not just stretch but shrink metal into the 21st century, Byron said, it still is “you against the metal,” and he’ll have to stay in shape if he is going to continue fabricating into his 80s, which is his goal.

  5. There are iconic cars and then there are rat rods. Some of us may not be familiar with the latter, but David Hubbard, Vancouver, Wash., knows his rats.

    Competing in Rat Rod magazine’s 2014 “Great American Blue Collar Build-off,” Hubbard and his wife Jessica have accepted the challenge to build a rat rod for $3,000 or less in a span of 30 days, then drive it 300 miles from St. Louis to the “Redneck Rumble” near Nashville, Tenn.

    How do rat rods differ from other hot rods? For one thing, they are much cheaper. Hubbard noted that some hot-rod builders spend more on paint than he’s putting into his whole car—a lot more.

    Incorporating used auto parts required a lot of cutting and fabricating, which left some shiny seams showing where newly cut metal met original equipment. The Hubbards rusted out the fresh metal with bleach and vinegar.

    They soon will be on the road towing the car to St. Louis before they drive it to Tennessee Sept. 19.