Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles .243 vs 25-06

Not quite as hard core as you guys, but I can remember a time when I�d go home at night burned through my leathers and seeing puddles in my sleep. I don't care how much milk ya' drink nor whether its sweet, buttermilk or chocolate. Ya' burn on galvanize grate for 15 hours and ya' get galvanize poisoning. I sure used to hate that.
Hopefully ya�ll won�t make to much fun of an old fart reminiscing about days gone by when he could do a day�s work.

I moved away from my parents house when I was 19. My mother was a hard shell southern Baptist. I wanted to chase women, smoke dope and surf. I had enough respect for my parents that I didn�t want to do that at their house. This was around 1969. In 1976 I had just got back from a couple months surfing in Mexico. My dad had invested with another man in an Industrial supply business. Unfortunately for him and his partner, the Dago that they put in charge of running the business was a crook. He managed to pay himself, his wife, father and two kids for 18 months. When the bills for material would come in he would just toss them in the corner. Started out with my dad and his partner having the money, and the Dago, the experience. After 18 months the Dago had the money and my dad and his partner had the experience. IIRC my dad had invested about $100K. He proceeded to fire the Dago and buy out the partner. When I got back that summer, one of my brothers was working there trying to liquidate the stock or return it. Problem was that the Dago had not set up any distributorships. He�d buy surplus and junk that had been stolen out of the plants. Tons of [bleep] that was worth $.02 per pound as scrap iron. My dad said he would pay me to help my brother Steve for a while and liquidate the inventory. I was between semesters at Sam Houston State U, was broke on my butt and could use the money. I�d been there a couple weeks and I�d come in all hung over on a Saturday morning. The phone rang. I picked it up. Guy on the other end of the line identified himself as being with one of the local petrochemical companies and said he needed 300 tray bolts out of 304 Stainless, he needed them by Monday and he did not care what it cost. Jay had bought a couple old Landis tangential threaders and had a manual chop saw for making small quantites of b-7 studs. When Jay got ran off, the guy that ran the threader got let go also. I had a rolodex with some phone numbers and a yellow page phone book. By 10 AM that morning I got ahold of the machinist, found a steel supply company that would open up and sell me the bar stock. I got $500 or so from my dad. Went and picked up the bar stock which was in 10� lengths in my Ford Falcon as I did not have a truck. I brought it back, worked with the machinist all day, all that night and till early the next morning. We threaded the bar stock. Cut the threaded stock into 3� lengths, Used an old drill press and chucked up endmills to mill a flat side down to the minor diameter so the bolts wouldn�t turn in the tray washers, and chamfered them on a bench grinder. IIRC we got a couple hours sleep that night and finished about 8AM on Monday morning. I charged $10 a bolt or $3,000 total. I paid the machinist a couple hundred dollars and delivered them myself. I said to my self, this is the business for me.
During the next couple years, I bought more Landis threaders, DiAcro and Pedrick benders. When I wanted to learn how to weld, I bought welding machines. I could do stick, MIG TIG, and innershield. Bought tool room and turret lathes when I wanted to learn how to run those. We used to use that old sulfur based cutting oil in the Landis threaders. I don�t know how much you know about stainless steel, but if you don�t have a chipbreaker, it don�t chip, just one long continuous gummy thread. Eight thread per inch is 7 strands continuously wrapping around a piece of bar stock. Would reach in between the chuck and the tuning die head with a glove on and pull those stainless winding out. Somehow I did that for years and never lost a finger hand or arm. I can�t tell you how many nights I�d go into our little office to sleep for a couple hours. I�d lay a piece of plywood down on the floor. I�d get up a few hours later and there would be an outline of my body where the oil had drained out of my clothes onto the plywood. We used to joke when folks came in to our shop that the coffee was �Seaport� cause we were so po� that with Seaport we could run the grinds twice. Our original shop was a home made building of pipe and 2 x 2 x �� angle iron. WE had a gumbo/shell driveway. Folks really had to want to do business with us. When it rained, four wheel drive pickups wold get stuck. I had an old lull brick lift that I�d use to pull them out with. The tire were head high. One time I didn�t see a guy�s Datsun 240Z that he parked next to it. Those Lull�s had front and rear steering. I flat rolled right over the top of his �Z� car, tore the driver�s door off and crushed in the roof. Bummer. That building was also in the flood plain. After about an hour or two of a hard rain, water would start flowing from the northwest corner of the building toward the southeast corner. We�d stack pallets two high and run the threaders with plastic gloves and lightning striking all around. At that time we had an old manual band-saw that was always on the blink. I�d keep the cover off the box that held the switch to control the power. One time I was standing on a pallet running the small landis threader and a lightning bolt hit either the building or close b. I swear I saw an arc of fire jump two feet from that fuse box. That time I shut it down and went inside the office. Within 3 years I paid off the $180 K indebtedness, bought a couple acres on SH-225 in Pasadena, put up 21,000 square feet of building. Rented out 10,000 SF and had 11,000 SF of Mfg space with 24� eave heights. By time I was 31 I was rockin� and rolling. We could thread and cold bend bar stock up to 4� diameter and did what I called trash fab. I would not do business with local, state or Federal entities cause they paid too slow and had too many regs. My inside sales guys were instructed to never say no. They were to ask �when do you need it. Our motto was "tell us what you want, and we�ll give you what you need�
Early on we got hooked up with a maintenance company. Two partners. One had been a wheel with General Electric, the other was a millwright by trade. We�d been doing business with them for a couple months. They would call and tell me what they wanted. I�d tell them to let me get back with them on a price and delivery. I�d then call around find the stuff, buy it and mark it up about 30% over my cost. One day Lennard, the partner who�d been a wheel at GE called and said. Geedub, I like you boys and your go get it attitude, but I want you to listen real good. I�d hate to have to find someone else to round up all this [bleep], but I can. I sez to Lennard, what�s the problem. His answer was, Geedub, do you know what �cost plus� is. I was so green that I did not know, but didn�t admit it. I guess Lennard could hear the trepidation in my voice, so he basically said, If I didn�t start charging more, he�d have to go somewhere�s else. Those were the days. LOL Of course I was a fast learner. We had a long and mutually profitable relationship.
I figured out early that there was price, quality, availability and service. You could not get all 4. I never competed on price, usually the other three. I charged what I called �rape plus 10%� If they weren�t screaming about the price, then I wasn�t charging enough. Didn�t have any salesmen out. Word of mouth. Seems it wasn�t long word got out that there were three brothers in Pasadena that did what they said, and you could take that to the bank. Didn�t look back for almost 10 years. I�ve lost most of the photos I took during that period due to �life happens�. But here are a few���



Hard to believe I once had a flat stomach and a full head of hair.



The guy in the picture as about 6� tall. Shell chemical called up in a panic. They were to be pouring concrete for a new dock on the Houston Ship Channel and had forgot to order tie downs. That�s 2-1/2� 4140 Chrome moly steel. IIRC each one was 17� long before bending. IIRC 2.5� round bar weighs 16.69 lbs per lineal foot. IIRC, 4140 steel was around $.75 per pound back then and came in 20� lengths. So about $250 per stick. I bent those. Measure twice and then cut/bend. What�s the old saying, never enough time to do it right the first time but always time enough to do it over. No way, not when it was coming out of my pocket.



Made these assemblies for Brown & Root, and like most things one remembers, there is a story�.
I had trained m sales guys never to say no. Always ask what you need, how many and when. Typical answer from a purchasing agent back then was �if I needed it tomorrow, I�d call tomorrow. Yeah buddy.
We�d been doing quite a bit of business with B&R at the South Texas Nuclear project. The PA we�d been doing business with had just got transferred to the Pasadena field office from Freeport/Bay City area. New guy at STNP. We get a call from the new guy. Down there everything had to be stainless, monel, or Inconel IIRC. Evidently they were having a problem with steel control panels corroding and lasting a shot time. I don�t remember whether it was salt spray, electrolysis or both. So the guy calls and order 400 stainless steel bolts with nuts, washers and lockwashers. He also orders 100 panels, say 10� x 12�. Had to be fiberglass or plexiglass. This was around 1980, no fax machines, most everything was done on a verbal P.O. with the written PO mailed a couple days later. Well we jump through 10 hoops to get the panels cut and the fasteners in house. Do this over a weekend. Charge a healthy price. About a week later I get a phone call from this newbie saying he only order 4 bolt/nut/washer/lw assembly and 1 panel. Wants to restock the other 99. When the written PO arrives you can see where it was originally written in pencil the quantity we shipped. He had erased that and wrote � 1� over the 100 and �4� over the 400. [bleep] pretty much hit the fan as this was prolly a $2500 order. I ended up restocking as a courtesy to my friend who�d just been promoted to the Pasadena field office. Rock forward a couple years and B & R orders 24 of the assemblies pictured. Those were 2" thick plates that had to be drilled and tapped for 2.5� and 3� galvanized double end studs. IIRC the price was about $1,000 per assembly complete. I made sure I got a written PO on this one. We made them up, met the delivery schedule and delivered them. Almost a month later I got a call from my friend the B&R PA that was now a pretty big deal saying that they F�d up and orderd the assemblies wrong and could we restock them. I had my brother Steve call up the Main office of Brown and Root on Clinton Drive in Houston and talk with their accounts payable girl. We told here we were in a bind and that we would be glad to extend a 5% cash discount if they could write a check today. Well they loved that. Five percent on $24k. So while I was engaged in a delaying action Steve went and got the check and cashed it. I was at the Brown and Root field office doing a song and tap dance trying to stall when he called me. I proceded to tell my friend the PA, remember those 100 fiberglass panels ya�ll ordered a while back I had to eat. Well, guess what, we just cashed the check on those 24 bolting assemblies so you can stick them where the sun don�t shine cause they are yours for sure. Needless to say it was a while before I did more business with that B & R Field office. Not only that but I never did another job for B&R that I did not have a written PO in hand before I started.








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