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Walked into the old mill shop in Hastings and the floor still had the hammer marks
Honestly I took a drive up to Hastings last weekend to poke around the old industrial part of town and ended up in a mill building that got turned into a craft market. Most of it was candles and overpriced jam, but there was one corner where they left the original concrete floor alone, and you could still see these shallow dents all over it from where a trip hammer used to sit. The guy running a booth nearby said his grandad worked that shop back in the 40s and that the whole floor had been rammed earth packed down with slag before they poured the slab. It got me thinking about how we all fuss over anvil stands and sand beds in our garages now, and these guys were just working whatever dirt the building came with. I probably stood there a good 20 minutes tracing the marks with my boot before my wife dragged me off. I snapped a few pics if anyone wants to see them, but it also made me wonder what tooling they had that never got saved. Anyone here ever worked in one of those old shop buildings or know if any of that gear ended up in a museum somewhere?
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the_ben6h ago
Those shallow dents in the slab are the real record of the shop, and the packed earth with slag under it is the part that gets me. I used to figure old shop floors were just rough and cheap, but hearing how they laid that dirt to soak up the hammer shock makes me think they knew more about setting up a shop than half the guys building fancy stands today. Most of that gear got scrapped for the war effort or hauled off when the buildings changed hands, so the dents may be all that's left. Post the pics, I'd like to see how deep they actually go.
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