" I would also love to see the "Iron Worker" that you could use to punch holes in a 60"+ diameter, 5/8th thick smoke box shell, and what super man is going to hold it up there while you do it...come on!"
The super man you are searching for is called a "crane", look it up "Mr. Know it all “steam kid". All decent boiler shops have one. You mark the holes first, then punch them undersized, so if you are off a little you don't screw everything up, then you would ream them to size. Its called thinking ahead, like using a crane would be, mankind has been doing that for a few generations now. I would make a 30” radius press jig to hold it flat and not warp the dia/rad and hold the part with the crane, & rotate to each marked punch position and punch it that way.
"I" know nothing, HA! You have no idea what I know, but more importantly, you have no idea what you don’t know and that is what you should be most concerned with.
Let me give you an example;
Would you be the official "bondo kid" at Marlins? You know, the flunkie who’s job it is’ fills all the voids and inclusions that are in every iron casting that shop makes? Marlin's only good castings come from other foundries, but he tries and tried to make decent castings and just can’t do it.
No wonder it costs so much, it gets redone about 30 times before its even close to right and it never meets industry standards. The customer pays for those. He over extends himself, like you just did. Do what you “know” you have enough info/expertise to accomplish, and try to be self-critical in the areas where you might be talking about (hint) or doing something that it outside of your area of expertise. The most difficult part of learning, is learning what you don’t know so you can learn it. Sophomoric is a good term for that, you my enthusiastic young combatant are still sophomoric, but so is Marlin and he’s no youngster. I do admire your effort though, you have promise, but be careful who you defend!
I'll not comment about Mr. Butler, because I don’t know him or his work. I was just commenting about the other guys mention of Mr Butler’s work, which I have not seen, so that is for others to comment about. I’ll accept El Coke’s opinion of the guy, I just wanted to make sure everyone is not giving Mr Butler a little more break than he might deserve, that’s all. I’m tried of an attempt being good enough, I want to see good work and a professionals ethic, not an “I’m going to make a @#$%& load of money here attitude and a half-assed attempt” , which I’ve seen way too many times already. You really should have not gotten offended about the Mr. Butler comment or questions, its the Marlin comment you can get offended about, but I’m about to back that one up. Here is one small example for about Marlin’s work,
Put a Magnet on the left side cylinder castings of that 5/12 scale K-28 that used to sit in Marlin shop, and see it it says "iron" or "bondo", I know the answer, as I saw those casting being machined and they were pathetic!!, and this was for "his" locomotive, and it was the best one he could get! I would have scrapped those castings over and over again if they kept looked like that, but not Ol’ Marlin, nope he uses them and he uses them on parts he sells! I would hate to be the guy that bought them. He never produces industry standard castings, never has that I saw, and you should be able to expect a minimum industry standard. Marlin knows this because I protested about that to him. But he has his group of cronies’ that he trained and raised and you guys keep on defending him in the rail community. He seems like a nice guy, but he’s not. He seems helpful, but he’s not, he is a salesman and he plays the part of the doddering old honest guy, but he not that guy.
I used to think that Marlin meant well, and was just in a no-money market, heck steamers are really a non-market. After talking to him about those castings once I came to the realization that he is in “survival mode” and he’s either not playing with a full deck and he is never going to be able to account for his actions, or he is playing with a full deck and he’s a thief. You decide, which is it? Letting Marlin at our toys is like asking for bad work and asking to pay too much.
The longer his shop exists the more credibility it gets and that is a bad situation if nothing has improved, and it was his judgement that was the problem back then, so how could that have gotten any better. You guys should stop defending Marlin before you get one of his “boys” that was a real insider to start commenting and that might really wreck his business!
