Snips,for Tin

I like my hands. I like my hands even more when there are a very special kind of scissors in my fingers grip, that I still have all five fingers on both hands are still miraculously intact, especially after over 40 years of working. Tools are the extension of our Bodies, that sometimes just don't have the strength to do what we set out to do. We have come a long way from the dark ages when the guillotine was invented and used to decapitate our fellow believers, by putting the shears of the Blades in the stocks to a positive, comfort bringing to the houses, offices Recreation fitness centres and shops we work worship, play, shop, learn and live in! These scissors are the tin snips, that still employ the shearing action of their cloth or paper cutting contemporaries! They are an extension of mine and others hands, allowing my eyes to guide my fingers and hands cutting left red, or right green handles, yellow for both, and the bigger ,heavier bull snips for up to 26 gauge metal sheeting, in a true straight line, along ascribed line on the tin being cut!

My chisel, or another tool is used along with my tin bashers hammer near the previously scribed line. This is so I can get the point of my snips into the hole to cut and open up the hole while using my other hand to pull the cut metal up, going in the natural direction of my reds or greens. I let the snips cut in a spiral until it is big enough so that I can comfortably and safely start cutting along my rectangle or square. All this is to open up the furnace side for a furnace filter box, the supply air duct, or the cold air return duct. This is all about keeping our homes and all the previously mentioned buildings warm inside when it is cold outside, or cool inside when it is hot outside.

Let me share this part with you. I am not a tin basher, but a Journeyman Plumber, gasfitter, steam fitter. I Once remember when I was taking a gasfitter upgrading course, which I really was not required to do, but to increase my pass mark from trades schooling. That it was suggested to us to go after the Sheet meatal, tin bashers ticket, which stuck in my mind along with so many other possibilities in the whole of this very specialized industry. Please do not take the view that I am not happy with plumbing, but most of my apprenticing years was installing Hydronic heating, some gas fitting and very little in the service industry. Servicing furnaces was something that some, but not all gasfitters did, and if we remembered what was taught, it could go a long way in trouble shooting furnaces, hot water heaters and stoves when they failed. And they do.

Us plumbers don't really make a lot of noise when we are working. Tin snips are a required tool in the box. They mostly don't move from there very much, unless we are cutting hanger strapping. Tin snips are quiet also. Sometimes I like making some noise when I am working, to ventilate Pun intended for anger management or express appreciation of our great looking ladies when exiting the office buildings, OOOOps, I said that out loud, didn't I?

I can make noise, like here's a yarn of it: I have heard that some fittiers, would depress the lock on the switch of a grinder (the dead-man switch), then place it so it wouldn't damage anything while sneaking off to do something else, so that it would sound like they were productively working!

I digress, but a flat piece of tin or even the ducks, when shaken can kinda sound like thunder crashing! I take delight in bangin square ducks together!! Could you call that my vengeance for when the laborers would take some three quarter inch copper tubing at heights above in a downtown office building going up, blowing it like a trumpet, because allumininium electrical conduit just did not resonate in sound the same way from the tent or fifteenth floor! I think the ladies going for Lunch was the direction of the trumpeter laborer dude!

Back to the tin supply air duct. There is little to no sound as the snips cut the metal, up to the corner. Of which there are four, requiring the opposite colored reds or green, depending on the direction they lead, keeping the square or rectangular corner square, and accurate with NO rounding. that can cause a whistle when there is air flowing through. Heated or cooled conditioned air.

There are notches to be cut for the furnace filter box that are sometimes cut with notching snips that cut a "V' into the metal to make folding tabs. But I don't have them, so I use my lefties to cut one half of the "V" and the righties to cut the other half, making them at one inch intervals. This becomes my joining method to the furnace blower compartment, which are easily folded or hammered over top of the opening securely.

I was doing sheet metal in the down years when the Journeyman rate was cut in less than half, so I thought if I'm only going to get paid an apprentice rate, why not start again in this area? so I did. Something was still in the back of my mind. I was barely married two years at that time, and our second child was due . I had to do something to cover house payments, providing for my family. We had bought a foreclosed house. And you know who , would be putting in a new gas line and furnace by the time the renovation was done? and Yes, I did it right, I had help. Funny thing though, I never did get signed to that apprenticeship.

Even going through trade school, I couldn't help but come into contact with apprentices working in sheet meatal while I was getting MINE in our area. Even Autobody mechanics was also being taught at this campus, another area where tin snips are a definite requirement IN THE TOOL BOX, pouch. One guy went through each intake 3 times! I thought and asked why? He complained to me despondently:" lotsa math!" Like we don't get it designing drainage systems for Houses? Sizing Gas lines correctly? I realize there is a lot of Geometry involved. Even airflow at pressures are definitely and accurately have a need to be calculated to engineered design specifications to deliver the right amount of conditioned air to every airspace within the system.

I think there might have been another reason for his very regular attendance at the campus. It could be an equation involving economics. If he had my mindset of taking the occupation in High school , with reduced hour requirements as a very beneficial credit, I wanted my Journeyman ticket as soon as I could get it with the accompanying 20 Percent raise in pay! Some apprentices become known as Career, in that the longer they take , the more they are employed, and could also have another underlying issue: FEAR . FEAR of taking on the response ability. Fear of Being accountable. As and when journeyman even, we are required and expected to give answers, to solve problems. I digress again, something the editor may want to consider in his or her editing scissor, snips!

Then continuing, with the steam-fitting, pipefitting trade we have been introduced to the steam tables, brought to us by the late Great Albert Einstein! I have worked in coal fired power generating plants and coal combined with natural gas, doing both maintenance and new construction. There are stainless steel Braided gas lines for the pilot burners as small as six inches in inside Diameter

Yes, there's sheet metal and the need for bigger tin snips, We call them brakes and shears, a great progression from the Guillotines! These however, I thank our God of creation are designed to cut various thicknesses of metal, not to take and lop peoples heads off! Just fingers, and hands, and that mostly a result of distraction or just not knowing that your finger/hand was still there when you or someone else hit the button. Did I mention I still have all My fingers and both of my hands? My secret comes later on.

The air just for combustion is now about an eighth of an inch thick, with the duct size now in feet by feet dimensions! Kleft foot right KLeft foot flight foot, no I mean 12 inch increments by 12 inches, requiring mechanical hoists and cranes to lift into place, if you know what I mean. The Flu stacks are very High, circular, tapering to the top like a romantic table candle, sometimes well over 100 feet, with their air scrubbers taking out fly ashes and sulphurous vapors, carbon Monoxides and other pollutants.

Can you imagine the size of duck for bringing in Just the air for the Giant burners on these ten story superheated steam power generating Boilers? All this air is pre heated before being Blown into the Burner Chamber at very high pressures and velocity? I can if I wanted to but I have not the engineering education for either! That's why we have professional engineers and artificial Intelligence to assist us in our requirement for supplied electrical power at point of use. That being another area I really think I should have pursued but didn't, as I had a young family to provide for. not seeing where finances would come from, and that in itself is another story.

There is One thing I did try to do, was to get into the refrigeration, air conditioning trade several times after the stint or gig with a couple Hvac companies. Supplying , installing and servicing roof top units is an excellent business. As mentioned before, this time trying to get in on the Trade union door. This prove a dead end: I WAS Told go get work through the non union sector. The Oilfield dehydration plants was an " in the door and back out" a year and a half later. The heating part that was utilized was a process that instead of flaring sour gas to the atmosphere, it was used to heat the space by a glowing element heater and or pressurize regulator and sensing transmitters. the occupation of Instrumentation mechanic and calibrating was, is and remains to be an area to go into and would have been intellectually challenging, another story to be presented another challenge time. But why am I still unemployed in this time?

Did I mention that the original " Name" for "tin snips" is "aviation Snips?" Surely, that certainly is part of this story, in a very big way! I haven't dealt with it much, but lets see what you can do with it , where, why and how aviators snips is a fast way to shape, build and patch holes in the wings or fuselage of any size aircraft, and why you will definitely see them on the Space ex craft, the iNternational Play Station, or the interplanetary space ships soon to be headed to mars, as we head into: the " Fourth Industrial Revolution"! Unless of course we have a Roboshear/snip, multitool!