Bjay said:
The stakes and mandrels came from a school about ten years ago.
:lol: You guys have made me remember our Sheetmetal teacher Mr White, or "Whitey" as we called him behind his back in the mid 70's. A grumpy 50 something lard ball whose jolly smile would just as easily give way to a scowl as he reached for the strap to give someone the cuts. Whatever his problem was, prostate or missus at home, nobody knew, or maybe he just didn't like kids after teaching in a rough boys school for all those years.
He always came into the classroom, got his "Good Moooo-rning Mr White" from all of us in unison, and then before even marking the roll he would go over to the burners to light them- big round steel furnaces with half a dozen or so holes around each, with little ledges that the soldering iron handles would sit on while the copper would heat in the gas furnace, ready to start soldering once he had called the roll and told us all how clever he was.
Except this morning one of the kids went over and opened the gas tap as we saw him in the distance walking towards the room. Snickering with cries of "Not too much, he'll smell it!", the kid gave it a good dose of gas that must have pretty much displaced all the air in the furnace, and then he shut it off. Whitey came in, got his "Good Mooooo-rning Mr White", went straight over to the furnace and opened the gas, bent down with a match through one of the holes, and Whoooooooofff!! half a dozen long flames shot out of the holes for what seemed like seconds, one of them taking Whiteys eyebrows with it. He bellowed out an expletive, and stormed off to his office slamming the door behind him. As he did so the glass fell out of the big clock above the door and it smashed on the floor, causing us all to burst out laughing. He flew out of the office holding his strap and asked us if any of us thought it was funny. Needles to say by then we were all straight faced and we were
oop: ing ourselves.