Trustee From the Toolroom (37 page)

This was wholly strange to Keith; he could make no useful comment and he said so, though he found it full of interest. He watched a couple of Douglas firs about a hundred and fifty feet tall as they were felled, watched the branches being lopped off by men standing on the trunks working with axes. He tested the edge of an axe and found it as sharp as a razor. He watched the bulldozers pulling the logs down to the lake and rolling them in, to be made up into rafts by the boom-men and floated down the river to the log pond at the mill.

The work seemed to him to be excessively dangerous, but on inquiry he found that the Hirzhorns were not worried by accidents in the forest cuts. They said that the accident rate was lower than in the mills, possibly through the average age of the men being lower; most of them were unmarried anyway, so that accidents made less trouble. Keith thought that the monotony of work in the mills might have something to do with it. In factory work when men get thinking of other matters than the job in hand accidents are apt to happen, but out in the forest where no two jobs were ever quite alike men kept alive to the chance of a tree rolling over and crushing them.

They drove back to the helicopter in the truck and took off for home. They landed at the Seattle-Tacoma airport as cars on the main highway were beginning to put on their lights, changed into the Cessna waiting for them on the tarmac, and landed on the strip below the house at Wauna a quarter of an hour later. The car was there to meet them and take them the few hundred yards to the house, Sol Hirzhorn being forbidden to climb hills. An hour and twenty minutes after leaving the forest cut a hundred miles away they were seated with cups of tea and cookies before the fire in the great living room at Wauna.

Julie had come back to Wauna from the head office in Tacoma in the car, and had brought with her a great packet of plans and specifications from Ferris Hydraulics, a file of correspondence, and a sheaf of photographs. She had laid these out upon the table in the middle of the room; she showed them to the men and retired to her own office. When they were warm and comfortable before the fire Sol Hirzhorn said, ' I'd like you to know the way things are at the Flume River, Keith.'

' I'd like to hear it, Mr Hirzhorn.'

The old man paused in thought. ' It started over a year ago,' he said. ' I got an invite to attend a demonstration of rockets at this place Cape Canaveral in Florida, Thor and Atlas and things like that. Well, I don't know anything about rockets or satellites or space vehicles, or what you call them, and not much interested either, but an invite like that don't come very often and I was taking Sarah to Palm Beach, so I decided to go. I didn't understand much of what I saw or what they told me either, but one thing did interest me. They had one of these things lying horizontal on the launching base while they serviced it and did things to it. Then they had to lift it up into the vertical position for fuelling and firing. It was eighty or ninety feet long, and they put it up vertical with two great hydraulic jacks, one on each side, all in next to no time. Those jacks must have been thirty feet long, the extension, I mean, and I never saw H jacks go so fast.' He paused. 'Well, you know how it is. You know at the first sight it might be useful in the business but you don't know what it is you've got in mind. So I asked the officer showing us around who made the jacks, and he said, Jerris Hydraulics.' He paused again.

'It wasn't till the middle of the night I thought that if those jacks could push at that speed they could push our carriages in the mill just the same, 'n cut out every chain.

I don't suppose you ever saw a man caught up in a four-inch roller chain that runs over a sprocket, Mr Stewart?'

'No,' said Keith.

'Well, you don't want to, either. I got in touch with Ferris Hydraulics, and Chuck Ferris he came down with his engineers, and left them with us for a week. I guessed it would be best to try it out in the one mill for a start, and we picked on the Flume River. Well, what they proposed was that we didn't stop at the carriages but put hydraulic motors on the saws as well, worked, off the same hydraulic mains, from the same plant. Well, that's attractive in some ways although it's a big increase in the costs. I don't care about high-voltage electric motors in a sawmill much more than the chains. Six hundred volts can kill a guy quite quick, and you take an eight-foot bullsaw, that'll take close on 200 horsepower. You get a saw break and hang up and things are apt to happen.' Keith nodded. 'Well, with the hydraulics they just put a sort of safety valve across the mains and no one's likely to get hurt, no damage to the motor either. I don't care about high-voltage current in the mill, any more than the chains.

'Manny's got the drawings and the specifications on the table there,' he said.' I wondered if you'd care to take a look at them.'

' I'd like to very much,' said Keith.' I don't know that I'd be able to help much, you know. It's not as if I was a consulting engineer.'

'No. But you've been around a bit. I'd appreciate it if you'd look the scheme over.'

Keith crossed to the table with Emmanuel and they started to discuss the scheme, while Sol Hirzhorn sat on in his chair before the fire. They started on the plan of the mill, then turned to the Ferris drawings and the specification. It was all straightforward enough to an engineering mind, a well prepared scheme, easily comprehensible. It was good, too; Keith Stewart liked the look of it. It was one which would remove most of the apprehensions which had troubled him that morning in the mill. It would certainly make the work safer.

'What happens to the waste heat?' he asked Emmanuel at last.

'What's that?'asked the mill owner.

Keith turned to the specification. ' The power going into the hydraulic system is the brake horsepower of these diesel motors, the prime movers,' he remarked. 'Six thousand five hundred horsepower.'

'That's so.'

'That's the power going into the mill when everything's going at full blast. Well, of course, nothing works at 100 per cent efficiency.' Emmanuel nodded. 'I don't know what the efficiency of these hydraulic rams would be,' said Keith thoughtfully. 'The motors might be 90 per cent. Suppose we guess that as the figure for the whole mill - ten per cent power loss. That means that when the plant is going at full blast, 650 horsepower has to be got rid of as waste heat.'

'Seems a lot,' said Emmanuel.

'I don't know that it is,' said Keith reflectively. 'Not in the scale of the whole job. I suppose it goes into the hydraulic fluid. I saw something about that.' He turned over the pages of the specification. ' Here it is. Maximum temperature of the fluid, i io° F.'

'That's what these intercoolers are for, I think,' said Emmanuel. 'They've got them stuck around behind each motor and each ram, with water from the river running through them. Here's the drawing of the water mains and pump.'

'I see.' Keith took the drawing and studied it. 'That's all right. This is the drawing of the intercooler ... In two sizes.' He studied the dimensions. 'It's not very big . . .'

' I wouldn't know,' said Emmanuel.

Keith smiled. 'Tell you the truth, I don't know either.' He sat in thought. ' How hot does it get there at the mill ?' he asked. ' Outside, I mean - on a fine day in summer?'

'Oh, it gets quite hot,' said Emmanuel. 'The guys outside, they work in pants and singlet. Eighty degrees, I'd say - maybe eighty-five. It's right down in the valley, so you don't get much wind.'

' That'd be the inlet temperature of the hydraulic fluid

by the time it got from the power plant into the mill,' said Keith thoughtfully. ' It must go in at round about air temperature.'

' I guess it would,' said Manny.

Julie brought the tray of drinks into the room, and the two men crossed over to Sol Hirzhorn by the fire. ' How did you make out ?' he asked.

' I'd like to think about it just a little bit,' Keith said.' The trouble is, I don't know much about hydraulics, and they know just about everything there is to know-There are one or two things I don't understand, but that's probably my fault.' He paused, and took a drink. ' I'd like to read that specification through quietly after dinner, by myself.'

'Do that,' said Mr Hirzhorn. 'I'll be down in the workshop starting work on the gearwheels.'

'Not after nine o'clock you won't,' said Julie firmly. 'You've had quite a day.'

Keith settled down after dinner at the big table in the middle of the room, while the old man retired to his workshop and Emmanuel sat in a long chair before the fire smoking a cigar. He read the specification through twice and did a little figuring on the back of one of the drawings. At the end of it, when Julie went downstairs to flush Sol Hirzhorn from the Workshop, Keith was as much in the dark as ever. He got up as the old man came into the room.' I'm sorry,' he said simply, 'but I still don't understand these intercoolers. I'd say they were too small and they should be about three times the size. There's almost certainly some factor here that I don't understand.'

'Could be,' said Sol Hirzhorn briefly. He turned to his son. ' Manny, how would you like to take a run up to Cincinnati with Mr Stewart, show him the hardware 'n talk to the engineers ?' 'When, Dad?' 'Tomorrow, I guess.'

Emmanuel reflected for a moment. 'I could do that,' he said. 'Go in the office first and catch the United plane midday, Flight 183, thirteen zero five. Gets in around nine o'clock their time, sleep in the hotel 'n see them in the

morning. Back here next night. We could do that if you like, Dad.'

' I'd be kind of happier, now this has been raised,' the old man said. ' If we don't get it cleared up we might be worrying about it all the time.' He turned to Keith. ' Could you do that for us ?' he asked.' It seems asking rather a lot.' 'I'd be very pleased, Mr Hirzhorn,' said Keith. He smiled. ' I'd be very glad of the chance of walking through the Ferris works.'

Sol Hirzhorn turned to Julie. 'Better call United now and make the reservations. Make them for the return flight too.' . ' Okay, Mr Hirzhorn.'

The organization went smoothly into effortless action. Keith spent the next morning in the workshop going over all the details of the clock with Sol Hirzhorn. At twelve-thirty the Cessna was waiting on the airstrip to take him across the water to the airport. At twelve-fifty the pilot escorted him to the booking hall and handed him over to Emmanuel. Ten minutes later he was sitting in the DCy, and at nine-thirty that night he was in his bedroom at the hotel in Cincinnati over 2,000 miles from Wauna.

He had a morning of absorbing interest in the Ferris plant next day, and finished up with considerable admiration for the design and manufacture of the hydraulic motors. The morning ended with an office conference presided over by Chuck Ferris, a small, dynamic red-haired man that Keith had no difficulty in recognizing as Dawn's father. The chief engineer was present with one of his aides, a Mr Monnington.

Keith said he didn't quite understand the intercoolers. 'That's all right,' said the chief engineer patiently. 'The cold river water comes in here from the main, picks up heat, and comes out here, and back into the river. The oil comes in here, and goes out here, a whole lot cooler.'

Keith said he understood that. 'What puzzles me is the heat transfer balance,' he said. 'I take it that the hydraulic fluid goes into the intercooler at no degrees? That's the maximum temperature you work at ?'

"That's so,' said the chief engineer. 'In the case of the biggest motors that would be the outgoing temperature.'

'And it goes into the power generator about eighty degrees?'

'More or less.'

Keith stared at the drawing, still puzzled. 'Well, whatV the temperature rise in the cooling water, then?'

The chief engineer glanced at his aide. Mr Monnington said, 'Fifty degrees. Fifty-five under extreme conditions.'

Puzzled, Keith said, ' It can't go higher than the temperature of the oil, or it couldn't do any cooling. What's the inlet temperature of the water?'

' Fifty degrees,' said Mr Monnington. Emmanuel stirred, but left the talking to Keith.

"That seems on the cold side for summer temperature,' said Ke_ith.

' It's general in these rivers,' said the engineer. ' Maybe you don't get the same conditions in England. This is snow water, made by melting the eternal snows upon the Glacier Peak.'

Emmanuel leaned forward on the table. 'That's baloney,' he said candidly. 'Flume River doesn't rise from Glacier Peak. Flume River rises in the Troublesome Mountain, not much higher than 5,000 feet. All the snow's gone from Troublesome by the end of April, most years.'

He paused, and then he said, 'Tell you sump'n. I went fishing up the Flume two years ago, in August, ten or fifteen miles above the Eight Mile Cut. Trout fishing. We didn't catch anything because the water was too hot, the fish wouldn't stir. So there was only one thing to be done, see? We stripped off, 'n went in for a swim. Real warm it was -I stayed in half an hour or more. I guess the water in that river, in the Flume, the one we're talking of-I guess it was seventy-five degrees or more, that day.'

There was a dead silence in the conference room of Ferns Hydraulics, Inc.

Sol Hirzhorn took his call to Chuck Ferris next morning in Julie's office because he didn't want Keith Stewart to hear what was said. The girl started the tape recorder as he lifted the instrument and stood back in the room.