Inside The Airstream Factory [video]

Inside One of The US’s Last Pencil Factories

According to the NY Times –

A pencil is a little wonder-wand: a stick of wood that traces the tiniest motions of your hand as it moves across a surface. I am using one now, making weird little loops and slashes to write these words. As a tool, it is admirably sensitive. The lines it makes can be fat or thin, screams or whispers, blocks of concrete or blades of grass, all depending on changes of pressure so subtle that we would hardly notice them in any other context.

Even as other factories have chased higher profit margins overseas, General Pencil has stayed put, cranking out thousands upon thousands of writing instruments in the middle of Jersey City.

Continue reading HERE.

Alternate link HERE.

Inside A Steel Mill [pics]

Wired posted some photos of a steel mill from photographer Ricky Rhodes.

Check out the pics HERE. (the page may be slow to load)

The Last Audio Cassette Factory [video]

The Ingenious Design of the Aluminum Beverage Can [video]

How The Tesla Model S Is Made [video]

F3T – Ford’s Rapid Prototyping For Sheet Metal [video]

Think The US No Longer Makes Anything? Think Again – Chicago Is The Fake Vomit Maker To The World

CollectorsWeekly reports –

Have you ever stopped to contemplate the existence of rubber barf? It opens up enough philosophical quandaries to make your head spin. Who would ever think of such a thing? Why would he feel the need to manufacture it? Fortunately, Stan and Mardi Timm, the foremost experts on famed novelty company H. Fishlove & Co., have the answers to these vexing questions. The couple even got a personal tour of the factory where “Whoops,” the original fake vomit, is still churned out. Chicago gag kingpin Irving Fishlove, son of the company’s founder, loved nothing more than a good prank—particularly when the prankster gets a laugh at the expense of his unwitting target. So when presented with the first prototype of latex puke in the late 1950s, he howled with laughter and declared that he loved it.
“It is a secret recipe,” Mardi says. “But I think we know what’s in it. It’s got foam pieces cut up, and it’s got latex. But the actual recipe, nobody outside the company knows that.”

View photos and continue reading HERE.

 

 

GOP Says Outsourcing Is Good – Let’s Outsource The Republicans

CBS reported –

Republicans, with help from a handful of Democrats, used a filibuster to block a measure that would have used the tax code to punish big companies that shut U.S. manufacturing plants and move the jobs overseas. Current tax law allows companies to benefit in a variety of ways when they move jobs overseas, including deducting the costs of closing American plants. The proposed bill would have raised taxes on companies that move manufacturing jobs out of the country and provide a tax incentive for companies that decide to bring them back.

Continue reading HERE.