# What was the best thing in the engine room other than yourself ?



## Derek Roger (Feb 19, 2005)

I believe it was the scrap box full of goodies . Always full of bits of plate ; pipe ;angle iron ; threaded rod ; brass bar ; copper stuff ; bits of lead ; old shafts and bearing bits plus all the swag we could ac***ulate after a shore squad had left and a bonanza when in drydock with all the stuff left lying around by the lazy workers !
Those were the days when we had a proper workshop with lathe ; drill press ; shaper ; power saw grinder etc. Also good burning and welding kit .

Many a time the "scrap box " kept the job running .


In todays world it seems if they don't have a spare the sh1t hits the fan and planes fly frantically around trying to deliver their needs .
Most engineers today while very smart and great at their job do not have the skills that a lot of the old timers who had served apprenticeships ashore had ; there was always someone who could machine or fit or weld. Plus we had Chippy who was usually a shipwright to help keep things going .

Happy Days ; One mans view . Derek


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## A.D.FROST (Sep 1, 2008)

The EXIT!(Jester)


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## AlbieR (May 18, 2007)

The stool under the blowers when on a Red Sea passage in August.


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## Engine Serang (Oct 15, 2012)

Ah Derek, what you're talking about is the "Handy to Have" box of bits in the corner of the ER Workshop.
May I say you're a bit out of touch, don't you realize that Cadets trained under STCW have no need for bits of pipe, brass bar or broken valves. As for a lathe, they got a couple of hours on one during Workshop in 1st Year. But no better men in ticking a Checklist.
Rant over, back to your question, the best thing was always my Junior. We would work together, sweat together and after the Watch he would listen to my ramblings whilst sharing a few beers. 
Modern management speak call it Mentoring.


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

I still have that box of assorted items, it's called a shed.


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## Engine Serang (Oct 15, 2012)

What the hell are you doing with two broken pressure gauges, six foot of aluminum angle and half a roll of rubber insertion in your shed. Where is the lawnmower?


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

Engine Serang said:


> What the hell are you doing with two broken pressure gauges, six foot of aluminum angle and half a roll of rubber insertion in your shed. Where is the lawnmower?


I have a coil of greasy Hemp, a coil of Serpant 'C' and the ever reliable Hockey Stick bearing scraper amongst other sundry items which will come in handy I am sure one day(*))
Lawnmower? The Gardener brings his own, my days of kneeling down and getting dirty in the garden are over, I can get down easy enough it's the getting back back up that's the problem.


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## dougiedunbar (Oct 17, 2016)

the chilled water machine


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

chadburn said:


> I still have that box of assorted items, it's called a shed.


I have too but it'll only be a shed when Sister-in-Law visits and makes me clear it out there.


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

Black oil and graphite?


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## spongebob (Dec 11, 2007)

The cups of tea


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## loyalhelper (Aug 16, 2008)

The old kettle with fresh water in tasted like nectar


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## Dartskipper (Jan 16, 2015)

In the small craft I was involved with, we also had a "box of useful bits." Spare Jabsco impellers that could be reused if absolutely necessary, even cut down to fit a slightly different size pump as a "get you home" fix. Gaffa tape was always useful, as well as a good assortment of Jubilee clips of all sizes. 
But best of all was a hot meat pie wrapped in foil, fresh off the exhaust manifold.


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## spongebob (Dec 11, 2007)

dougiedunbar said:


> the chilled water machine


What's next Dougie, air conditioning!


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## Fergie (Mar 3, 2007)

I found the workshop lathe to be a God send. Had G clamp frames cut by shore gang, Machined square thread shafts and nuts, swivel on end of thread, all contact areas case hardened and had welded into 2 sizes of clamps. Although a metal turning lathe i did a number of wood turning items also from exotic Asian grained dunnage. All this only possible once a 3 or 4 legged steam job steadied on a 20 or more days voyage. And the turnings cleaned up by Asian storekeeper


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## Derek Roger (Feb 19, 2005)

The only trouble I had with the box of goodies was on our motor ships ; we had 2 Chinese fitters and they were always raiding it for bits of brass etc. with which they made some beautiful models . One a 3 throw fully operational steam engine ; they also made the boiler out of 1/8 '' plate riveted together .
No pressure gauge or relief valve ; worked like a charm ; Scotch boiler type fired with wood soaked in diesel .

PS The Chinese also made us many fine meals served in their mess including sharks fin soup ( caught at Sand Heads anchorage )

Happy Days Derek


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## NINJA (May 8, 2006)

Thistle bond.


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

Dartskipper said:


> In the small craft I was involved with, we also had a "box of useful bits." Spare Jabsco impellers that could be reused if absolutely necessary, even cut down to fit a slightly different size pump as a "get you home" fix. Gaffa tape was always useful, as well as a good assortment of Jubilee clips of all sizes.
> But best of all was a hot meat pie wrapped in foil, fresh off the exhaust manifold.


That sounds a bit more like the radio room shelf with the "used but good" (Don't be silly - not the meat pie) - usually the essential word missed off.


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## twogrumpy (Apr 23, 2007)

The engine room lift.
Even though I was the one ho had to repair it.


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## stehogg (Mar 14, 2016)

*Best thing in the engine room apart from me.*

On one particular Petromin tanker,without doubt, apart from the inevitable scrap box,bags of cement and gravel kept us safe for months as we constructed cement boxes on a very regular basis,rotten salt water pipes abounded until the next drydock!Happy days?(==D)


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## MWD (Aug 15, 2005)

Your relief, as he reached the bottm plates from the engine room stairs!

MWD.


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

NINJA said:


> Thistle bond.


Memories of R.S. "Queen City" known as the "Thistlebond Queen".


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## ART6 (Sep 14, 2010)

even after all these years I still have my scrap box in my home workshop. In it there are the odd brass valves that were thirty years ago part of a dismantled central heating system, together with some bits of 15 mm copper pipe and some compression fittings without any nuts or olives. There are the steel shafts from the fireside sets that my wife kept buying during her compulsive buying phase because they are handy bits of eight-mil steel rod, and the plastic cutting boards that she so loved which make excellent washers and spacers for one of my projects. The odd bits of electrical equipment that have failed are stripped down and usable bits slung in the box in the expectation that they will come in handy one day. And just as in my days at sea, where the rule was never throw anything away because it might save your life one day, I have to get a bigger box every two or three years. But it is surprising how many times when I have needed something to fix a computer or repair a pipe, there has been something in my scrap box that will do.
Number one son laughs that dad never throws anything away, but when he comes to me to ask if I might just possibly have an obscure computer cable or a valve that would fit his oil central heating boiler, I can gloat! [=P]


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## BobClay (Dec 14, 2007)

My box is called the 'attic.' Odd bits of wood. Suzuki bike parts. Computers from the 70's and 80's (still working, just a bit veteran.) Various bits of wire and cables. Left over bits from plumbing jobs. There will come a time when I wont be able to open the attic door anymore. 
I think I'll start on the garage then. (Smoke)


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## howardws (Aug 15, 2009)

This little chap (16mm/foot) includes a vertical boiler from a bath sealer cartridge, cab sides and engine main casing (at the front) from a central heating zone valve cover, copper pipe chimney and lots of other little bits from my scrap box.


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## Bill Morrison (May 25, 2013)

The forty five gallon drum cut in half. It was not only used for dobbing, when leaving the Kiwi coast with a few sacks of crayfish tails in the brine room as you came on watch, Tennent lagers in and crayfish tails out. Into the drum with them and steamed them through your watch. One of my best memories of being at sea lying on deck on a lovely night in the Pacific drinking Tennents and scoffing the crayfish after your watch.


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## JohnBP (Mar 27, 2008)

Best things... brass scrap ac***ulated to sell. Potatoes for cooking on the exhaust pipe.... cant think of anything else...


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## avonbank (Feb 10, 2007)

Eight Bells.


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## ianrobson36 (Dec 9, 2012)

Standing under the vents from topside hoping to get a cool breeze.


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## NINJA (May 8, 2006)

Avonbank said Eight Bells, what about Four Bells Rum?


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## chadburn (Jun 2, 2008)

JohnBP said:


> Best things... brass scrap ac***ulated to sell. Potatoes for cooking on the exhaust pipe.... cant think of anything else...


For those who remember, Fire Bars were a good source of revenue for those who deserved it.


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## TonyAllen (Aug 6, 2008)

saying hello to the guy who was going to replace you on a rust bucket 
I would think


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## William Clark8 (Feb 15, 2013)

avonbank said:


> Eight Bells.



Sorry my reply had already been posted by Ninja


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## KEITHMAR (Oct 8, 2012)

Greetings ,Bill, Did You share?.K:M:


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## Micky Bodill (Jan 3, 2015)

On steam ships it was the tea made with expired lifeboat conny onny, and had been brewing all the previous watch. cured many a headache.


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## ART6 (Sep 14, 2010)

BobClay said:


> My box is called the 'attic.' (Smoke)


That is my bulk storage box, for things that are too large to go in my workshop box. The last time I looked there were three old computers, two defunct printers, two CRT monitors, and two large tea chests containing just about every sort of cable known to mankind. There is a bag on imperial nuts and bolts (since you never know nowadays when you might need a 3/4 inch Whitworth bolt). 

There are half a dozen electric motors salvaged from old washing machines etc., because they will be used in a project sometime in the next fifty years, and you never know when you might need an old Hoover vacuum motor even if it has been in the attic for the last twenty years.

There is a chest of drawers containing zip disks, 1.4MB floppies, and even a box of the ancient 5 1/2 inch floppies in their paper cases. I don't any longer possess a computer with the necessary drives to read them, but I do have drives in another drawer and so, one day when time permits, I will install them in a modern computer and read all the things I did in the nineteen-eighties, in IBM word processing software that cannot any longer be read by any modern software.

There is a shelf that contains many of my notebooks from technical college from the age of thirteen, and more containing my notes when I was studying for my tickets. A box of my grandfather's tools (he was a master craftsman) -- old planes, chisels, saws, scribers and other unidentifiable things that would be no use at all in this mechanised age, but parting with them would seem to be sacrilege, because I inherited an oak bookcase that he had built with those tools a hundred years ago -- and in that there is a story in itself. There are even things that I was forced to make in my early teens in technical college -- angle clamps, centre finders, tee squares - all made by hand.

There is the space reserved for our children's toys, because my wife could not bear to throw away our children's childhood. So we have a wooden pull-along dog with paper sides, lots of bears in various states of decomposition, and a rag Rupert Bear who has been hung by the neck from a rafter because there was no suitable space for someone of his standing. Sadly, I think he is dead.

So now, in my declining years, I really must give some thought to my bulk scrap box if, apart for any other reason, my house insurance requires me to state that my house has never been subjected to subsidence. Yet I worry that it is slowly subsiding under the weight of its attic. I, therefore have a plan which, like all of those of governments, will be accomplished when funds permit. I am slowly clearing out the attic and passing over to #1 son all of those things that he will find of value in the years to come like half a dozen electric motors and a bag of Whitworth bolts. After all, he has a bigger attic than I have.

That is how it should be -- pass down through the generations the wisdom and frugality of one's forefathers,

If nothing else, it gets rid of a lot of junk! [=D]


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## BobClay (Dec 14, 2007)

I remember having a massive clearout a few years ago. I filled my old Volvo Estate to the brim with stuff three times and drove down to the recycling centre carefully placing each item in its correct skip.
What I don't understand is when I went back up into the attic afterward ... it still seemed full !!! (EEK)


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## Les Gibson (Apr 24, 2004)

ART6 
All great posts, I have things in my shed (mostly dead) and I can't even remember what they are for.


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## binliner (Apr 19, 2006)

We are continuously talking about down sizing but thought of clearing out my precious stuff in the garage stops me every time, enough bits to plumb or rewire a house which I know will never be used,but part of me says you never know.


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## Clifford Cocker (Jan 21, 2008)

As somebody who is old enough to have suffered hours of trying to get an evaporator to make some boiler feed/cooling water and spending hours chipping salt off the coils, the finest thing was the Atlas "Rain Maker"


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## BobClay (Dec 14, 2007)

I dud that when I was an engine room rating ! I found a cold can of Tennant was the best thing ever then (we were allowed 2 cans a day in Shell.)


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