Milam Sheet Metal shop photos
Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2021 4:20 pm
My friends, I worked at Milam Sheet Metal for 13 years. I started out as a true newbie and learned all I know from two great tinsmiths/sheet metal mechanics; Mr. Milush "Milton" Valka and Charles Moraw, who bought the shop from Valka.
We did a wide variety of work; from making Christmas cookie-cutters, to fabricating and installing all the ductwork in a huge supermarket. We put on hand-formed, on the job site, standing seam galvanized roofs using methods and tools that were unchanged over hundreds of years. We hung galvanized gutters with each joint soldered and still made stove pipes and double-flues for wood stoves. As the only sheet metal shop around, we did just about everything one could with sheet metal and many custom, one-off projects. It was interesting work most days. One of the toughest jobs was building sheet metal water cisterns. We built them upon orders and it took Charles and I a full day to turn out a 6' tall x 6' wide, two ring cistern. I built several myself with the assistance of a helper. Back in the day, I had forearms like Popeye!
Some of our tools had patent dates from the late 19th Century. We heated the shop with a 3' woodstove and cooled it with a few fans blowing that hot Texas air. Roof and attics got mighty damned hot and there were days when I was too tired to eat lunch, instead laying down for a rest before tackling them again and I was in my natural prime then and much of a man in those days.
I thought some members might enjoy seeing some scanned photos from "back in the day". I learned so much but I made little money in our small town. But the experience and knowledge was compensation in their own way.
Some inside shots of our shop:
A new cistern, just finished:
A huge 8' cistern with 3 rings (36" each). We had to assemble it outside since it was too tall for the shop ceiling. I'm on the far right in ths pic, my boss Charles stands in the middle and our helper Derek on the left:
Derek painting the inside of that cistern with a tar-like coating:
Yours truly spraying duct liner adhesive on duct work for a Safeway supermarket in which we installed all the ductwork. It was our biggest job ever and Charles hired two other helpers for it:
The Cameron cotton compress had a building done that connected two existing other buildings. We installed wide galvanized valleys at the connecting points. I soldered all of those joints with Derek tending my soldering coppers. Here's the framework:
In this shot , you can see our propane burner for heating those big copper soldering irons:
We also installed panel metal roofs as well as fabricating standing seam styles. This is one of our roofs on top of a building in Rosebud, Texas. We did it in the middle of summer and started work before the sun came up, having to get off the very hot metal by early afternoon. I recall that we could see the Rosebud bank's sign with the temperature readout from that roof. We would watch the number going steadily up to 100*F +. Hot days for sure!
Charles Moraw can be seen soldering joints in the far corner:
Charles was a very devout Catholic and he was asked to build a copper-clad cross for our local hospital, owned at the time by the Catholic Church. Both my children were born there. We subbed out the angle-iron frame work and then covered it in copper sheet. The hospital changed hands several times over the ensuing years and the cross was removed. It has now been reinstalled at the Church cemetery here in Cameron. Here's a photo taken for the local newspaper, with Charles and I standing by our creation:
And just for grins, here I am playing the fool for a photographer friend of mine, circa 1978:
We did a wide variety of work; from making Christmas cookie-cutters, to fabricating and installing all the ductwork in a huge supermarket. We put on hand-formed, on the job site, standing seam galvanized roofs using methods and tools that were unchanged over hundreds of years. We hung galvanized gutters with each joint soldered and still made stove pipes and double-flues for wood stoves. As the only sheet metal shop around, we did just about everything one could with sheet metal and many custom, one-off projects. It was interesting work most days. One of the toughest jobs was building sheet metal water cisterns. We built them upon orders and it took Charles and I a full day to turn out a 6' tall x 6' wide, two ring cistern. I built several myself with the assistance of a helper. Back in the day, I had forearms like Popeye!
Some of our tools had patent dates from the late 19th Century. We heated the shop with a 3' woodstove and cooled it with a few fans blowing that hot Texas air. Roof and attics got mighty damned hot and there were days when I was too tired to eat lunch, instead laying down for a rest before tackling them again and I was in my natural prime then and much of a man in those days.
I thought some members might enjoy seeing some scanned photos from "back in the day". I learned so much but I made little money in our small town. But the experience and knowledge was compensation in their own way.
Some inside shots of our shop:
A new cistern, just finished:
A huge 8' cistern with 3 rings (36" each). We had to assemble it outside since it was too tall for the shop ceiling. I'm on the far right in ths pic, my boss Charles stands in the middle and our helper Derek on the left:
Derek painting the inside of that cistern with a tar-like coating:
Yours truly spraying duct liner adhesive on duct work for a Safeway supermarket in which we installed all the ductwork. It was our biggest job ever and Charles hired two other helpers for it:
The Cameron cotton compress had a building done that connected two existing other buildings. We installed wide galvanized valleys at the connecting points. I soldered all of those joints with Derek tending my soldering coppers. Here's the framework:
In this shot , you can see our propane burner for heating those big copper soldering irons:
We also installed panel metal roofs as well as fabricating standing seam styles. This is one of our roofs on top of a building in Rosebud, Texas. We did it in the middle of summer and started work before the sun came up, having to get off the very hot metal by early afternoon. I recall that we could see the Rosebud bank's sign with the temperature readout from that roof. We would watch the number going steadily up to 100*F +. Hot days for sure!
Charles Moraw can be seen soldering joints in the far corner:
Charles was a very devout Catholic and he was asked to build a copper-clad cross for our local hospital, owned at the time by the Catholic Church. Both my children were born there. We subbed out the angle-iron frame work and then covered it in copper sheet. The hospital changed hands several times over the ensuing years and the cross was removed. It has now been reinstalled at the Church cemetery here in Cameron. Here's a photo taken for the local newspaper, with Charles and I standing by our creation:
And just for grins, here I am playing the fool for a photographer friend of mine, circa 1978: