Sunday, June 6, 2010

A Machinist Apprentice

Yesterday Uncle Stan was visiting our house and we talked about his dad. Apparently, John Zvolanek was a Machinist Apprentice in Czechoslovakia for a while, which could possibly explain why he left his Russian birthplace and moved West. Is this what he was doing in Stare Ransko, southeast of Prague?


On some of John's documents, he had listed himself as a "machinist" which I thought was an error because I knew he was a car mechanic. What I didn't realize is that he was able to make car parts too.


Uncle Stan had memories of his dad creating very precise machine parts with a metal lathe. And although his dad died when Stan was very young, Stan remembered using his dad's metal lathe to make fake nickels. A practice that John Z. told him was not only wrong, but cost more in materials to make than an actual nickel!


Both Grandpa John and his brother Jim were also blacksmiths.
I think about them when I'm welding and creating moving-gear wooden art sculptures, called "automata."


Do I have a genetic love of all these things? Maybe this explains why I also love to collect old foundry molds -- big wooden sprockets and cogs used as patterns for big machine parts.
Sure wish I'd met them both...