One of our biggest problems in the late 70’s had been finding qualified help to meet demand. We had two full shifts going, and our parking facilities were stretched to the limit. Because we were running two shifts in the production and assembly areas, there was a perceived need to be able to react quickly to any emergency, whatever it may be. There were many entry points (doors) on the buildings (especially plant #1). If an emergency occurred, how would the police or fire department know which one to use? Where to enter the building? To solve this problem J&L numbered all the entrances into the building, and educated the workforce on how to contact the local authorities in an emergency, using these numbers. Also, most everyone was required to take a basic first aid / CPR course, which was taught over at the Tech Center by qualified instructors. I still have my booklets from these classes.

Because all the shops in the valley were busy, so were the local businesses who supported them. At the time, if you wanted to go to lunch during the workweek, you better have a reservation. The more upscale places included The Hartness House and The Paddock (now closed). The Hartness House at that time was the prime location for lunches, especially if a vendor took you there (and paid for it!!). Another popular location was Penelopes (now closed). Downstairs was McKinleys, a more informal place with a bar and tables. These two businesses were actually one, and were connected by a stairway internally (McKinleys is where Sheries is now). The Gaslight was a bar and restaurant in the plaza, now an insurance agency (by the footbridge). In its later incarnation it became Alabis, before closing. Always popular because of its location next to the bowling alley. We shouldn’t forget The Duck Inn, which was located where The Oriental Palace is now. It was a little less formal dining / drinking/ dancing place, and a locals favorite. Down near I91 was Howard Johnsons restaurant and motel. They had an attached bar called The Black Bear, where serious drinking and dancing took place. And of course there were many outlying businesses that are now closed (The Hind Quarter in Chester, and The Chopping Block in Proctorsville as examples).

As an aside, the location where Sheris is now (and was McKinleys) was a Grayhound bus terminal when I came to town in 1965. It was just a small area down in the cellar, not nearly as large as it is now. Steve Green and his crew excavated many yards of dirt to create a restaurant which would become McKinleys. And the handcrafted pine woodwork was quite a sight when it opened in 1975.

Nobody who lived thru these times would forget Al Pinders, and his clothing store, Furmans. Al was the go-to guy for anything that the office workers needed in the clothing line (with free alterations). I would guess there are hundreds of suitcoats and thousands of ties hanging in closets locally. I know I have a few.

In the early 80’s we had a significant member of our engineering team retire. Harold Noyes had been with the company for many years, working his way up thru the ranks like we all did. His position when he retired was as the Engineering Lead Man for the TNC lathe product line. I had been a member of this department for quite a long time, and had advanced to the position of Senior Design Engineer, so I was asked if I would like the Lead Man position. Because I was familiar with our people, and product line, and had worked closely with the other department heads, I accepted.

The Engineering Lead Man position was basically as an assistant to the TNC lathe engineering manager. At the time this was Dave Keniston, who had held this position for several years, being promoted in from the programming department. Dave had been my boss right along, so this was nothing new. Basically, my job would entail reviewing all projects that were entered into the TNC lathe department, and sitting down with Dave to go thru time estimates for each. Then we would prioritize these jobs, and pick who we thought would be able to tackle the actual design work. Dave had a wall mounted chart in his office that we used to list all our available people and their workload. We had perhaps eight or ten engineers on staff at this time, each one having certain talents that might fit the task at hand. Sometimes these folks were busy working on other projects, and it might be a few weeks before they could “take hold” of a new assignment. In that case, I might do some preliminary groundwork to give them a “head start” when they finally were available. I might even be able to pick off little pieces of these jobs, do the layout and design work, and release them to manufacturing. This was especially important if there were any long-lead items that had to be ordered (“long lead” meaning things that take a long time to obtain).

When I refer to “releasing items for manufacture”, I should describe just how we did this at J&L. Our machinery was built using a multi-page “machine writeup”, which listed all the sub-assemblies needed to create a full blown machine. These basic sub-assembly lists were written, as an example, starting with the machine base (or bed) as “A-12345 Machine Base”, and this list would include all the parts necessary to build a base. Following this on the machine writeup would be all the other sub-assemblies, both mechanical and electrical, until the build list was complete. There were many “standard” sub-assemblies already in existence, enough to build any “standard” TNC lathe; no engineering involvement was necessary. But the orders that did find their way to my desk involved some special element; it may just be a customer specification for a different limit switch brand. So we may have to do some design work to fit these in, and write and issue a new sub-assembly list to get them on order. But most of our work involved much more complicated items then that.

The  bottom line in any business is profit. That’s just the way it is in our capitalist system. Money has always been a good incentive to excel, and always will be. The J&L sales department could arguably be called the Most Important part of the company. Without sales, what is there? But selling a product took much organization, and many people.

The salespeople who had direct contact with our customers were called “Outside Sales”, as they were located in major cities around the country, and overseas as well. Some of these people were on the company payroll as employees, but many worked for independent machine tool distributors. Their pay was based on a commission percentage of sales. A machine tool distributor essentially sold a variety of machinery, with the J&L product line only one part of their lineup. It’s basically similar to the local new car dealership: the dealership is not an employee of the car company, but works under contract, being paid a commission from them based on sales performance.

The “Inside Sales” people were the ones located at the factory; they were basically the contact between outside sales and the sales engineers who prepared the quotes. They did quite a bit of travelling to customer locations, and the longer a person held this job, the more “customer contacts” they usually had. They also entertained the customer when visiting J&L.

When a request comes in from a customer, it is routed to the “Sales Engineer” for review; if the requested machine is straightforward (I.E. no special requirements), it can be quoted after reviewing the machine build backlog and determining delivery time. But this type of quote was rare; most customer requests involved some sort of difficulty. There may be a customer spec that had to be adhered to. These could be very complex, requiring collaboration with the product engineering department (both electrical and mechanical). Time and material costs had to be calculated. There would likely be an “extra charge” for the customer. Many of our customers were automotive type businesses (Ford, John Deere, and Caterpillar as examples). Many of these companies had several plants located around the country; and sometimes each plant had its own standard. J&L strived to comply to these requests, sometimes at no additional cost, to get the order.

Quite often the “Customer Specs” were composed of hundreds of pages, and a thorough review was impossible; J&L might take exception to certain parts, but we always had to defend our position. Sometimes it was best just to “No Quote” because the complexity was just too great. Of course, it all depended on how big our machine backlog was; were we “hungry” for work? Sometimes that hunger got us in trouble………..

While the TNC product line was being quoted and built, J&L was working on a new improved model; even as the original TNC was selling well, there were many areas that could be improved. The original TNC lathe lineup consisted of three basic sizes: the original “B” size, a somewhat larger “C” size, and a “D” size for the big boys. The new product line would be called the “Delta” TNC’s. “Delta” is a Greek letter signifying change. So the new products would be known as the “Delta line”.

One of the limitations of the original TNC line was the time it took to index the turrets (and tools). Each index consisted of unclamping the turret, indexing one tool station, and reclamping. If the program called for using a tool in station #1, and then skipping to station #3, you still had to unclamp and reclamp station #2 to get there. Because of the inherent design, index could only move one station at a time (the index itself was by hydraulic cylinder and rack and pinion gearing). The new Delta designed turrets used an electronic servomotor connected to a worm and wheel to enable multi-station indexing without having to clamp at each face. This was possible in part because of advances in electronic servomotors and their feedback devices. This was a huge improvement for the customer, helping him to cut machining time (and per piece cost) down.

The Delta series improvements included the servomotor index setup mentioned above, along with better guarding to meet the current OSHA regulations. The headstock drive was improved to include infinitely variable spindle speeds which translated into more optimum cutting tool metal removal rates (this was referred to as “constant surface footage”). The older TNC’s had just a few specific spindle speeds, and you could hear when the RPM’s jumped from one to another. The new setup provided seamless speed increases. The basic spindle sizes remained the same. The “C” size TNC was redesigned with the petroleum industry in mind (what we referred to as the “Oil Patch”). Everything was made larger, and we had the steepen the slide angle to keep the overall machine width narrow enough to fit on existing flatbed trailers.

Unfortunately, these Delta “C” machines were brought to market just as the country was entering a recession. Unemployment and inflation sent the economy reeling. After much development time and money, J&L sold very few of these machines. I believe the first two were sold to Cameron Iron Works, a petroleum based Texas outfit that made large threaded oil pipe couplings and such. At this point in time there was also a banking crisis, especially in Texas. Many banks were failing, and their involvement in the real estate market just compounded it. Oil workers were losing their jobs (and homes) and leaving the Southwest.