Do you know what this is?

[johnjohn]

"Myrtle's Girdle" used to pour horizontal lead joints.

 

[Nevada Ed]

My father in law and a lot of other plumbers, were very glad to see that unit,
take a back seat to the new improved ways of putting pipe together !!

They would turn over in their graves, if they could see the newest, copper pipe, "Snap lok" system that we use today, that only takes......
seconds to do.

 

[Rustyt1953]

When I assembled my joints back in the 60s, I didn't use anything like that.

 

[Kenna]

yup pouring lead joints on cast. Got one somewhere in garage.

 

[Golddollar]

I told my doctor I was getting stiff in the joints. He told me to stay out of the joints.

 

[oldbrownhat]

You gotta respect guys who spent their days working with asbestos and molten lead.

... and lived to tell about it.

Somewhere here I have this old book (c.1918) that probably belonged to my grandfather:

There is a section on making up a gold amalgam where it describes mixing the gold and mercury in your fingers , applying it to the surface and then putting it in a gas muffler (ie hot air stream). It does, however, take care to mention to avoid the fumes, which are highly injurious (!)

 

[llowry61]

You learn something every day. I remember working on a plumbing pipe under a rental house we had. I had to crawl in there and bust up the cast pipe and pull it out in pieces. We put in a PVC pipe and tied it in on either end with rubber connectors. I had never seen a cast iron lead jointed pipe before.

 

[lihpster]

There is a section on making up a gold amalgam where it describes mixing the gold and mercury in your fingers ,

You'd have to be mad as a hatter to do that!

 

[oldbrownhat]

You'd have to be mad as a hatter to do that!

ISWYDT

 

[oldbrownhat]

You learn something every day....

Quite a change from when we were teenagers/young adults and figured we knew everything As Dorothy Parker quipped, "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

 

[handejector]

Wow.
I am old. I remember when cast iron and lead joints was the ONLY type of installation. I could always warm my hands up around the plumber's furnace.