On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 22:53:03 -0400, Phil wrote:

A variant of this is that I've seen is in use on the large manufacturing
area floors at Sikorsky Helicopter in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Wood
blocks, about 4 inches square. [...]

If anyone knows what they are (wood type), where to purchase them and
how they are finished, I'd like to know.

A few years ago I was working in the body panel press shop of Rover
cars in Swindon. This is a huge shop - one of the biggest
menufacturing plant buildings I've ever been in. 20 lines of presses,
about 4 or 5 presses in each line, and each press ranging from 250 to
1000 tons load.

The floor in there is end-grain woodblock, about 4" square as you
describe. I can't swear to this, but I'd always understood them to be
hard pitch pine.

Each press is fed with a sheet of steel, maybe 6' square. To lubricate
the press tools, a guy with a paint roller applies a wax and paraffin
mix. This goop gets _everywhere, and the floor is near-impossible to
stay upright on. Being a traditional English company (useless fools)
I had to show up wearing a suit and tie, even when I was working on
the shop floor. I drew the line at shoes though, and had my biggest
pair of hobnailed boots (real hobnails) and the suit trousers tucked
into them. I worked there about two weeks, writing and installing
machine-monitoring software on a laptop hooked into our press monitor.
To get a clean workspace, I had to go out and buy locally a folding
white plastic picnic table and chairs, complete with parasol !

I was used to trying to code (and think) in 100dB noise, so working in
ear defenders was no surprise. But I'd never had to sit permanently in
somewhere so oily and grimy for so long. Disgusting place - I was glad
to be out of it.

--
Smert' spamionam