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Best Place to Play “Heavy Metal”
Lunar Tool
By Stefene Russell
Photograph by Frank Di Piazza

Lunar Tool is right off I-44, behind O’Connell’s Pub, on the other side of a parking lot filled with American trucks. The company’s name conjures images of astronauts with oversize platinum calipers collecting pinches of moondust; in reality, Lunar Tool repairs and fabricates parts for heart catheters, turbines, rock-crushers, steam locomotives, printing machines and so on. A slogan on president Bob Farrar’s business card explains the name: “We work into the night to serve our customers.”

That’s a good thing if you’re a power station in Trinidad and Tobago and you need new collector shells. (Because the small, specialized machine shop has become a rare beast, Lunar Tool makes and services parts for companies all over the world.)

“Usually by the time we get final dimensions they almost want a 72-hour turnaround,” says plant manager Randy Travers, who arrives at work at 5 a.m. and goes home around 4 p.m.—with a stop-off at O’Connell’s. “We work around the clock to make that happen. When we service the pump on a nuclear power plant, I think they can only have that pump down for 24 hours.”

(We who power our hairdryers with the split atom are very glad Lunar Tool has a third shift.)

The building looks big from the outside. Inside, it’s cavernous. Formerly home to Banner Iron Works (which forged decorative ash dumps, sewer inlets and manhole covers around 1900), the building’s now split into two parts. There’s the floor where the machinists fabricate the heavy industrial stuff: Several months ago, they repaired a 14,000-pound turbine from Canada’s Hudson Bay dam here. The smell of shaved metal and machine oil hangs in the air, and it’s loud—a chorus of grinding, milling, boring and sawing. On the ceiling there are cranes (whose hooks have a 35-foot clearance, to give you an idea of the scale). Hip-high piles of curly metal shavings—silver, copper, gunmetal blue—are tidily collected, looking for all the world like tinsel for a robot’s Christmas tree. Machinists in goggles are hard at work behind their machines, including a boring mill that’s nearly the size of a merry-go-round.

Step through one particular doorway, and the noise drops by several decibels. The room smells like static and plaster; the walls are white. This is where Lunar Tool keeps its CNC (computerized numerical control) machines, capable of cutting metal finer than a hair. These are used to make finely tuned parts for medical equipment; any of the 20 general machinists employed here need to know how to work in either room, boring holes in 6-foot-thick steel or working with a thread of metal a thousandth of an inch in diameter.
Farrar says machinists make a more-than-decent living, and it’s not a grubby occupation, despite what people think. He wants to add a second shift to the shop, but there’s a machinist shortage; besides, a good machinist takes some breaking in, some apprentice time. “Doin’ it is a whole other thing,” says quality manager Mike Moore with a nod, stroking his white moustache as he peers up from a pile of blueprints he’s inspecting.

“Never a dull moment,” says Travers, laughing, “and, if there is, you’re looking around, wondering what you’ve missed.”