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man... the part about the canceled Christmas distributions was pretty sad. With each of these videos, I try to imagine what it was like before they shut down and that posting must have been like a sign that it was only a matter of time... thank you for your dedication to putting out quality content
Yeah. Can’t help but imagine people who’d worked there for many years, various friend groups, people dreaming of working their way up or into a more skilled position…
My grandmother worked most of her life here, but in the newer section of the plant. I still live about two miles from here. Nearly the whole area worked at the plant up until the 80's, then the business started going overseas. You should check out whats left of the Clearwater Finishing plant down the road, only one building left.
So much self-sufficient industries went overseas, generally in the name of "cost." For the factory owners' benefits and no one else's, of course. It's really such a shame.
@@CaptainSouthbird Sometime that also happens because an overseas investment group gains control through stocks or through outright buying the company. Often with promises that nothing will change and the workers can keep their jobs only to a year later start moving operations to their home countries in the name of making money for the investors. Same for overseas groups buying up farms and driving out the smaller family farm operations.
A big thanks to NAFTA, that one act destroyed all America's industry. But, I'm sure any politician that voted for it got wealthy overnight; it's disgusting and pathetic!!
I manage an electric motor repair shop in Oregon. It is so cool to see all of the old electric motors. We still see some of these older motors for repair. We just finished changing out bearings on a US Motors, Pre-NEMA, 15HP electric motor from 1952. The design was an industrial art deco. It has been in service 72 years.
At 18:20, those were not slots for each employee, those names were the names of all of the different mills in the Graniteville Company. Probably samples from each mill there for quality control. The lab was for quality control more so than R&D. The company was huge, there were like 8 different mills in the area that were all part of Graniteville Company. What you saw is just a very small part of a very large complex of mills throughout the Horse Creek Valley. Some of the mills have been reused and repurposed, some have been abandoned. I live about 10 miles from there, I remember the train crash well. Sadly, the mills were all on their way out of business before the crash ever happened, the crash just gave the final nail or excuse to go ahead and shutter it. Most of the equipment still there was stuff that was too old or worn out to be sold off. I have a large drill press in my shop that once upon a time was used in one of the Graniteville Mills repair shops.
I have just been wondering what the fate of the place would have been had it not been for the aforementioned disaster. Do you know the reason for the ever-deteriorating fate of this factory? The 1980s are completely foreign to me.
Thanks to NAFTA. This and every other manufacturing industry in America began moving to Mexico or they wouldn’t have survived the competition as well. And after NAFTA came the incentives to move manufacturing to China. Nafta is what killed the small town I grew up in and all the surrounding towns for that matter.
@@michaelgraycar444 That's grossly oversimplifying the situation. The real problem is that people in third world countries were and still are willing to work longer and harder, under poorer conditions and for less pay than workers in the U.S. Sure, you could try to slap big tariffs on everything to attempt to level the playing field and keep U.S. jobs, but then the cost of everything goes way up and people gripe bitterly about inflation. Interestingly, now that so much manufacturing is located abroad, people in THOSE countries are demanding better wages and higher living standards, and that's also contributing to inflation. No easy way to get things back to the way they used to be. And even if you could, the jobs in a factory like the one in this video were pretty hard, and not highly desirable. Note the signs on the wall in Spanish. I'd be pretty certain these factories employed a lot of recent immigrants, and illegal immigrants (back when enforcement was much more lax).
@@MaxxBigg So true. Most people in the U.S. want to get the most they can at the lowest price possible. Very few people are interested in paying more for food, clothing, etc. to keep jobs here, and to make sure people working in U.S. factories get a good living wage.
@@michaelgraycar444 Thanks for bringing the story closer. Generally speaking, it seemed absurd to me that one admittedly serious accident would cause an exceptionally long-lived factory, vital to a huge number of local residents employed in it, to suddenly cease operating overnight. If there were more reasons - as you wrote that there were - then this is already understandable, nevertheless it is always a huge loss.
In the lab they would be conducting tests on anything from dyes to fabric durability. The washing machine could have been used to run tests on contraction properties (how much it shrinks), as well as dye durability. At 13:30 looks like an abrasion tester and the device at 13:50 is used for testing yarn strength.
I was part of the team that computerized the Gregg dye mill, it was the state of art at the time Graniteville Company invested several million dollars in the computerizing of this mill. We control almost every machine in the mill, from the cloth unloading dock to the shipping dock. I was the assistant supervisor in the Gregg instrumentation shop 1983 - 84. Now live in Florida.
textile mills had tinted windows and some didn't have any windows in the manufacturing departments this video shows the Maintenace area . i worked in them for 25 years.
17:00 I think all those machines were for sharpening the various blades and cutters used on the production machinery. Any time you needed to cut individual threads or pieces of fabric, you'd need some sort of cutting blade, maybe dozens for certain machines. And if you think about these machines rolling out hundreds or thousands of yards of fabric per day, times how ever many machines they had, that could be hundreds or thousands of blades to sharpen, and they probably had backups of everything, so every evening when the mill shut down for the day, some poor dude probably had to go around to every machine with a box of new blades and swap them all out and bring the dull ones back here for the entire process to repeat the next day.
Those machnes that start at 15:50 are roll buffing machines for buffing cotts and rolls for spinning frames and draw frames. The rolls are made of a synthetic rubber material and wear with use and are resurfaced with this type of equipment. Many years ago worked at a plant and would run such a machine. We had one such machine so this place was a very large operation. It is now common for a textile mill to send these rolls out to another company to have such work done.
@@jimthesoundman8641 It can depend on a lot of factors, but in general a single spinnng frame can have hundreds of these and this mill was quite large. How often they are buffed varies but at least once a year. Some years ago I had a conversation with a field service technician from a textile machne company that went to this mill after the train derailment. He said the chlorine gas was very corrosive and had done so much damage to the electrial relays etc., that the equipment was beyond repair. The poor economic condition of the textile industry due to imports combined with the level of damaged resulted in the mill being in the state it is now in. I have no idea as to how much insurance money was paid out, but clearly it wasn't enough to cover and repair the damage. Most likely your looking at a couple hundred million dollars or more of damage.
@@marklynch8781 With chlorine, every exposed iron or steel surface in the plant would have flash rusted almost instantly, and it will contaminate all the oils used in the machinery as well and continue to cause rust until chemically cleaned. Anything damp would have been rendered acidic. Copper, overnight thick green patina. A lot of polymers would have started to break down depending on their vulnerability, like the paint in various places. If it penetrated into the concrete that's nightmarish because over years it will dissolve any rebar as calcium chloride would be created, absorb water to liquefy, and immediately attack iron to form an even more corrosive film.
I was driving from Charlotte to Graniteville the morning of the accident. I was a service tech who visited the Townsend plant a few times a year. My boss called me, and had me turn around. I was about 30 miles from Graniteville. He had heard about the accident on local news in Charlotte. No one we knew was injured, but we never went back, and the plant closed soon after. It seemed like a great place to work, and a good company. They made the best denim cloth. On my first visit they gave me a tour of the plant. Huge bales of raw cotton came in on rail cars. Giant rolls of indigo blue denim was shipped out the other side. They used a lot of industrial automation, and most of the plant was air conditioned. I worked at several industrial facilities (still do) and this was the nicest.
Looking at how some of those denim swatches aged in the lab over 20 years, I have no doubts it was excellent denim. Denim, now, is terrible by comparison to the 90s.
THIS WAS EPIC!!....Truly a walk through time...WOW!!!....My mind wondered off to seeing people working, machines making noise, employees receiving holiday bonuses or hampers, Years and years of the same job, same place, but no one protested or complained because it paid the bills. Some of these factories were family run, and family oriented...quite the find!!...A gem for sure!!
I visited this location back in 2001 on a customer visit. We used to supply woven fabric to them. It is sad to continue to see these old textile facilities shut down. They provided a good income to many people over the years.
Omg this is where I’m from! I read the title before clicking and I was like “it’d be so cool if this is abt graniteville,” and I was so happy when I pressed play. I was a teenager working at dominos when this happened & some of my coworkers worked part time at the mill. It was a huge tragedy. 😢
I grew up in NC next to a couple "mill towns." The movie Norma Ray was no exaggeration on how the employees were treated. Any employee could be replaced in a minute with another uneducated, unskilled laborer. I used to see them come on Fridays into the local grocery store I worked at, their 60-hour $90 paycheck in hand, filling their carts with the cheap brands of food and cigarettes the store sold. Often they'd be covered with a thin veil of lint from standing in front of the weaving machines all day. The lint sometimes cause "white lung," the equivalent of miners' black lungs. It was a dead-end job for most, never climbing the company ladder, never really making a dollar more than what it took to survive.
Norma Rae was shot at the cotton mill I worked at in Opelika AL. It was Opelika Manufacturing at the time. It was later Leshner, then Pillowtex, before it shut down and moved.
thats insane this place is still standing, and as a train enthusiast it really bothers me when they malfunction and cause devastating destruction and death. what a shame edit: as a matter of fact, I can't think of the top of my head a technology that is as old as railroads that is as widespread and have made only a few upgrades over the many generations they have existed, mainly from them being steam operated to diesel. they still operate the same from day one though, a huge engine moving tons of freight on fixed metal to metal tracks. pretty incredible if you ask me. and I appreciate the conversation and likes on my thread, y'all have a good one now!
Unfortunately it’s only going to get worse. Railroads are being ran on less and less money. The are going to be more disasters until the government steps up
Same, foamer here. I had to look this up, the young engineer of the mainline train was among those killed by the gas.. Now I'm sure things will be better with PSR... oh wait..
Not insane at all. A brick building standing, what... 13 years after closing? Maybe if a 13-year-old suggested it, but I've seen plenty of VERY old buildings intact that have been untouched for centuries.
I am from this area and vividly remember friends who live in the apartment complex up past the middle school having to be evacuation from the wreck. My friends have been all through the factory and I used to have some "souvenirs" they brought for me. Random test tubes and what not. Anyway, really cool to see an area I used to call home in a youtube video.
Up in Randolph County, North Carolina, on the shores of the Deep River, is the crossroads of Coleridge and the remains of the Enterprise Mill. It’s a fascinating place. Built in 1882, it’s not quite as old or as big as the Granville Mill it was important in its day. One interesting difference, like the Granville Mill the Enterprise Mill was powered by water, however, while the mill has been closed for years its powerhouse is still working, now feeding power to the grid.
BTW from the videos with the camera sliding steady from one side to the other you can create perfect 3D (anaglyph) photos using two frames and a (free) software like StereoPhotoMaker, bringing out all the little surface details (reflections) and room atmosphere (particles/dust/mist/light rays).
There's just nothing romantic or beautiful about plastic. The metal here and the heyday of metal is just so pretty and more interesting. Maybe I'm more weird than I thought, but I love to see vintage metal items and NOT PLASTIC of our cheap modern life. Thank you for showing us.
Metal is just better. I’m a big fan of tools and machines, I hate plastic parts and casings. Metal may take more resources to make but it lasts, and when it’s life expired it returns to the soil. Plastic just pollutes.
Sad to see this mill complex left to rot. It has so many features that could make it a unique multi use facility, from small work shops to dance and art spaces, fitness studios, etc. That millrace can also become a fantastic source of power once more with updated turbines and electrical equipment. Areas near the river could become restaurant and event areas with awesome views. So many possibilities if the right owners and investors can be found.
The penalty box is a smoking booth. You had to sit in one to take a smoke break to prevent fires. Great place to gather gossip. The grinders are for buffing the rubber rollers used on just about everything from the card room to spinning.
There seems to be so many derailments carrying toxic substances, East Palestine being just one in the last 12 months, health and safety definitely needs a look at!
Fantastic........It has been awhile since i have been in a Textile mill....My Dad and Mom both worked in one many years ago..and i would "visit" them after school....and surprisingly , the Mill is still in production today....one of the very few left in New England..........thanks for the explore.....
The night of the trainwreck, I was doing late night grocery shopping with my spouse at a 24 hour Kroger in nearby Aiken, South Carolina (the Kroger has since moved, there's a T.J. Maxx there now). When we went to check out, the cashier told us that a helicopter had landed in the parking lot and taken off again. Later we found out that that specific parking lot was chosen as the initial emergency response command post, because it had the largest space of open asphalt just outside the initial 5 mile response radius. Even later still, because the job I worked at at the time sometimes dealt with hazmat chemicals, we got to sit through safety training courses that had detailed review of the emergency response to the Graniteville trainwreck, including dashcam footage and 911 dispatcher recordings from that night. I've even had to listen to the 911 call from one of the fatalities.
They still have you listen to that 911 call in hazmat classes. I had to take a class a few years ago with my job training and it was just very grim and shocking to sit there and listen to someone's last sounds.
I can't imagine what it must have been like to be fully employed with a well-planned-out future one minute, and the next with no job, no money and no home. You can't help but wonder where those 1500 surviving employees went and what they did after that terrible mishap.
especially in an area that that it is the only major company and the entire town and possible county is built around that company..if the company closes all the stores restaurants etc would have to close also...some companies had generations working there and never trained or considered they may have to move to other fields even when the writing is on the wall for decades..very rarely will a company go under quickly but some people will ignore the signs that the company is struggling and refuse to do something different.. we still have cities around the US that are like that mainly in the south with struggling "company towns" the cities,counties or states that are sometimes unfriendly to other business via their laws etc..the governments would rather stick to their outdated "principals" than to allow their area to grow and be prosperous...of course education has a lot to do with that..
It wouldn't have been that fast, you would have noticed a slowing down as they lost business to cheap overseas suppliers. My wife worked at a small 'shop' where they cut, sowed to orders, that slowly evaporated. She was kind of 'on call', the calls just slowly dried up to nothing.
9:30 that's literally the hardest one to turn and you wouldn't be able to if the lathe was brand new. You'd have to unlock the sled first. You should have tried literally anything else or the chuck. If you come across a lathe with a big gearbox on the drive, those levers will move, at least a bit. Try to get the chuck moving and get the gearbox into the lowest speed. Then keep turning the chuck and try to engage the sled with 1 of the two levers on there. One of them is a lock, the other one engages the drive.
it's too rusted. There's no play on the slides so with the rust it won't go. Sad. Someday that lathe might see action again though. They get rebuilt all the time, even a cnc controller put on it.
I know you guys are probably been super super busy but I do miss the longer videos just like it was back in the day thank you again to both of you guys subscribers since 2016
Old Worthington air compressors. So cool to see. I always watch these videos hoping to see the air compressors from these old buildings but it seems like a lot of the time they remove them before closing down.
I have to say this channel has been my absolute favourite by such a big margin. I’m so happy that you guys are keeping it going. I hope you never ever stop making these videos!
Googling the history of the area, apparently they built up a town, and little houses for the mill workers. Sure was a different time to be alive. Love your videos!
You can really get a scale for the size of this place by the huge maintenance shops to service the complex. Looks like they made everything in-house. Those were some huge lathes, and that band saw was massive.
Have you all ever considered doing up follow up videos with people that worked at the locations you have visited? Seems like every videos there are a few people that either know someone or used to work at said location. Would be neat to see some videos of the former employees reliving their time at these places.
Amazing place. Been following you guys since 8 years now. In my opinion it is very cool that your videos still have the same style and the same intro music 😎👍
We live not very far from a railroad. This is the house I grew up in and thankfully during the time its been here from about 1954, no train derailments. And yes, they do ship chemicals sometimes in this line through a bedroom community. About 30 years ago, I heard the dreaded signal of what my Father called the tied down horn and screeching of brakes. A continuous blast of the horn. The engineer had seen a body on the tracks. Someone was passed out drunk, and sadly, he in no way he could have stopped.
I just hope we never get in another world war. We've shipped so much manufacturing overseas that I'd worry that we don't have the manufacturing infrastructure to gear up for war. Sad to see so many closed factories and dying industries in this country.
You've been in a War for decades my friend, a War for your mind, and it's not with a foreign power, it's with your own Government and you're the enemy.
@@jaysmith179Last time we voted red we literally had a narcissistic man-child president who mocked everyone he could and was overall pretty disastrous in terms of foreign affairs.
Honestly? It's probably for the best. It's time the US stop focusing on the world, and start focusing on America alone. In fact, I'd go so far as to say we had no business fighting in WW1 or WW2.
The generator/turbine is actually cooler than you guys realized. Back when this place was built, it would have been pre-electric machinery, meaning the turbine (or more likely, an earlier water wheel) probably would have originally been used to power a mechanical belt-drive system (or maybe even something earlier than that) for the machines along with a massive flywheel to keep it all moving. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the ducting and structure around the river was original, and just updated in places as needed to accommodate newer technology. Also, given that the pre-civil war south had not mechanized as quickly as the north during the industrial revolution (incidentally, also one of the reasons they lost the Civil War), it's quite possible this factory was one of the first of its kind in this part of the country, especially given its scale; it's placement on the river indicates it was built there specifically to take advantage of the power of water to operate machinery, as opposed to earlier factories that would have relied on more manually operated textile technology and wouldn't have necessarily needed to be built near running water.
It was a guy named William Gregg who saw the potential of the Horse Creek Valley. He stated out with a small canal. Then industry captured the waterpower. There are three towns as I remember...Langley, Bath and Clearwater that used the waterpower. Then of course across the Savanmnah River in Augusta Ga. is the famous Augusta Canal It has 14,000 horsepower in it. I worked at a chemical plant in Langley on 1994-5. Right on the Laqngley Pond. I used to drive by the Graniteville co everydaya. Sad to see it now.
I’ve been following y’all for a while and glad to see you in my area! I live in Graniteville and work at Leavelle McCampbell Middle. Our old building I taught in for 3 years is right next to this
I went to that middle school. Even commuted from there to midland valley high school. It is so wild to see a place I'm familiar with be in a yotube video.
It’s a little weird to watch this having seen the place when it was still in operation - but also neat to see inside, which is something I never got a chance to do when I lived there.
Unfortunately every American is price-fixated. Even if a roll of cloth is one cent less getting it from overseas, that's who 90% will pick, so it's impossible for the USA to compete in almost any sort of manufacturing with low labor countries like China. Unless you can find a thousand people who want to work in a factory like that for $3 per hour, of course.
there was a point in which shipping a tree from Everett Washington overseas and made into lumber and shipping it back was cheaper than having it made in lumber locally...
Also that saw is used to cut long bar stock into length pieces to be ran on the lathes and or the mills! I love machines and machining it is my passsion!!
Your channel always great a quiet Saturday afternoon-props to you on your fantastic work! Seeing stuff like this is really fascinating! Textile something not a lot of places cover :)
man its so cool yall are this big now, i remember when yall had your first video on this brand new kinda unique looking channel with its own vibe and style, i love that your still doing this shit man great ya got this far already
15:07 I think that might be a thing for making stonewashed denim. You'd throw the denim in there with a bunch of those ceramic lumps down below and it would age the fabric. That looks pretty small, so maybe it was just for doing samples before they put it in a full sized industrial stonewashing machine.
It is a tumbler but I don't see it able to hold water although they didn't get it open and it may have been lined with rubber or something. At first I thought parts polishing, maybe for a consumable part for the manufacturing machines, maybe like the one commenter said about sharpening tooling.
@@jlucasound Yeah, you would think if it was meant to hold water, there would be a water source right next to it, but maybe it was meant to be used dry? It's also strange that the ceramic things underneath (which I assume were meant to be used inside it) are all tubes instead of solid lumps, as you would expect. Maybe that was to make them lighter? No way to know. I find it also strange that the motor is directly coupled to the tumbler, instead of having belts and pulleys so you could adjust the speed of it.
There are so many people in steam engine clubs that would really flip over the steam engines in the basement . The stone work of the buildings could be repurposed. Nice tour guys be safe.
these guys make the most amazing videos i have ever seen. i love the sections with discriptions with historicle facts, and the section with no verbage just that mesmorizing music. i spell light crap
@ 16:30 - seeing the cubby's with stack of pipes in them and those machines, it appears they were manufacturing spindles possibly to wind rolls of fabric onto or something similar. Saw videos long ago where they would take a very wide roll of fabric or other flexible material like plastic sheeting and it would be run through long slitter machines set to cut it into different width strips then wound onto spools or spindles like those. Could also have been a blade maintenance and sharpening operation a mill like that would have thousands of rotary blades that wear constantly during operation.
Thats just one city away from my home town of Aiken SC. When I was growing up in the 60's I noticed that many of the streams around that ares were always blue from the dumped indigo. And I wasn't living there when the chlorine spill happened but I still had family and friends in the area. I wanted so badly to get investors to buy the Granville plant and make it a E-waste processing plant.
16:50 Machinist here, those are cylindrical grinders. They turn parts on the lathe and then it gets ground to precision. I don't get why or what they would need to grind? I saw some shafts with fabric on them they likely made on the lathe. Wouldn't need to cylindrical grind then though. That's got me so curious
09:50 Edward L. McGowan (1920-2004) was the longest serving labor commissioner in SC state history. He was also a WWII Veteran. He served as Commissioner from 1971 until 1989, so that sign is at least that old. I wish he was still alive, I could have liked to have told him that his sign still stands to this day. RIP good sir.
The cupola I've always heard pronounced as "Q PA LO". My uncle was a conductor for Burlington-Northern and rode many miles if the cupola on the caboose. Edit: The grinders are cylinder grinders and are a highly accurate machine. They can grind a hardened cylinder and hold a .0001 inch tolerance. Most were probably used to regrind the rollers on the machines. They were used back before the lathes today were so accurate. They are still used when a non-directional surface is required.
16:40 Those are cylindrical grinders The machine shop and grinders are used to keep the rest of the mill running. I assume the grinders were used for some kind of spindles. They give a smooth perfect size qhen tight tolerances are needed....like a spindle.
8:53 - Looks like a drill bit sharpener. Really large drills, though. But I dont quite see why they would have that there. But it seems like something to sharpen tools.
The machine shop is to make replacement parts for the machinery since the company that made the equipment is probably long gone. The stations you were looking at were probably for sharpening cutting blades used in the machinery, these blades would need constant maintenance against wear. The buildings were probably built around the machinery which makes replacement even more expensive vs. fabricating parts as needed to repair the existing equipment. I used to do a lot of work at the old St. Regis paper mill here and they also had their own machine shop and would fabricate replacement parts for the machines that dated back to the early 40's when the plant was built. I remember on one trip they were fabricating a new shaft for one of the machines on a lathe that was at least twice as large as the ones you were looking at.
7:36, 11:18 and 11:57, 14:53, 15:33 and 15:41 and 15:54... I could keep going, but my point here is, you lads are incredible at capturing textures in a very specific way. You two capture literally everything I love about nearly untouched places. And the level of peace you generally find in a place like this.... Would you agree it is unmatched?
So much history out there… waiting to be demolished. Thanks for documenting this.. very cool! We’ve lost so much of the historical things in our town. It’s a shame. “Progress”.. yeah well,don’t forget where ya came from…….
There's something particular about old mill buildings to me, in part because I spent one summer as the night watchman at an old and mostly empty mill building while I was in college.
I grew up in Aiken. It was a very tragic accident. My son did a science fair experiment about the effects of chlorine and the best ways to clean up the metal that is in those buildings. The damage to those buildings was horrific.
Always well done, guys!! After all these years, i have yet to be disappointed about a video by Proper People. Not once. Did i see that right. At the beginning of the video, did this place use normal bricks for pillars?
Talking about the ones that were starting to tip? Yeah, just brick. They're machine piles, something heavy was bolted to the wooden floor above them when the plant was operating. Those were moved, and the reduced load let the floor flex back up which lost contact with the piles. Long story short, they kept the floor from sagging too much when heavy machinery was installed, and that's gone.
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I looked up that bandsaw company, and that saw alone is $10,146
Hey TheProperpeople I was wandering if I could use your music in a video that I am making if so please reply. :)
man... the part about the canceled Christmas distributions was pretty sad. With each of these videos, I try to imagine what it was like before they shut down and that posting must have been like a sign that it was only a matter of time...
thank you for your dedication to putting out quality content
Yeah. Can’t help but imagine people who’d worked there for many years, various friend groups, people dreaming of working their way up or into a more skilled position…
My grandmother worked most of her life here, but in the newer section of the plant. I still live about two miles from here. Nearly the whole area worked at the plant up until the 80's, then the business started going overseas. You should check out whats left of the Clearwater Finishing plant down the road, only one building left.
I second the Clearwater finishing plant suggestion!
So much self-sufficient industries went overseas, generally in the name of "cost." For the factory owners' benefits and no one else's, of course. It's really such a shame.
@@CaptainSouthbird Sometime that also happens because an overseas investment group gains control through stocks or through outright buying the company. Often with promises that nothing will change and the workers can keep their jobs only to a year later start moving operations to their home countries in the name of making money for the investors. Same for overseas groups buying up farms and driving out the smaller family farm operations.
A big thanks to NAFTA, that one act destroyed all America's industry. But, I'm sure any politician that voted for it got wealthy overnight; it's disgusting and pathetic!!
@@CaptainSouthbird reduces retail price so in a sense it helps consumers..hurts workers though...this is the reason stores like Walmart exist...
I manage an electric motor repair shop in Oregon. It is so cool to see all of the old electric motors. We still see some of these older motors for repair. We just finished changing out bearings on a US Motors, Pre-NEMA, 15HP electric motor from 1952. The design was an industrial art deco. It has been in service 72 years.
That’s cool! I like checking out the old machines. I’m a machinist.
At 18:20, those were not slots for each employee, those names were the names of all of the different mills in the Graniteville Company. Probably samples from each mill there for quality control. The lab was for quality control more so than R&D. The company was huge, there were like 8 different mills in the area that were all part of Graniteville Company. What you saw is just a very small part of a very large complex of mills throughout the Horse Creek Valley. Some of the mills have been reused and repurposed, some have been abandoned.
I live about 10 miles from there, I remember the train crash well. Sadly, the mills were all on their way out of business before the crash ever happened, the crash just gave the final nail or excuse to go ahead and shutter it. Most of the equipment still there was stuff that was too old or worn out to be sold off. I have a large drill press in my shop that once upon a time was used in one of the Graniteville Mills repair shops.
I have just been wondering what the fate of the place would have been had it not been for the aforementioned disaster. Do you know the reason for the ever-deteriorating fate of this factory? The 1980s are completely foreign to me.
Thanks to NAFTA. This and every other manufacturing industry in America began moving to Mexico or they wouldn’t have survived the competition as well. And after NAFTA came the incentives to move manufacturing to China. Nafta is what killed the small town I grew up in and all the surrounding towns for that matter.
@@michaelgraycar444 That's grossly oversimplifying the situation. The real problem is that people in third world countries were and still are willing to work longer and harder, under poorer conditions and for less pay than workers in the U.S. Sure, you could try to slap big tariffs on everything to attempt to level the playing field and keep U.S. jobs, but then the cost of everything goes way up and people gripe bitterly about inflation.
Interestingly, now that so much manufacturing is located abroad, people in THOSE countries are demanding better wages and higher living standards, and that's also contributing to inflation. No easy way to get things back to the way they used to be. And even if you could, the jobs in a factory like the one in this video were pretty hard, and not highly desirable. Note the signs on the wall in Spanish. I'd be pretty certain these factories employed a lot of recent immigrants, and illegal immigrants (back when enforcement was much more lax).
@@MaxxBigg So true. Most people in the U.S. want to get the most they can at the lowest price possible. Very few people are interested in paying more for food, clothing, etc. to keep jobs here, and to make sure people working in U.S. factories get a good living wage.
@@michaelgraycar444 Thanks for bringing the story closer. Generally speaking, it seemed absurd to me that one admittedly serious accident would cause an exceptionally long-lived factory, vital to a huge number of local residents employed in it, to suddenly cease operating overnight. If there were more reasons - as you wrote that there were - then this is already understandable, nevertheless it is always a huge loss.
In the lab they would be conducting tests on anything from dyes to fabric durability. The washing machine could have been used to run tests on contraction properties (how much it shrinks), as well as dye durability. At 13:30 looks like an abrasion tester and the device at 13:50 is used for testing yarn strength.
Awesome comment. Thank you 👍
Probably it could but he should have gave them some ice cream. I mean cmon man.
Would also check Size add on and finish formulations.
I was part of the team that computerized the Gregg dye mill, it was the state of art at the time Graniteville Company invested several million dollars in the computerizing of this mill. We control almost every machine in the mill, from the cloth unloading dock to the shipping dock. I was the assistant supervisor in the Gregg instrumentation shop 1983 - 84. Now live in Florida.
I really like the way factory buildings made the most of natural daylight.
I just wish they'd closed the skylights they'd opened (@18:45-19:11). No need to let in more rain and increase deterioration. Otherwise, very nice.
Had to. Otherwise they’d have spent countless dollars on artificial light to keep the place bright. lol
@@brianj.841 Im sure they did. They are respectful of stuff like that
Same here. I think it's neat.
textile mills had tinted windows and some didn't have any windows in the manufacturing departments this video shows the Maintenace area . i worked in them for 25 years.
17:00 I think all those machines were for sharpening the various blades and cutters used on the production machinery. Any time you needed to cut individual threads or pieces of fabric, you'd need some sort of cutting blade, maybe dozens for certain machines. And if you think about these machines rolling out hundreds or thousands of yards of fabric per day, times how ever many machines they had, that could be hundreds or thousands of blades to sharpen, and they probably had backups of everything, so every evening when the mill shut down for the day, some poor dude probably had to go around to every machine with a box of new blades and swap them all out and bring the dull ones back here for the entire process to repeat the next day.
Those machnes that start at 15:50 are roll buffing machines for buffing cotts and rolls for spinning frames and draw frames. The rolls are made of a synthetic rubber material and wear with use and are resurfaced with this type of equipment. Many years ago worked at a plant and would run such a machine. We had one such machine so this place was a very large operation. It is now common for a textile mill to send these rolls out to another company to have such work done.
@@marklynch8781 How many rolls did an average production machine have, and how often did they need to be replaced?
@@jimthesoundman8641 It can depend on a lot of factors, but in general a single spinnng frame can have hundreds of these and this mill was quite large. How often they are buffed varies but at least once a year. Some years ago I had a conversation with a field service technician from a textile machne company that went to this mill after the train derailment. He said the chlorine gas was very corrosive and had done so much damage to the electrial relays etc., that the equipment was beyond repair. The poor economic condition of the textile industry due to imports combined with the level of damaged resulted in the mill being in the state it is now in. I have no idea as to how much insurance money was paid out, but clearly it wasn't enough to cover and repair the damage. Most likely your looking at a couple hundred million dollars or more of damage.
Mill never stopped, they had 3 shifts to cover 24 hours. My grandma worked second shift 3pm-11pm for 30 years.
@@marklynch8781 With chlorine, every exposed iron or steel surface in the plant would have flash rusted almost instantly, and it will contaminate all the oils used in the machinery as well and continue to cause rust until chemically cleaned. Anything damp would have been rendered acidic. Copper, overnight thick green patina. A lot of polymers would have started to break down depending on their vulnerability, like the paint in various places. If it penetrated into the concrete that's nightmarish because over years it will dissolve any rebar as calcium chloride would be created, absorb water to liquefy, and immediately attack iron to form an even more corrosive film.
I was driving from Charlotte to Graniteville the morning of the accident. I was a service tech who visited the Townsend plant a few times a year. My boss called me, and had me turn around. I was about 30 miles from Graniteville. He had heard about the accident on local news in Charlotte. No one we knew was injured, but we never went back, and the plant closed soon after. It seemed like a great place to work, and a good company. They made the best denim cloth. On my first visit they gave me a tour of the plant. Huge bales of raw cotton came in on rail cars. Giant rolls of indigo blue denim was shipped out the other side. They used a lot of industrial automation, and most of the plant was air conditioned. I worked at several industrial facilities (still do) and this was the nicest.
That’s crazy
Looking at how some of those denim swatches aged in the lab over 20 years, I have no doubts it was excellent denim. Denim, now, is terrible by comparison to the 90s.
THIS WAS EPIC!!....Truly a walk through time...WOW!!!....My mind wondered off to seeing people working, machines making noise, employees receiving holiday bonuses or hampers, Years and years of the same job, same place, but no one protested or complained because it paid the bills. Some of these factories were family run, and family oriented...quite the find!!...A gem for sure!!
I visited this location back in 2001 on a customer visit. We used to supply woven fabric to them. It is sad to continue to see these old textile facilities shut down. They provided a good income to many people over the years.
and really fine and hard working people too!
Omg this is where I’m from! I read the title before clicking and I was like “it’d be so cool if this is abt graniteville,” and I was so happy when I pressed play. I was a teenager working at dominos when this happened & some of my coworkers worked part time at the mill. It was a huge tragedy. 😢
I grew up in NC next to a couple "mill towns." The movie Norma Ray was no exaggeration on how the employees were treated. Any employee could be replaced in a minute with another uneducated, unskilled laborer. I used to see them come on Fridays into the local grocery store I worked at, their 60-hour $90 paycheck in hand, filling their carts with the cheap brands of food and cigarettes the store sold. Often they'd be covered with a thin veil of lint from standing in front of the weaving machines all day. The lint sometimes cause "white lung," the equivalent of miners' black lungs. It was a dead-end job for most, never climbing the company ladder, never really making a dollar more than what it took to survive.
A sad image of grey reality.
Norma Rae was shot at the cotton mill I worked at in Opelika AL. It was Opelika Manufacturing at the time. It was later Leshner, then Pillowtex, before it shut down and moved.
I have to imagine the working conditions and salaries in China are far worse.
@@joshb124 Probably so, but we're not living in China.
@@ManMountainMetals I really don't understand what that has to do with anything.
thats insane this place is still standing, and as a train enthusiast it really bothers me when they malfunction and cause devastating destruction and death. what a shame
edit: as a matter of fact, I can't think of the top of my head a technology that is as old as railroads that is as widespread and have made only a few upgrades over the many generations they have existed, mainly from them being steam operated to diesel. they still operate the same from day one though, a huge engine moving tons of freight on fixed metal to metal tracks. pretty incredible if you ask me. and I appreciate the conversation and likes on my thread, y'all have a good one now!
Unfortunately it’s only going to get worse. Railroads are being ran on less and less money. The are going to be more disasters until the government steps up
@@GreenAppelPie gov want oil gas
Same, foamer here. I had to look this up, the young engineer of the mainline train was among those killed by the gas.. Now I'm sure things will be better with PSR... oh wait..
@@jackd.ripper9216 If rail companies need subsidies to survive, then maybe we don't need rail companies. Let's pipeline chemicals already.
Not insane at all. A brick building standing, what... 13 years after closing? Maybe if a 13-year-old suggested it, but I've seen plenty of VERY old buildings intact that have been untouched for centuries.
I am from this area and vividly remember friends who live in the apartment complex up past the middle school having to be evacuation from the wreck. My friends have been all through the factory and I used to have some "souvenirs" they brought for me. Random test tubes and what not. Anyway, really cool to see an area I used to call home in a youtube video.
Up in Randolph County, North Carolina, on the shores of the Deep River, is the crossroads of Coleridge and the remains of the Enterprise Mill.
It’s a fascinating place. Built in 1882, it’s not quite as old or as big as the Granville Mill it was important in its day.
One interesting difference, like the Granville Mill the Enterprise Mill was powered by water, however, while the mill has been closed for years its powerhouse is still working, now feeding power to the grid.
I was lucky to see the old Lassiter Mill back in 2006 before it collapsed. Really cool place!
Watching these videos makes me feel like I'm actually exploring an abandoned place and I enjoy every minute of it.
The “power ball” equipment I believe was for stone washing the denim. You could see the stones used to tumble with the denim right below the machine.
@coolcosmic one word "Fashion"
Its too small to for stone washing. Looks like to be a for deburring, or testing.
@@guytech7310yes. It is a tumbler used for smoothing/deburring parts from the machine shop. (I have used many tumblers in my career as a machinist)
A big cup of coffee on a Saturday morning and a new video from you guys. Could a day start any better?
Yeah! Best timing possible lol
all those buffing / grinding wheels are to polish the spindles that receive the thread
My grandmother worked on the spindle take-up machines for her whole 30 years there.
BTW from the videos with the camera sliding steady from one side to the other you can create perfect 3D (anaglyph) photos using two frames and a (free) software like StereoPhotoMaker, bringing out all the little surface details (reflections) and room atmosphere (particles/dust/mist/light rays).
There's just nothing romantic or beautiful about plastic. The metal here and the heyday of metal is just so pretty and more interesting. Maybe I'm more weird than I thought, but I love to see vintage metal items and NOT PLASTIC of our cheap modern life. Thank you for showing us.
Metal is just better. I’m a big fan of tools and machines, I hate plastic parts and casings. Metal may take more resources to make but it lasts, and when it’s life expired it returns to the soil. Plastic just pollutes.
@@chriswoods7452 Well said!
Sad to see this mill complex left to rot. It has so many features that could make it a unique multi use facility, from small work shops to dance and art spaces, fitness studios, etc. That millrace can also become a fantastic source of power once more with updated turbines and electrical equipment. Areas near the river could become restaurant and event areas with awesome views. So many possibilities if the right owners and investors can be found.
The penalty box is a smoking booth. You had to sit in one to take a smoke break to prevent fires. Great place to gather gossip. The grinders are for buffing the rubber rollers used on just about everything from the card room to spinning.
Correct. Center ground lathe.
There seems to be so many derailments carrying toxic substances, East Palestine being just one in the last 12 months, health and safety definitely needs a look at!
Fantastic........It has been awhile since i have been in a Textile mill....My Dad and Mom both worked in one many years ago..and i would "visit" them after school....and surprisingly , the Mill is still in production today....one of the very few left in New England..........thanks for the explore.....
The night of the trainwreck, I was doing late night grocery shopping with my spouse at a 24 hour Kroger in nearby Aiken, South Carolina (the Kroger has since moved, there's a T.J. Maxx there now). When we went to check out, the cashier told us that a helicopter had landed in the parking lot and taken off again. Later we found out that that specific parking lot was chosen as the initial emergency response command post, because it had the largest space of open asphalt just outside the initial 5 mile response radius. Even later still, because the job I worked at at the time sometimes dealt with hazmat chemicals, we got to sit through safety training courses that had detailed review of the emergency response to the Graniteville trainwreck, including dashcam footage and 911 dispatcher recordings from that night. I've even had to listen to the 911 call from one of the fatalities.
Oh my gosh! I’d love to hear more about that night and the time after. I’m fascinated with it
They still have you listen to that 911 call in hazmat classes. I had to take a class a few years ago with my job training and it was just very grim and shocking to sit there and listen to someone's last sounds.
I can't imagine what it must have been like to be fully employed with a well-planned-out future one minute, and the next with no job, no money and no home. You can't help but wonder where those 1500 surviving employees went and what they did after that terrible mishap.
especially in an area that that it is the only major company and the entire town and possible county is built around that company..if the company closes all the stores restaurants etc would have to close also...some companies had generations working there and never trained or considered they may have to move to other fields even when the writing is on the wall for decades..very rarely will a company go under quickly but some people will ignore the signs that the company is struggling and refuse to do something different..
we still have cities around the US that are like that mainly in the south with struggling "company towns" the cities,counties or states that are sometimes unfriendly to other business via their laws etc..the governments would rather stick to their outdated "principals" than to allow their area to grow and be prosperous...of course education has a lot to do with that..
it's only 15 miles from Augusta, Georgia and adjacent to Aiken, SC. There were still plenty of good jobs in the Augusta/Aiken area.
It wouldn't have been that fast, you would have noticed a slowing down as they lost business to cheap overseas suppliers. My wife worked at a small 'shop' where they cut, sowed to orders, that slowly evaporated. She was kind of 'on call', the calls just slowly dried up to nothing.
9:30 that's literally the hardest one to turn and you wouldn't be able to if the lathe was brand new. You'd have to unlock the sled first. You should have tried literally anything else or the chuck. If you come across a lathe with a big gearbox on the drive, those levers will move, at least a bit. Try to get the chuck moving and get the gearbox into the lowest speed. Then keep turning the chuck and try to engage the sled with 1 of the two levers on there. One of them is a lock, the other one engages the drive.
it's too rusted. There's no play on the slides so with the rust it won't go. Sad. Someday that lathe might see action again though. They get rebuilt all the time, even a cnc controller put on it.
I know you guys are probably been super super busy but I do miss the longer videos just like it was back in the day thank you again to both of you guys subscribers since 2016
Old Worthington air compressors. So cool to see. I always watch these videos hoping to see the air compressors from these old buildings but it seems like a lot of the time they remove them before closing down.
I have to say this channel has been my absolute favourite by such a big margin. I’m so happy that you guys are keeping it going. I hope you never ever stop making these videos!
Googling the history of the area, apparently they built up a town, and little houses for the mill workers. Sure was a different time to be alive. Love your videos!
You can really get a scale for the size of this place by the huge maintenance shops to service the complex. Looks like they made everything in-house. Those were some huge lathes, and that band saw was massive.
Out of everyone that does abandoned videos, you guys do them the best!!!!
Have you all ever considered doing up follow up videos with people that worked at the locations you have visited? Seems like every videos there are a few people that either know someone or used to work at said location. Would be neat to see some videos of the former employees reliving their time at these places.
I bet Levi’s source their denim from that factory before they got cheap and thin. Jeans used to hold up for years and get super soft.
it was the best quality denim available - Avondale Mills
Some jeans had to be worn a couple of months with several washes involved before becoming soft and pliable, they had to be virtually "tamed" for use.
Amazing place.
Been following you guys since 8 years now. In my opinion it is very cool that your videos still have the same style and the same intro music 😎👍
We live not very far from a railroad. This is the house I grew up in and thankfully during the time its been here from about 1954, no train derailments. And yes, they do ship chemicals sometimes in this line through a bedroom community.
About 30 years ago, I heard the dreaded signal of what my Father called the tied down horn and screeching of brakes. A continuous blast of the horn. The engineer had seen a body on the tracks. Someone was passed out drunk, and sadly, he in no way he could have stopped.
I just hope we never get in another world war. We've shipped so much manufacturing overseas that I'd worry that we don't have the manufacturing infrastructure to gear up for war. Sad to see so many closed factories and dying industries in this country.
Sad thing is that we're closer than ever at the moment.
You've been in a War for decades my friend, a War for your mind, and it's not with a foreign power, it's with your own Government
and you're the enemy.
Vote red to stop this mess. God Bless America.
@@jaysmith179Last time we voted red we literally had a narcissistic man-child president who mocked everyone he could and was overall pretty disastrous in terms of foreign affairs.
Honestly? It's probably for the best. It's time the US stop focusing on the world, and start focusing on America alone. In fact, I'd go so far as to say we had no business fighting in WW1 or WW2.
A truly remarkable relic from history these sort of places need to be afforded protection because of their historical value alone
Great video, as always. The "powerball" bit made me laugh 😂
The generator/turbine is actually cooler than you guys realized. Back when this place was built, it would have been pre-electric machinery, meaning the turbine (or more likely, an earlier water wheel) probably would have originally been used to power a mechanical belt-drive system (or maybe even something earlier than that) for the machines along with a massive flywheel to keep it all moving. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the ducting and structure around the river was original, and just updated in places as needed to accommodate newer technology.
Also, given that the pre-civil war south had not mechanized as quickly as the north during the industrial revolution (incidentally, also one of the reasons they lost the Civil War), it's quite possible this factory was one of the first of its kind in this part of the country, especially given its scale; it's placement on the river indicates it was built there specifically to take advantage of the power of water to operate machinery, as opposed to earlier factories that would have relied on more manually operated textile technology and wouldn't have necessarily needed to be built near running water.
It was a guy named William Gregg who saw the potential of the Horse Creek Valley. He stated out with a small canal. Then industry captured the waterpower. There are three towns as I remember...Langley, Bath and Clearwater that used the waterpower. Then of course across the Savanmnah River in Augusta Ga. is the famous Augusta Canal It has 14,000 horsepower in it.
I worked at a chemical plant in Langley on 1994-5. Right on the Laqngley Pond. I used to drive by the Graniteville co everydaya. Sad to see it now.
This is my hometown, this has truly been an amazing thing to see as I have drove by this mill for years and many of my family
Worked there.
Weirddd I can see the plant from my window, also drove by and saw you filming. Good stuff. I’ll be watching your videos from here on out. 👍🏼
I’ve been following y’all for a while and glad to see you in my area! I live in Graniteville and work at Leavelle McCampbell Middle. Our old building I taught in for 3 years is right next to this
I went to that middle school. Even commuted from there to midland valley high school. It is so wild to see a place I'm familiar with be in a yotube video.
thanks for coveringg the textle mills. such a huge part of americas past
Loved the music that accompanied the video.
Same. It reminded me of Horizon Zero Dawn's music, which has a similar feel to it. Melancholic peace.
Thanks
I love environments like these. Beautiful photography, as always.
It’s a little weird to watch this having seen the place when it was still in operation - but also neat to see inside, which is something I never got a chance to do when I lived there.
Just think if we just continued making stuff in America. No shipping raw material overseas and shipping finished stuff back
Unfortunately every American is price-fixated. Even if a roll of cloth is one cent less getting it from overseas, that's who 90% will pick, so it's impossible for the USA to compete in almost any sort of manufacturing with low labor countries like China. Unless you can find a thousand people who want to work in a factory like that for $3 per hour, of course.
Your whole attitude towards your work changes when your family, friends and neighbors will be using what you make vs. complete strangers overseas.
@@jimthesoundman8641 Yes. Nobody wanted to pay 100 dollars for a shirt anymore.
there was a point in which shipping a tree from Everett Washington overseas and made into lumber and shipping it back was cheaper than having it made in lumber locally...
Also that saw is used to cut long bar stock into length pieces to be ran on the lathes and or the mills! I love machines and machining it is my passsion!!
Awesome video as always Guys. Y’all really show just how amazing each place is in every one of y’all’s videos.
Y’all are right down the road from where I live I’m in Augusta Ga we have a lot of old abandoned buildings that need to be explored !!
Right On! 🙌 Nice to see all of those old machines. I’m a machinist and enjoy watching your videos where you visit machine shops. Thanks!
Another great video. It's fun to see these old factories and think of the people who used to work there.
Your channel always great a quiet Saturday afternoon-props to you on your fantastic work! Seeing stuff like this is really fascinating! Textile something not a lot of places cover :)
man its so cool yall are this big now, i remember when yall had your first video on this brand new kinda unique looking channel with its own vibe and style, i love that your still doing this shit man great ya got this far already
15:07 I think that might be a thing for making stonewashed denim. You'd throw the denim in there with a bunch of those ceramic lumps down below and it would age the fabric. That looks pretty small, so maybe it was just for doing samples before they put it in a full sized industrial stonewashing machine.
It is a tumbler but I don't see it able to hold water although they didn't get it open and it may have been lined with rubber or something. At first I thought parts polishing, maybe for a consumable part for the manufacturing machines, maybe like the one commenter said about sharpening tooling.
@@jlucasound Yeah, you would think if it was meant to hold water, there would be a water source right next to it, but maybe it was meant to be used dry? It's also strange that the ceramic things underneath (which I assume were meant to be used inside it) are all tubes instead of solid lumps, as you would expect. Maybe that was to make them lighter? No way to know. I find it also strange that the motor is directly coupled to the tumbler, instead of having belts and pulleys so you could adjust the speed of it.
There are so many people in steam engine clubs that would really flip over the steam engines in the basement . The stone work of the buildings could be repurposed. Nice tour guys be safe.
these guys make the most amazing videos i have ever seen. i love the sections with discriptions with historicle facts, and the section with no verbage just that mesmorizing music. i spell light crap
@ 16:30 - seeing the cubby's with stack of pipes in them and those machines, it appears they were manufacturing spindles possibly to wind rolls of fabric onto or something similar. Saw videos long ago where they would take a very wide roll of fabric or other flexible material like plastic sheeting and it would be run through long slitter machines set to cut it into different width strips then wound onto spools or spindles like those. Could also have been a blade maintenance and sharpening operation a mill like that would have thousands of rotary blades that wear constantly during operation.
This is by far the most interesting back story I’ve heard from your guys‘ places you’ve gone
what a cool video!!! I feel like you only scratched the surface of what that place had in store!
I wish everyone could have seen the mill and the Town of Graniteville in its heyday. Wonderful town to grow up in.
Thats just one city away from my home town of Aiken SC.
When I was growing up in the 60's I noticed that many of the streams around that ares were always blue from the dumped indigo.
And I wasn't living there when the chlorine spill happened but I still had family and friends in the area.
I wanted so badly to get investors to buy the Granville plant and make it a E-waste processing plant.
An Outstanding Urbex Video, I especially liked the bathroom, beautiful decay, wow, Happy Trails y’all !
10:32 Horizontal Bandsaw. It's for cutting long metal stock, like pipe, tubing or bar into smaller pieces.
16:50 Machinist here, those are cylindrical grinders. They turn parts on the lathe and then it gets ground to precision. I don't get why or what they would need to grind? I saw some shafts with fabric on them they likely made on the lathe. Wouldn't need to cylindrical grind then though. That's got me so curious
wow guys another great film so good to see . you are masters of your craft
09:50 Edward L. McGowan (1920-2004) was the longest serving labor commissioner in SC state history. He was also a WWII Veteran. He served as Commissioner from 1971 until 1989, so that sign is at least that old.
I wish he was still alive, I could have liked to have told him that his sign still stands to this day. RIP good sir.
The cupola I've always heard pronounced as "Q PA LO". My uncle was a conductor for Burlington-Northern and rode many miles if the cupola on the caboose.
Edit: The grinders are cylinder grinders and are a highly accurate machine. They can grind a hardened cylinder and hold a .0001 inch tolerance. Most were probably used to regrind the rollers on the machines. They were used back before the lathes today were so accurate. They are still used when a non-directional surface is required.
16:40 Those are cylindrical grinders
The machine shop and grinders are used to keep the rest of the mill running. I assume the grinders were used for some kind of spindles. They give a smooth perfect size qhen tight tolerances are needed....like a spindle.
8:53 - Looks like a drill bit sharpener. Really large drills, though. But I dont quite see why they would have that there. But it seems like something to sharpen tools.
Yes, it is a sharpener for drill bits
"Gotta be careful with this floor" as he walks across a wooden floor, 175 years in the elements. I can tell you're in the trades. Safety First
Echoes of our past. Awesome and creepy at the same time!
I loved the mini hydro electric facility
Excellent composition, gents. Some great, smooth camera sweeps and a mournful soundtrack on this one. Very nice.
That machine you called the powerball thing is a denim stone washer. The ceramic stones were on the floor under it.
You have the best exploration of deserted places. I have watched your videos from over 4 years ago.
Loved your videos of China. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the tour of this amazing bando!
The machine shop is to make replacement parts for the machinery since the company that made the equipment is probably long gone. The stations you were looking at were probably for sharpening cutting blades used in the machinery, these blades would need constant maintenance against wear.
The buildings were probably built around the machinery which makes replacement even more expensive vs. fabricating parts as needed to repair the existing equipment. I used to do a lot of work at the old St. Regis paper mill here and they also had their own machine shop and would fabricate replacement parts for the machines that dated back to the early 40's when the plant was built. I remember on one trip they were fabricating a new shaft for one of the machines on a lathe that was at least twice as large as the ones you were looking at.
7:36, 11:18 and 11:57, 14:53, 15:33 and 15:41 and 15:54... I could keep going, but my point here is, you lads are incredible at capturing textures in a very specific way. You two capture literally everything I love about nearly untouched places. And the level of peace you generally find in a place like this.... Would you agree it is unmatched?
This was interesting. I love seeing old factories like this frozen in time.
As someone who was born and raised in South Carolina never heard of this place! Thank you!!
I always enjoy your videos. Well shot. Well edited.
Excellent content!. Keep up the terrific hard work for us!
Thanks!
5:21 easily one of the coolest things you guys have ever gotten to explore!
So much history out there… waiting to be demolished. Thanks for documenting this.. very cool! We’ve lost so much of the historical things in our town. It’s a shame. “Progress”.. yeah well,don’t forget where ya came from…….
I find it sad how nowadays people think of glass blocks as having more character than old architecture.
Thank you for another wonderful video with excellent photography!!
Something hit different about this video. It was mesmerizing.
There's something particular about old mill buildings to me, in part because I spent one summer as the night watchman at an old and mostly empty mill building while I was in college.
8:51. Oliver brand Drill bit Sharpener.
I grew up in Aiken. It was a very tragic accident. My son did a science fair experiment about the effects of chlorine and the best ways to clean up the metal that is in those buildings. The damage to those buildings was horrific.
That was a quick 20 min... Sad to see it closed and never used again for anything... Thx for bringing us along.. Take care and be careful...
This place looks like it would be fun to explore. I'm loving the old machinery.
Always well done, guys!!
After all these years, i have yet to be disappointed about a video by Proper People. Not once.
Did i see that right. At the beginning of the video, did this place use normal bricks for pillars?
Talking about the ones that were starting to tip? Yeah, just brick. They're machine piles, something heavy was bolted to the wooden floor above them when the plant was operating. Those were moved, and the reduced load let the floor flex back up which lost contact with the piles.
Long story short, they kept the floor from sagging too much when heavy machinery was installed, and that's gone.