Iron(ing)

With so many projects ongoing in the Reno area; if you were a foreman without a current project, you were sent to whichever project needed some extra help. It was great! Variety was the spice of my life! I would check in with the office on a daily basis to find out where I was needed. One of the projects that I was sent to was the Porte Cochere at the MGM Grand Hotel.

I don’t remember how tall the structure was, but I do remember that the scaffolding was quite high, maybe 40’? and it seemed to cover about a football field in size. It was solidly planked and there were about 3 dozen people working up there. Ironworkers, electricians, carpenters and lathers.

For this job I became a lather, something I was still new at. But with hundreds of yards of 3.4 galvanized metal lath to install on the ceiling, I was going to become better in a hurry. Interesting thing about the 3.4 metal lath; it’s very sharp! Rub your hand across it in one direction and it’s quite smooth. Rub the other direction and it’s sharp as razors. We would wear gloves with the fingertips cut out so that we could handle the wire ties, while we used the back of our hands (and glove) to smooth the lath as we tied it to the ¾” black iron supports.

Another bit of info… the black iron we used came from Japan and it was always dipped into some cheap black paint before being bundled and shipped. And this paint would flake off constantly, landing on our upturned faces as we tied the lath to the iron. At the end of the day, our faces were a mass of black specks and our fingers were bloody. Great combination!