Work, Work, Work. We Got Work. Get Your Work Here!

Many of you know by now that I have been working to bring a new industry on line in Stuart. Many of you also know that we have been behind schedule.

Well, we will make our first board sometime this week. We recieve our first load of wood on Wednesday. We now have a (almost) completed fiberboard plant. I have a (almost) completed software program to run it. I look for a board to come off the line sometime Thursday, maybe. Watch for pictures. Also, don't expect much activity here, as I expect long days and late nights for the next week as we work the bugs out of my software and hardware.

Anyone in the Patrick, Henry, Floyd, Carroll County area of Virginia and the Surrey County area of North Carolina in need of employment, with a good locally (Hickory, NC) based company, come on by and fill out an application. We are in need of not only production personnel, but also good maintenance people. Mechanics, electricians, electronics technicians are all needed.

Because we "inherited" a lot of existing equipment that came with the physical plant we have been engineering on the fly. We are using much of the stuff that International Paper abandoned when they abandoned Stuart. This has resulted in some major cost savings, but the opposite side of that coin means that we could not spend the up-front time engineering the final configuration of the new plant. Each section of the new facility has been built using as much of the existing parts as possible, requiring us to "trial fit" many segments. We re-used probably 90% of the existing conveyors, and roughly 80% of the existing electrical motor control centers. But in nowhere near their original locations or configuration.

Just because we are finally going into production, my life will not get easier. In fact, the reverse may be true. I am not only the electrical engineer, I am also the only one here qualified as an AutoCAD operator. I have hundreds of mechanical drawings that will need to be consolidated into final drawings. The same applies to my electrical drawings, only more so. Most of the electrical has been done using quick sketches I made on legal pads. Other circuits were verbally described, and exist only in my head.

If you are a qualified AutoCAD operator, I especially invite you to come on down.