It's the 1970s and I'm on the Bianchi factory floor, and suddenly I hear a shriek. And just as suddenly, I'm aware of our production manager, Bill Adair, literally running across the shop's bench tops toward a young woman at a machine.
Her hair is not tied back and it has caught in a spinning shaft driven by a high-rpm, high-torque machine used to polish the edge of a damp leather part.
When Bill gets to her and stops the machine, she's had a one inch circle of her scalp completely torn out of her head by her long hair, which had been caught by the spinning shaft. The hair and plug are still wrapped in the drill motor. "Drill motors" are not only very fast -- as much as 3,000 rpm -- but are such high torque that they can't be stopped even by grabbing the work. Not even with your hair . . ..
Now notice that this mid-1970s article shows Bianchi workers wearing hairnets with machines:
Fast forward into the 21st century, specifically 2025, and I encounter this video of a very pretty girl, doing something very dumb, in Mernickle's shop. You will see she survives, after taking a very unnecessary risk that she wouldn't have been smart enough to avoid (or she would've refused the task) but her boss Mernickle sure as hell should've known better to set up for her.
This is the least of the troubles that ensue in a shop run by a self-taught holster maker. Volume in a large holster shop breeds fast learning and we learned better more than a half century ago, than to allow long hair near a machine. Of any kind. Very old knowledge in machine shops.
Below she is turning on the high speed, high torque electric motor of a machine fitted out with a sanding drum:
Below she's begun the operation of sanding off the sharp edge on the backside of a leather part (the rest of the world uses a hand tool called an 'edge', but they bite, too):
Below, the kind-hearted among us think, "DON'T LEAN INTO YOUR WORK!":
Enough of that, let's move her to yet another machine to dress that leather piece; this time to polish the sanded edge that now has been inked to not only wet it to lay the fibres down, but to colour the edge, too:
Again, we're hoping she won't ever lean into her work, or maybe drop something and move forward and down to pick it up:
Normally I would say, "take all the warnings off and let God sort it out" but I sure wouldn't take that attitude if it were MY shop.
A few images to give you an idea of just how big the Bianchi factory floor was:
To read more about it all in my book titled "Holstory -- Gunleather of the Twentieth Century
-- the Second Edition", click on the new link at top of page.
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