can-do-it capers
44
CIANBRO THE FIRST 50 YEARS
Ken’s wizardry
N
ecessity really is the mother of invention. Ken and Chuck will
attest to that. At least necessity gave birth to such devices as the Chinbro Beam Clamp and the Chinbro Pipe Grab. Ken is the curious type. He’s
eases beam and pipe handling He had mentioned his concept to Chuck, but nothing was done about it. Later, however, when Chuck was building a bridge in Winthrop and was experiencing his own frustrations setting steel, he remembered the design and asked
erecting steel faster than ever before. People said we ought to patent it. So we did.” Now what about something to handle pipe? Give Ken a few minutes: “We were putting in a water main in
always reading and when he’s not
Ken about it. By then Ken had
Old Town. In order to pick up the pipe
reading, he’s asking questions and
thrown the drawing away.
and put it down in the trench we had to
when he’s not asking questions, he’s trying to think up easier ways to do things. He’ll tell you the reason he does that is because he doesn’t like to work any harder than he has to. One day he was thinking about how much work it took to erect steel. He had just finished a job and it had been cumbersome having to use a cable choker to lift the steel beams into place.
“I said I would go figure it again.” Ken drew the second plan to scale. Then he made cardboard patterns of each of the pieces of his proposed clamp. He pinned the pieces together and gave the pattern to Chuck. “I showed him how it should work.” This was on a Sunday.
wrap a rope or chain around it. It was time-consuming and troublesome. It was hard to get the chain out from under the pipe once it was in the ditch.” Ken started thinking again. He made a tool. It was painted. And the first “Chinbro Pipe Grab” was ready for a trial run. It worked, too. It was also patented. In fact, brother Norris set up distribu-
Chuck took the pattern and went
torships throughout the United States to
“I thought there should be a
to the company’s repair shop. He
market Ken’s inventions. Both sold fairly
way that would work better. I put
found some scrap steel and started
well, although the income didn’t make the
something down on paper. But then I
cutting and welding. By day’s end,
brothers rich. Once a firm acquired one or
got busy with something else and I
Chuck had the very first “Chinbro
both, they didn’t need to restock and the
didn’t have any more steel to erect.” The idea that Ken had come up with was for a device that would clamp onto a steel beam and allow for more agility in its handling.
Beam Clamp,” albeit, a very crude beam clamp, ready to take to Winthrop. “He started using it and the thing worked,” says Ken. “They were
products didn’t wear out. Eventually the rights to the manufacturing and sales were sold and the brothers concentrated solely on construction.