$15 Minimum Wage for Fast-Food Workers

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
New York State may be the next to raise its minimum wage to $15.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
The state would follow some Western cities - San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles.
INSKEEP: Now a New York wage board has recommended more pay for workers in the fast-food industry. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang has more.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: Even in New York City, most public meetings don't have a marching band for an opening act. The musicians played at an outdoor watch party for a state wage board meeting.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We will be making resolutions that provide for $15 an hour statewide.
(APPLAUSE)
WANG: Fast-food restaurant workers and their supporters celebrated on a blocked-off street in downtown Manhattan as they watched a panel take them one step closer to a minimum wage hike from $8.75 to $15 per hour.
ALVIN MAJOR: It's a victory. We have been fighting, and today, we have made history.
WANG: Forty-nine-year-old Alvin Major works as a cook at a KFC in Brooklyn, N.Y. If New York's labor commissioner approves the proposal, Major will start making $15 an hour in three years. And he says he'll be able to stop relying on food stamps to feed his family of six.
MAJOR: This would help me to take care of my kids, send them to the right school, and put food on the table.
WANG: The raise would go into effect gradually over the next few years for workers at chains with 30 or more stores nationally. Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed the board that recommended the wage hike. He called their proposal an important first step.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
ANDREW CUOMO: We will not stop until we reach true economic justice and we raise the minimum wage for every worker in every job in this state.
WANG: The fast-food industry is one of New York's biggest employers of low-wage workers. Randy Mastro, an attorney for fast-food franchise holders, says his clients are being unfairly targeted.
RANDY MASTRO: There are many other similarly situated restaurants, diners, food counters, not included in this proposal.
CAROLYN RICHMOND: Singling out fast-food employers and saying that they must pay $15 an hour really doesn't leave a lot of room for competition.
WANG: Attorney Carolyn Richmond represents restaurant owners in the New York City Hospitality Alliance. She says the proposed wage hike would mean some of her clients won't be able to hire more workers. And smaller fast-food chains that want to expand might think twice before opening in the state. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, New York.

Household Help

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. For generations of African-Americans, especially women, the job most available to them was working in someone else's home as a domestic. With the expansion of the black middle class, many black women are themselves hiring help. We have the latest story now in our series on The Changing Lives Of Women. Karen Grigsby Bates, of NPR's Code Switch team, explores why some African-American women are conflicted about being the ma'am their help answers to.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE: Solange Bumbaugh has a busy life. She's a mother of two small boys, and she's also completing a doctoral degree. She and her husband have a housekeeper, and she believes the money they spend on paying her is a good tradeoff for eliminating the marital spats they used to have over who cleaned what. But even though she's had help for several years now, Solange Bumbaugh remains conflicted about being the boss lady.
SOLANGE BUMBAUGH: It feels very weird. I know for me, certainly because of - you know, African-American history in this country, it feels uncomfortable being on this side of the divide.
BATES: Her current housekeeper is from Central America, and they speak to each other in Spanish. They have a good working relationship, but Bumbaugh says she still flinches a little bit every time she asks for work to be done. She doesn't want to feel like one of the housewives in "The Help," barking orders to their black maids.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE HELP")
BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD: (As Hilly Holbrook) Put mama in a chair before she breaks a hip.
BATES: But she's not a white socialite in 1960s Mississippi. So Solange Bumbaugh tries to put aside her middle-class guilt, to realize not employing her housekeeper isn't going to help either of them.
BUMBAUGH: Clearly, that's why she's here. She's here to make money for her children.
BATES: Maria Reyes says, in essence, get over that guilt thing. Reyes has worked as both a nanny and a housekeeper. She's now on staff with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and says having an employer of the same race doesn't guarantee anything.
MARIA REYES: (Foreign language spoken)
BATES: You and your employer don't have to be of the same race, Reyes says. What matters is that as an employee, you be treated with dignity and respect. We're human beings, she insists, and we deserve respect.
Natalie Preston-Washington is a marketing communications specialist in Tampa. She says friends and colleagues her age have no problem hiring help if they can afford it, and they are not conflicted in the least.
NATALIE PRESTON-WASHINGTON: We recognize that - you know, you can't be all things at all times to all people; and there is something that, you know, you will have to let go of. And for me, you know, it was cleaning.
BATES: So Preston-Washington hired a black couple to deep-clean her home monthly, after she had her son. She thought she was being respectful. But things got rocky when one day, she left a list of to-dos for the husband-and-wife team. The couple was offended, and so was Preston-Washington.
PRESTON-WASHINGTON: I feel like they treated me like it was a personal relationship rather than a professional one.
BATES: Forty years ago, if a black woman had help, frequently it was a personal relationship. Her housekeeper often was a friend of a friend or a neighbor, or someone from church. In 1975, the hit TV sitcom "The Jeffersons" built its first episode around Louise Jefferson's refusal to hire a housekeeper friend to clean the deluxe apartment in the sky she shared with her husband, George.
(SOUNDBITE OF TELEVISION PROGRAM, "THE JEFFERSONS")
ISABEL SANFORD: (As Louise Jefferson) Remember when Lionel was growing up, and I did domestic work twice a week to - sort of help out?
SHERMAN HEMSLEY: (As George Jefferson) Yes.
SANFORD: (As Louise) Remember the folks I worked for?
HEMSLEY: (As George) Uh-huh.
SANFORD: (As Louise) It was all "yes, ma'am, no ma'am." Now, how can I ask Diane to say"yes ma'am" to me?
HEMSLEY: (As George) Because now, you're the ma'am.
BATES: "Weezy" Jefferson eventually did hire an opinionated maid who stole the show. But Duchess Harris, professor of American history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., sympathizes with black women who cannot get comfortable with the notion of being the ma'am. She says for more than a century, there was one occupation open to them.
DUCHESS HARRIS: The job that black American women could get was being domestics. And they were awfully - incredibly disrespected. I mean, even my paternal grandmother was a domestic. And so for a lot of black American women, we can't let it go.
BATES: Harris and her husband, a surgeon, have gotten around that problem by hiring au pairs from an exchange program, to live with them and help with their three children. The young women mostly come from European countries that are part of the exchange, and it works well for her family. But Harris says a lot of her black friends and acquaintances wouldn't consider it.
HARRIS: I find that black Americans are open with how uncomfortable it would make them, to have someone living in their home from a different background.
BATES: Given demographic shifts, it's quite likely that "someone" will be a person of a different background. The majority of housekeepers in the U.S. are no longer African-American; they're Latina. And as the Latino middle class grows, many Latinos, like their African-American counterparts, have begun to ask themselves the same questions: Can I hire someone who looks like me? Is it OK to be the ma'am?
Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.

Gender Roles

Gender Roles and Household Chores

Hey guys. It’s Dana, and today we’re going to talk about roles in your house and how they kind of change after you have babies. So Jim is putting away the groceries right now, and he actually does the grocery shopping in our family. He does the family grocery shopping, and it’s kinda weird because we used to sort of do this together before we had kids—and grocery shopping is sort of a traditional female role, but it’s something that he does. So there are somethings that he does that are traditional for a man, and that is taking out the trash, mowing the lawn… What else do you do Jim? 

I cook dinner for the family so that is very stereotypical female. I do the dinner. We take turns or do it together as far as bathing the children at night and getting them ready for bed. We sort of swap that out depending on who is even here at night because of our work schedules, but some nights when we’re both here we do it together –incomprehensible audio- because we have twins, so we put both of them in the tub and each gets a baby.  So having twins have sort of facilitated the necessity of both of us having to take on some roles that possibly we wouldn’t have done before.

So when we go places he always drives. When we go somewhere as a family he is always going to drive. I don’t know why that is… I certainly can drive. I have driven from Boston to Anchorage, Alaska, and I’ve done that trip twice. So it’s not that I don’t know how to drive. So let me know down the comments. What are some chores that maybe you do that are not stereotypical for your gender, and then also what your partner does that isn’t really typical. And I’ll talk to you guys in the next video. Thanks for watching! Bye.

Minifasting

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
If your New Year's resolutions to eat better, be healthier and shed a few pounds haven't quite panned out yet, here's a strategy you may not have considered, intermittent fasting. NPR's Allison Aubrey is here to talk about an approach that's gaining a lot of traction among dieters and researchers who are studying the possible benefits beyond just weight loss. And Allison, intermittent fasting gives us a sense of what it is - fasting every now and then?
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Right. Well, the idea here is not to starve yourself for days. I like to think of this more as a mini-fast where you go, say, a 14 to 18 hour stretch without eating one or two days a week. The most well-known plan out there is called the 5-2 diet, popularized by a British physician. And this is where you eat normally for five days out of the week and then you pick two days a week when you do a mini-fast. So for example, you have an early dinner around 5 p.m., and you don't eat again until breakfast the next day at 8. That means you've done a 15-hour mini-fast. And the aim is that on these two days, you cut way back on the number of calories that you're eating to just 500 or 600 calories a day.
BLOCK: That's the catch.
AUBREY: That's right. That's the catch.
BLOCK: And Allison, you've been trying this intermittent fasting. You have a lean and hungry look to me. How's it going?
AUBREY: (Laughter). Well, you know, since this has been generating so much interest among scientists over in the U.K. and here, I decided hey, why not? I'll try it - not so much for weight loss but for other possible benefits such as lowering blood sugar and increasing energy and focus. That sounds good, right?
BLOCK: Yeah, sure.
AUBREY: And I have to say, it is challenging. I won't eat anything after 5 o'clock. So that means I'm at home cooking for my children, not eating dinner, and don't eat again until the next morning. So it can be challenging when you get started.
BLOCK: Yeah, 600 calories doesn't give you a lot of flexibility. What are you trying to eat on those days?
AUBREY: Right, well, you know, you can eat what you like. But be realistic. If you're down to 500 calories, these calories have got to hold you. So you're basically eating a lot of lean protein, greens, other non-starchy vegetables. And the important part here is to go that long stretch of at least 15 hours without eating.
BLOCK: Any downsides, Allison, besides crankiness, as I imagine...
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: People for whom intermittent fasting is a really bad idea maybe?
AUBREY: So I think that there are any number of people who probably wouldn't want to try it - pregnant women, children. If this is something that you're interested in and you have hesitations, certainly talk to your doctor.
BLOCK: Why do this though, Allison? Why not just reduce intake throughout the week?
AUBREY: Well, you know, this is where the science really gets interesting. Researchers at the University of Manchester in the U.K. tested this diet approach in about a hundred women. Half of the women in the group went on this 5-2 diet. The other half followed a more traditional, low-fat diet where they tried to restrict calories seven days a week. And what the researchers found is that the 5-2 dieters lost more weight. They lost more body fat compared to the women on the traditional low-fat diet. So this was a surprise. And what's more, the women on the 5-2 diet also saw improvements to blood sugar. So the researchers are still trying to untangle why this seems to be the more effective dieting strategy. But one thing I can say from my own experience is that these mini-fasts really seem to cut the appetite - or at least my appetite. One of the first days I tried this, I was really hungry when I was going to sleep. And I literally fell asleep, like, dreaming of a chocolate croissant. I was even planning my trip over to Union Station in the morning to buy my chocolate croissant. But when I woke up, I did not even want it. I think I had oatmeal instead. And I left half of the oatmeal in the bowl uneaten. So scientists say this pattern of eating may help regulate appetite so we don't eat as much.
BLOCK: Well, apart from appetite, Allison, you said you were interested in the effects of fasting on energy and on focus. What's known about how intermittent fasting might affect those?
AUBREY: Sure. Well, one of the scientists that I've been talking to is Mark Mattson at the National Institute on Aging. And he says fasting brings a lot of changes in body and brain chemistry. His studies in animals, mainly mice, find that going without food can change the way the brain gets energy. So he's studying how this affects learning and memory. And he's actually planning a study in people later this year. Researchers are also interested in immunity. It turns out that fasting seems to put a mild stress on the cells in the body. And again, studies in animals suggest that the cells become more resilient and better able to protect against damage and disease. So as Mattson likes to point out, you know, this eating three square meals a day plus a few snacks - as is so typical of modern life - is very abnormal from an evolutionary perspective. Humans have, in fact, fasted intermittently for most of history, and perhaps there's a benefit to this.
BLOCK: NPR food and health correspondent and intermittent faster, Allison Aubrey, thanks so much.
AUBREY: Thanks, Melissa.

Based on Voice, Algorithms Are Deciding Whom to Hire

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And now, All Tech Considered.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: If you apply for certain jobs, the way you present yourself - how you sound - may be considered. And soon in some industries, computers may be making that consideration. Job recruitment is the newest frontier where algorithms are choosing who's the right fit to sell food or handle angry cable customers. NPR's Aarti Shahani reports.
AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE: Let's take a voice you know and play a few samples of it. Clip number one...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE GODFATHER")
AL PACINO: (As Don Michael Corleone) My offer is this - nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license.
SHAHANI: Clip two...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "DEVIL'S ADVOCATE")
PACINO: (As John Milton) He gives you this extraordinary gift and then what does he do? I swear, for his own amusement...
SHAHANI: And number three...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SCARFACE")
PACINO: (As Tony Montana) I'd kill a communist for fun, but for a green card, I'm going to carve him up real nice.
SHAHANI: This is Al Pacino in "The Godfather," in "Devil's Advocate" and in "Scarface" - three different characters, three different accents at different ages. The movies were years apart. But in every version, Pacino's voice has a biological, inescapable fact.
LUIS SALAZAR: His tone of voice is - generates engagement, emotional engagement with the audiences.
SHAHANI: Luis Salazar is CEO of Jobaline.
SALAZAR: It doesn't matter if you're screaming or not. That voice is engaging for the average American.
SHAHANI: Years and years of scientific studies and focus groups have dissected the human voice and categorized the key of emotions of the person speaking. Jobaline has taken that research and fed it into algorithms that interpret how a voice makes others feel and cross-checks its judgment with real human listeners.
SALAZAR: We're not analyzing how the speaker feels. That's irrelevant.
SHAHANI: Regardless of whether you're happy or sad, cracking jokes, your voice has a hidden, complicated architecture with that intrinsic signature, much like a fingerprint. And through trial and error, the algorithms can get better at predicting how things like energy and fundamental frequency impact others, be they people watching a movie or cancer patients calling a help line.
SALAZAR: What is the emotion that that voice is going to generate on the listener?
SHAHANI: So far, Salazar says, the Jobaline secret formula can pinpoint if a voice is engaging, calming and/or trustworthy. And note - it's not a lie detector test. You could be a big liar, but just sound like someone honest. Salazar plays me a clip of a woman applying for a job.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: So one person that motivates me every day is my son because I'm trying to make a better life for him.
SALAZAR: So this is an answer to this - question what motivates you?
SHAHANI: Big companies pay Jobaline to help them sift through thousands of applications to find the right workers for their hourly jobs. The startup says it's processed over half a million voices for hotel receptionists, call-center staff.
SALAZAR: In the hospitality industry, in the retail industry, you want people engaged. The average span of attention these days is four seconds. In four...
SHAHANI: I'm sorry, can you repeat that?
SALAZAR: (Laughter).
SHAHANI: And the benefit isn't just efficiency, cutting costs. We humans can get tired by the time applicant number 25 comes through the door. We can discriminate. But algorithms have stamina, and they do not factor in things like age, race, gender, sexual orientation.
SALAZAR: Correct. Math is blind, basically, right? That's the beauty of math - it's blind.
SHAHANI: Now, of course, as a woman who's built a career on talking, I'm curious what the algorithms have to say about me. My friends say I've got two voices - the inviting, empathetic hey, how-you-doing, come-on-over voice, and the don't-mess-with-me, I'm-getting-work-done voice. Salazar ventures to guess the intrinsic quality.
SALAZAR: I'll say it's engaging and trustworthy. I don't think it will make the bar for calming, (laughter) but we'll see.
SHAHANI: The algorithms agree. They say with 95 percent certainty that my voice is engaging to three-quarters of Americans, so I'm a good fit for radio.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
That was NPR's Aarti Shahani, who was hired by humans, not algorithms. And we'd like to see what the algorithms have to say about you. NPR's tech team is collecting vocal samples. Go to npr.org/alltech to submit your voice clip.

A Revival in American Manufactruring, Led by Craft Food Makers

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's look at a part of the economy you can glimpse in the aisles of a grocery store. Maybe you've noticed a pickle jar with a rustic looking label or more microbrews in the beer aisle, brands you wouldn't see advertised on TV. These kinds of foods are becoming a regular offering. And as Planet Money's Adam Davison reports, far from being a niche market, craft food makers might just represent the future of American manufacturing.
ADAM DAVIDSON, BYLINE: One day Chris Woehrle decided to finally leave his corporate job and pursue his dream - to become an artisanal food craftsman. And so every day at home he'd basically pickle stuff.
CHRIS WOEHRLE: I had a refrigerator full of plastic food buckets that were full of pickles and kimchi and sauerkraut and harissa and salsa and ketchup and mustard and, you know, any kind of craft food you could make.
DAVIDSON: Chris Woehrle lives in Brooklyn, where shops are filled with hand-crafted, grass-fed, organically raised whatever. Too much of it, in fact. Every time Woehrle had a good idea, he found eight other companies were already making precisely the same kind of mustard or pickled radish.
WOEHRLE: You don't want to play a marketing game where it's just like, let's out-market the other pickle people.
DAVIDSON: Eventually, though, he and his partner found a hole in the market: all-natural beef jerky. Kings County Jerky was born. Two guys, a small warehouse in Brooklyn, and 25 pounds of beef a day. Food manufacturing - from a small shop like this one all the way up to those huge food conglomerates - add up to big business, well over half a trillion dollars a year. And the Kings County approach is a model for how all manufacturers can do better. Ignore low-priced commodity products. Focus instead on customizing high quality goods for a select audience willing to pay a premium. It works even on something as simple as a spring.
STEVE KEMPF: Springs are critical to the day to day functioning of everybody's lives.
DAVIDSON: Steve Kempf runs Lee Spring, which makes, no surprise, springs.
KEMPF: This telephone has a number of springs in it, from the buttons to the hang-up device. This stapler has several different springs in it, from the spring that...
DAVIDSON: Steve listed off all the springs in his office for four minutes. We timed him. My eyeglasses have springs. Our audio recorders have springs. And each of those springs has to solve a slightly different problem.
KEMPF: You take this wrench here, for example, and it's got a very unique L-shaped spring design. And so the product designer wants to come up with an elegant design and he also has a very specific force he wants when you let go of this wrench so that it opens in your hands and feels comfortable.
DAVIDSON: Think of this as an artisanal craft wrench. And a craft wrench, of course, needs a craft spring. This is good business, by the way. Companies will pay more for a spring that precisely meets their needs than they will for some off the rack spring. Incidentally, it makes spring manufacturing also a lot more fun.
JUAN DELGADO: The puzzle solving is what I love to do, OK? If you don't have a puzzle for me, I tend to get bored.
DAVIDSON: Juan Delgado is a coiler, and when he started here, 35 years ago, Lee mostly did make standardized springs, same thing every day. Now each day there's a surprise.
DELGADO: A regular spring - let's see if I find - here's a regular compression spring. This is boring to me.
DAVIDSON: Then he pulls out this crazy cone-shaped spring.
DELGADO: This - I look forward to things like this.
DAVIDSON: Just look at the gorgeous way the coils taper and don't tangle when you press down. Making something like this cone-shaped spring, that requires knowledge, artistry, in other words it's a true craft. Craft jobs typically pay more, so Juan does better than someone who doesn't have all those spring skills.
Even big manufacturers, like Toyota, General Electric, Dow Chemical, are focusing more of their business on custom-making products for customers willing to pay more. It's one of the best alternatives to competing with China and other low-wage countries which have perfected the commodity business of turning out lots of identical products as cheaply as possible.
Adam Davidson, NPR News.

World Climate Talks

DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Every year, the United Nations invites environmental experts and diplomats from around the world to negotiate ways to slow global warming. This year's meeting runs this weekend and next in Lima, Peru. Recent conferences have produced mixed results at best. But this year, as NPR's Christopher Joyce reports, negotiators say they have some fresh ideas.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Some say these conferences of the parties are a warming planet's best hope. Some say they're a United Nations jamboree. The conference in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 was a breakthrough. It produced an international treaty to limit emissions of greenhouse gases. But that treaty failed to slow worldwide emissions. And no one can agree on a new treaty to replace Kyoto. One problem is that the Kyoto limits on emissions only apply to developed countries. But now China, India, Brazil and Indonesia are among the biggest polluters. So in Lima, the new plan on the table requires every country to do something to slow warming. Todd Stern is the U.S. government's climate negotiator.
TODD STERN: It's supposed to be applicable to all. And to us - I think to a great many countries - that was an absolutely critical few words because that said to us that we weren't doing Kyoto.
JOYCE: In addition to leaving out developing countries, the Kyoto treaty set mandatory emissions reductions that applied for all developed countries. But even some rich countries failed to meet them. So the plan in Lima would have each government offer up its own voluntary target.
STERN: And to subject what they're proposing to do to full sunlight, right? So the views of other countries and the press and everybody else can look to see what China, the U.S. or India or Europe or Japan or anybody else is proposing to do. And you take whatever criticism you get.
JOYCE: President Obama and President Xi Jinping did the voluntary promise thing two months ago. They set targets for lowering emissions in the U.S. and China over the next 10 to 15 years. But what happens if, when you add up everyone's promises, it isn't enough to keep a lid on warming? Alden Meyer, a climate expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, is in Peru this week.
ALDEN MEYER: Will there be a moment where all those contributions are added up and the world has to confront the reality of what it has put a table if it's not ambitious enough?
JOYCE: In fact, pledges so far from the U.S., China and Europe are not nearly enough to keep the planet from warming to what scientists say will be a dangerous level. Yet many developing countries say they can't do much because their priority is getting their people out of poverty - not limiting greenhouse gases. This is the deep difference that negotiators in Lima hope to resolve in time for the next conference of the parties in Paris next year. And they do have a carrot to offer. Wealthy countries have promised a $100 billion a year to help poorer countries buy the technology they need to lower emissions. There are plenty of businesses making solar panels and wind turbines and energy saving devices for rich countries, and they're eager to sell to the developing world as well. Many are part of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy led by Lisa Jacobson.
LISA JACOBSON: Once people start making these investments, they're going to find that they're easier to do than they expected. They're less expensive than they thought - that new jobs and new economic development opportunities exist. And they're going to want to do more.
JOYCE: And it's worth noting that at the very first climate conferences, many business leaders came to oppose a treaty. Now they're lining up to profit from one. Christopher Joyce, NPR News.

How a Bolt Is Made

How a Bolt is Made

Hello. My name is Al Fogel. I’ve been the Operations Manager here at Portland Bolt since 1987.  This is an inch and a quarter diameter by 48 inch long, galvanized F1554 grade 36 hex head anchor bolt. We just completed 356 of these anchor bolts for the Caney River Substation project in Howard, Kansas.  We’ve been manufacturing bolts like these by hand since 1912, and we would like to take you through our shop to show you how a bolt like this is manufactured.

Step 1: Shearing

The first step in the manufacturing of any bolt is to cut the round bar to length. Our Peddinghaus shears function much like a guillotine and chop the steel, rather than using a saw blade to cut through it. We are capable of shearing round bar up to 2 inches in diameter and up to 100” in length. Bolts that are larger in diameter or longer in length are cut using a band saw.

Step 2: Heading

Next, a hex head is hot-forged onto one end of the steel rod. An induction heating coil heats the end of the rod to approximately 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. A National Upsetter  is then used to forge the heated end of the rod into a hex-shaped head. Gripper block clamps the round bar securely in place while a plunger or die compresses the heated end of the rod reshaping it into a hex-head configuration. A second position in the gripper block is used to stamp the head with the manufacturer’s logo and grade symbol, as required. The hex head of this anchor bolt will be embedded in concrete, and it’s intended to provide pull-out resistance.

Step 3: Chamfering

High speed cutting blades apply a chamfer to the ends of the bolt prior to threading.  This beveled end will help facilitate easy assembly of the nut once the bolts have been threaded and galvanized.

Step 4: Threading

Landis threaders  are used to cut 8” of thread onto the end of these anchor bolts.  Rotating heads contain chases which cut away steel from the round bar to produce the threads. A constant stream of cutting oil is applied to reduce friction and to prevent overheating. Threads are gauged by the threading operators to ensure conformance to dimensional tolerances.

 Step 5: Hot-Dip Galvanizing

The bolts must be pickled prior to galvanizing. This process cleans the bolts and prepares the surface of the steel to accept the zinc. Parts are first submerged in caustic soda (Stage 1) which removes cutting oil and other organic materials that accumulate during the manufacturing process. The bolts are then rinsed and submerged in sulfuric acid (Stage 2) which removes any scale from them and etches the surface of the steel. The bolts are rinsed again and then submerged in flux (Stage 3) which is a chemical that assists in the bonding of the zinc to the steel. After pickling, the bolts are placed in racks and lowered into our 12-foot-long by 4-foot-wide by 7-foot-deep tank of 840 degree molten zinc. The bolt remains in the zinc for between 2 to 4 minutes. When the bolts are removed from the zinc, they are spun in a high speed centrifuge to remove excess zinc from the threads. Due to the proprietary nature of this process, we have not include it in the video.

Finally, the bolts are cooled in quench tanks so they can be inspected and packaged as soon as they are removed from the galvanizing tank. Blue paint is applied to the threaded end of each F1554 grade 36 anchor bolt to identify the grade, as it’s required by the specification.

Step 6: Shipping

In preparation for shipping, bolts are banded to pallets, shrink wrapped, and clearly labeled. The morning after your order leaves our facility, you will receive an email that contains shipment tracking information  in addition to a copy of full mill tests reports. Portland Bolt provides complete certification documents free of charge with every order. Portalnd Bolt products ship nationwide and internationally. Refer to this page of our website to learn about the geographical distribution of the bolts we manufacture.