But the grinding machine sounded like a jet engine. While it ran, I would strike the top basin from underneath, using a steel bar, to make sure all the dust shook into the path of the grinding arms. The dust would pass through a filter at the bottom of the machine and them into a plastic bag, latched onto the opening of the machine, nestled into a cardboard barrel, which in turn was on a footcart. When the bag filled, I would turn the machine off, close the bag, put a lid on the barrel, and place it on a pallet. The cycle would then begin anew.
Lime is a nasty substance.
The stuff would form a fine layer on the skin of my arms regardless of whether or not I wore long sleeves, and it was just alkali enough to combine with my sweat and burn my skin like a day at the beach. Jaime and David worked on a much nastier machine. They would mix bags of calcium stearate, the nastiest hydrophobic substance known to man, with a milder powder known as hexamethylenetetraamine, or 'hex'. That stuff was grossly unpleasant. Dust hung in the air throughout the factory, and we all used every respite to step outside, if only for a little while, and the noise was ever there.