Professional Experience

45+ Years of Overhead Crane Experience

My name is Larry Dunville and I've been involved with the crane business since working as a welder in the shop when I was fifteen years old. I've built, installed, engineered, estimated, sold and serviced overhead bridge cranes. I've sat on the industry committee's that wrote the crane specs for the steel industry, written articles and taught professional architects and engineers about the special requirements to be aware of when designing buildings that will house overhead cranes.

In the early 90's, I lead the effort to become one of the first cranes builders in the US to attain ISO9001 certification, which lead directly to Dearborn Crane and Engineering winning the Indiana Governor's Quest For Excellence Award and the Indiana University Kelly School of Business Growth 100 Award, two consecutive years.

Personal Interests

I've been fortunate to have had a job, owning Dearborn Crane and Engineering, that has always been a challenge and provided for a fascinating occupation. As a result, for much of my life, the management of Dearborn Crane was to a great extent, my number one hobby.

In recent years, I've learned to diversify my interests. Due to a motorcycle accident, my teenage obsession with golf has officially ended. I have since refocused on four areas of interest.

Apple McIntosh Computers

I have been captivated by the micro computer revolution from the very beginning. My first computer was an Apple II around 1978 with 16k of ram (yes… 16k and not 16 megs much less 16 gb) and 5 inch floppies with 113k capacity! The thought of a machine giving me answers at the simple stroke of a keyboard was just too much for me to resist. Too bad, it was never quite that easy.

Since then, I've had MS-DOS machines, Unix machines, Windows machines and finally back to the Apple world which I enjoy greatly. Most people use computers because they are essential to modern life and can't escape them, I have computers because I genuinely enjoy them.

My current setup includes a 2018 MacBook Pro, a 38 inch 4k monitor, a 12.9 inch iPad and a 3 Terabyte backup drive. In 2018 dollars, it probably cost less than the Apple II did!

Astrophotography

Closely related to my computer hobby is my interest in digital photography. Having spent a life in business and engineering, photography allows me to escape to the severely atrophied right side of the my brain, or is it the left side? There are those that would probably say both sides are severely atrophied, but I still find photography endlessly challenging and it requires a side of me that I normally don't call upon.

Since Jenny and my move to the Arizona desert, I have found the Tucson sunset and deep sky objects to be a magnet for my camera. For anyone that has played with a modern dSLR camera, they have discovered that it's essentially a computer hooked to a sophisticated piece of glass, which is right up my alley.

Furniture Building/Woodworking

Woodworking and in particular furniture building is also a good balance to a lifetime in steel fabricating. Where forming steel takes 3000+ degrees of a welding rod and a very big hammer, furniture building takes sand paper and calipers. Since the move to Arizona, I no longer have the space, but I still enjoy every excuse to work with wood, including the bookcases and desk in the above video.

The picture to the right is a grandfather clock I made from un-finish 8/4 cherry boards using mortise and tenon construction.

Porsche Sports Cars

Sports cars have always been a passion of mine. My first car was a ten year old, 1957 Ford Thunderbird that my Dad and I totally rebuilt. About forty years later I purchased a 1968 Porsche 911S Targa (soft window). One of my wife's friends suggested to her that at 59 years old, I was having a mid-life crises. Lucky for me she reminded the friend that, if a sports car is the criteria for a mid-life crises, that mine started in my mid-twenties with a Datsun 240Z and has continued unabated with a series of Porsches, Z-cars, Corvettes, etc. But the 1968 911S was something really special.

I picked the 1968 Porsche 911 because it was one of the last cars with no pollution control baloney and no complex computer control systems. Truth be known, the early Porsches were really just VW Beetles on steroids (yes, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche designed them both). Anyone with a set of basic metric tools, the shop manuals and the support of the Porsche community could restore one.

Within a few months the car had been reduced to a number of boxes, probably a hundred zip lock baggies and hundreds of digital pictures documenting every step hoping that it would help me in the eventual reassembly.

After five years, and spending more money that I'm willing to admit to my wife, I finished one of the finest early Porsches in the country. The car was later featured on the Cable TV Show, “Chasing Classic Cars” with Wayne Carini. Take a look below, and make sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page.