Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | spring 2006
Bill Rickard

 


SPRING 2006
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Handyman extraordinaire

The crew from National Geographic’s Explorer television show needed some help. Could somebody please paint the Styrofoam packing peanuts swirling below Iowa State University’s tornado simulator? Pink just wouldn’t do.

Well, sure, Bill Rickard could.

But have you ever tried to coat packing peanuts with spray paint? The spray just blows them away.

Not if you’re Rickard, a 52-year-old laboratory mechanical technologist in Howe Hall’s Wind Simulation and Testing Laboratory. He went back to his shop and unrolled some wire mesh – the same stuff used in the tornado simulator to keep tiny models of houses and anything else from flying into the simulator’s big fan.

Rickard made a little cage with the leftover wire, put in the peanuts, and painted them a nice brown.

“I’m a notorious scrounger,” Rickard said. “I have a lot of stuff tucked away.”

Rickard grew up in Sioux City and was never far from a wood shop and power tools. His father owned a cabinetmaking business. And his father put him right to work.

“I had my first tetanus shot at 2,” Rickard said. “Dad had me on a job site showing me how to pull nails out.”

Rickard left the shop to study agronomy at Iowa State. He earned his degree, did a little farming, and returned to the family business. When his dad retired, Rickard returned to campus, thinking he’d go back to school.

He found part-time work in the Engineering Research Institute’s wood shop. Before long he was working full time running the shop. He ran the institute’s shop for about 10 years and then moved to the wind lab’s shop in 1999.

His agenda for a recent workday included setting up wind tunnels for student labs, working on air compressor filters, building models for the wind tunnels, setting up the next experiment, keeping the lab tidy, and working with a crew of students.

“It’s very, very interesting work,” he said. “It’s never the same thing. And there’s always a list of problems to solve.”

-- M. Krapfl

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