Shortly after learning what a mechanical seal was, and as I learned more, I began to think about writing a book on mechanical seals. At the time (early 1970s) there just didn’t seem to be much information available on the engineering aspects of mechanical seals.  I collected what information I could and, over the years, began to organize my book.  Over those same years, more and more information about mechanical seals became available – plus I found many books and articles that had been previously overlooked.

By the time I retired from John Crane Inc. at the end of 2014, there almost didn’t appear to be a need for my book on mechanical seals.  In particular, Dr. A. O. Lebeck’s book, Principles and Design of Mechanical Face Seals, is so comprehensive that there was little need for my own thoughts on mechanical seal theory.  Still, I reviewed my past publications and paper files and made plans for my own book.  It was a daunting task.  Who would publish my book?  Who would buy it?

I considered self-publishing. I had some experience with Blurb (shameless plug here for my dad’s memoirs and my own book of photographs) but then remembered that I had never received even one single dollar from Blurb.  Making money from my book on seals was not my primary objective but would have been nice.  I also considered Amazon self-publishing for a digital version of my seals book.  An Amazon ebook had considerable appeal but as I learned more, this publishing format seemed limiting, especially considering the many equations, graphs and illustrations that my book would have.  I became frustrated with the whole idea.

My frustration (and realization that there was no money to be made) inspired me to consider making a website about mechanical seals. After all, some of my friends and co-workers have been telling me for years that mechanical seals were actually a hobby for me.  I began to consider my options for making a website.  Actually, I already had a blog about my Buck family genealogy so I knew a little about making a site.  After a little research, I decided to use WordPress to develop my site and BlueHost to host the site.  I came up with the name “SealFAQs” as meaningful and unclaimed.  I outlined my site and jumped right into developing it.

My first efforts with SealFAQs were so frustrating and the results so bad that I temporarily gave up. Instead, I started a simple blog in order to learn and practice WordPress.  After a few months, I returned to working on SealFAQs in 2017.

SealFAQs is far from complete but I’ve decided to “launch” it now and continue to develop it. As a result, some (not too many though) of the site pages are blank – just a place marker.  However, these pages will be filled out in the coming months.  Also, other pages might look a bit rough but are useable and will be tidied up eventually.

Fortunately, I’ve already published so much about mechanical seals that there is a wealth of material already in the public domain from which to draw. I hope that SealFAQs will be a useful site and that you will visit it frequently.