Juceclone,
I had a working lifetime which spanned the era 1954 till 1998, So guess it was getting on for half a century, I would most likely have worked on for another few years, but illness precluded that , come to think on it by then I was getting thoroughly fed up with the so called workshop mentality which had by and then not crept in but came in like a gale, brotherly harmony and a workshop feel good factor was, Well not quite like that of the old workers of the 1950/s through to the early seventies ! But lets not moan and get back to some of the old shops I remember.
The town and area where i began my working life had an extremely nice old well equiped maintenance shop, belonging to the local harbor authority, The whole plant being driven from overhead line shafting, It was a reasonable peaceful place not much sound from the overhead line shafting which leisurely spun round at about 140 revs/minute, only the slight swish of the belts on the pulleys, The belts were not tight but seemed to sort of hug the pulleys and give an excellent drive, plus the clicking of the belt lacings, When the turner wished to change his belt from one step of the speed cone to the other, he used a belt stick,and nudged the belt over on to the next step on his cone down a speed & then flicked the other side of the belt & low and behold it would change over on to the corresponding cone on the lathe counter shaft above his head, When he wanted to stop or start his machine he pulled on one off two" skipping rope" handles hanging on ropes either of which was designed to operate a simple mechanism throwing the belt from the main line shafting driving pulley to either a "fast & loose pulley" on the lathes counter shaft, All this control going on well above his head.
On these old lathes if the poor old thing had not been beaten to death too much, when in back gear one got a rumble from the head stock, and in some cases a slight ringing sound from the change gears, Another thing that springs to mind was a slight smell of Archangel tar, this was from a weird and wonderful concoction known as "Gandy Belt Dressing"
used to stop the belts slipping under the load, In these old shops another machine which gave quite a rumble from the machine gearing was the planing machine, coupled with a rhythmic click when the kickers changed the machine's table direction.
As can be imagined the bigger the plant the more the noise , Tw of the old marine engine building shops in the Clyde area each still had a big vertical wall slotting machine, These old machines had in the case of one of the shops was capable of a planing cut of twenty five foot in length, They looked like big lathe beds bolted to the shop pillar, and had travelling on their slides a big saddle carrying the cutting tool which could be fed in an in or out configuration depending on the depth of cut the machine operator wished to adjust to The workpiece was bolted to a movable table wich could move longitudinally from left to right or vice-versa with a synchronizing feed from the tool block
The big cutting tool block was driven down on its cutting mode by a big lead screw which was controlled from a fast & loose pulley arrangement driving three big bevel gears on the reverse of the screw one got a lovely loud gear rattle, These powerful big machines could easily plane up a big marine engine bed, tied on its table on a huge pair of angle plates, The whole ethos of these old machines was a privilege to see, As the concept of these big things was from the fruitful mind of William Murdock a Scotsman who was the works manager of the steam engine works of James Watt in the early 1800/s The last of these machines worked in this area until 1980
I remember also an old crane works whose big face plate lathe was underneath the drawing office What a rumble that gave throughout the establishment , Kept the guys awake!
