By Fireman M.N.(Retired)

I had a bit of work to start me off but mostly it was from farmers (bless them), jobs that had them stumped - sheared off bolts and studs. Usually they had had a go at drilling them out but half a hole off centre. The most usual excuse being, “Our drills are only cheap ones, not good ones like yours”.

Welding jobs - cast iron really had them stumped, or “Our welder isn’t big enough”. There was usually a series of blobs and lumps of slag somewhere near the line of a totally unprepared crack and their favourite statement was, “It's thin so it needs gas welding”. Most of these I did with arc just to show off. I gradually got them educated and told them that if they wanted me to fix it then leave it alone! And above all wash it down, because I don’t want that parked outside my back door smelling of roses. One job which comes to mind was drilling.

It was a tractor draw-bar, some 2 ½” x 1” x 2ft long with holes along its length to take pins. It was made of manganese steel, known to be “work hardening” and good for digger teeth and railway points and crossings. When the drawbar was made, the holes in it would have been punched. The farmer had tried to drill a hole of about ½” diameter and failed. The lad who brought it in blamed the drills, even though they had used about ½ a gallon of oil. I set it up with a 1” drill, put the machine on auto-feed and stood back. It did send up some almost black smoke and the swarf was a dull red at the end but it made it. The lad said, “What’s that going to cost him then?” “Two and six”, said I. “Coo that’s a bit steep” said the lad. So I said, “Roly if Richard spent £2,000 on a machine like this and another £30 for a drill he could have done the job himself for nothing”. I think he got the message.

Work was steady but I wasn’t going to make my fortune in Spaxton when there was the rest of the world waiting. Bryco Concrete were about to expand, they were bidding for casting bridge sections for the M5 from Edithmead coming West. They had bought the ground and track bed of the railway line which ran from Henlade to Thornfalcon. Can you remember the humpbacked bridge and the station with its little hand operated crane at the end of the platform?

The future Bryco plans did include someone to stick ironwork together, so it was arranged that I would do 3 or 4 days a week, self-employed and submit an invoice monthly. Bryco’s bread and butter work was pre-stressed lintols, columns and trusses for farm buildings, fence posts and paving slabs. This was about to change.

A new man Jack Lowe from “Trent Concrete” took charge and had some big ideas. “Bigger and better” was his motto. The farm buildings, fence posts and slabs were phased out in favour of big industrial buildings and the motorway bridge sections. These were all pre-stressed units, which were produced as follows.

Imagine a concrete path with two vertical R.S.J.s set in each end with about 4ft sticking up. High tensile steel cables were stretched between these and strained to a pre-set tension which were anchored to the R.S.J.s (Heads) using spreader plates and collets. Next the moulds were built up around the wires to whatever length the beams were to be. The concrete was poured in and vibrated to exclude any air pockets and allowed to set.

When set the moulds were dismantled and repaired, the wires cut off flush with the ends and there you had fairly lightweight beams with the reinforcing pre-loaded to a known strain.

What was all this to do with welding? The moulds were all made of timber and with a team of carpenters working flat out making and repairing them they had a very limited life span, so steel was the best option. Parkins of Exeter sheared and pressed 8ft long sections of plate to size and I set about welding and bracing them to shape.

Also with the “bigger and bigger”, the R.S.J. Heads started to show signs of weakness and so new ones were needed. When I say new ones, what they wanted to do was to beef up the old ones with extra struts and bracing. I pointed out that at the end of the day they would end up with a right mess not much stronger than what they had already. After the powers to be had finished wringing their hands in anguish I sketched out what I thought was needed on the back of an old time sheet and left it with them to think about and asked them to come back to me when they were ready.

Meanwhile back in civilization I was doing a lot of work with horse-drawn vehicles, which entailed a lot of forge work so I decided to get a proper forge set up. Looking in “Exchange and Mart” I found a forge at Bristol, talked to the chap who had it for sale and arranged to meet him at a Lock-up in the back streets of that fair city. It was to be a cash transaction.

When I saw the forge it was just the job but somewhat larger than expected so I asked him how were we going to load it. “Don’t worry I have a gang, I’ll go and get them”, he said. About five minutes later back he came with six of the biggest and dirtiest leather clad “ Hells Angels”. My reaction was “Excreta”! I thought that I was about to be mugged and left to rot in the back of this Lock-up. They say don’t judge a book by it’s cover and this was true. The softly spoken “ Angels” picked up that forge as if it was a bag of feathers. When loading was finished I tied it down and headed for home. Having enough excitement for one day I left unloading until the following morning.

Some of the works on horse-drawn vehicles were museum restorations. One notable job was from the science museum in London and this was a huge coach called the “ High Flyer” which had rear wheels about 7ft diameter and 4” wide. When it was built in 1700 and something, rolling the tyres for these wheels was not possible so they settled for 2” wide curved sections, each about 2ft long staggered around the rim and fixed on with nails driven in and clenched over on the inside. I had the job of making the nails which were 7/16” x 5/16”, about 5” long tapered to a point with a rectangular counter sunk head finished with a big square mushroom top. There were 360 of them so the forge started to earn its keep.

About a month later Bryco phoned, wanting to discuss the new heads. Being no fool I picked up on the word “new” so off I went to discuss it with them. Traditionally Bryco went for second hand machines equipment etc and this time no change! There was a great pile of rusty 18” and 12” R.S.Js and they asked me if I would do the job.

I agreed, but when thinking about all of the bent and twisted bits that I would have to cut out, filling the unwanted holes and welding in dozens of gusset plates as it was to be loaded to 400 tons, it would have been cheaper for them to have bought new steel. Some people never learn.

I talked Father out of retirement to supervise the digging of the holes, setting up and concreting in. All went well and after testing there was another satisfied customer.

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