Hi,
I worked there (during a summer holiday job in 1964 I think). I was at Holly Lodge Grammar school and in the Sixth Form, planning to go to university. I just pitched up at the Smethwick unemployment office at beginning of the summer holidays, and was sent down there. I didn't trell them I would only be working there temporarily.
Yes, it was on Grove Lane, I think (I may have old pay slips somewhere -- I am a bit of a hoarder). Or it may have been Grove Street. I well remember walking all the way from Greenfield Road to get there for 07:30 (would a schoolchild do this today?).
I worked on silver and gold plating. Both were rather specialised at Ionic and I worked on my own (most of Ionic did chrome and similar plating) in a small room dedicated to precious metals. Silver plating was 'easy'; several of us worked on it. We did plating of electrodes for Kelner-Solvay process. I remember lifting 250 lb and 350 lb crates of the copper lectrodes to be plated on an off low loader trolleys. On my own -- a teenager. Didn't think much of it at the time. But I was naive, and fit (I guess). Health and Safety?!!
I also did gold plating (I was the 'gold plater' there for a couple of months). Mainly of small electrical items. I remember gold-plating a shilling for fun -- looked like a sovereign (don't know what I did with it). This was more problematic. I remeber plating items, having them tested, finding them unacceptable quality, ... for several weeks, before we got process right. As gold was so valuable, we stripped the gold off scrap items using aqua regia (a mixture of nitric an hydrochloric acid -- very corrosive -- but dissolves gold). I just put the acid in a bucket, then dipped a sieve containing the plated items in it and shook it until all the gold had been dissolved. The sive (made of iconel?) gradually dissolved as well of course.
I remember working late one night and switching off my gold plating tanks at the wrong place. When the early shift came on the next day, they swithed on the power, and when I arrived, I found the gold-plating tank was overheating (I recall 140 degrees Fahrenheit, but my memory may be faulty there). But it was definitely fuming. So I panicked, switched things off, ... And felt a little faint. Which was worrying, as the plating solution was a cyanide salt of gold, and evolved HCN (highly poisonous -- used in american gas chambers). This smells of almonds, but as I have had no sense of smell since I was a child. So I ran out, telling those I passed to evacuate the room. When outside, I knew I would now in a few seconds whether I would survive or not. Obviously I did.
Another memory I have is of finding two slabs of solid silver at the bottom of a plating tank: each about 100 mm by 8 mm by 400 mm. Quite valuable. Just lying in the tank. But we would never have dreamt of 'nicking' such items in those days.
As the gold process was so problematic initially, I got to talk to the works chemist, who soon realised that I knew much more about chemistry than the average recruit from the job centre (I was doing A and S level chemistry and physics, and had already passed A-level chemistry a year early) and he tried to persuade me to take a job there, and study for a degree (or even PhD part time). But I decided to continue with my original plan and left at the end of the summer, to complete my studies at Holly Lodge. We parted on good terms, but I cannot remember his name.
I am very proud to have worked (even if only for 2-3 months) in a Smethwick factory. I also worked at Scribbens-Kemp (loading lorries) and Mitchells and Butlers. All gone now. But I do feel I have a link with industrial Smethwick/Bham of the 1960s.