I am scratching my head for any more, unfortunately most of them are extremely "rude" and would probably get me banned!
I have remembered a few more "occurrences" from my time at Kynochs.
Outside of the Apprentice School was the cycle and motorcycle shed. Those that had motorcycles were considered the lucky ones, and each lunch break we used to gather to look at and the discuss the various bikes. One particular machine was pig to start, and was prone to back fire when kicked. This required the rider to get his foot off the kickstart, rapidly. On the one occasion the lad was fortunately wearing his crash helmet.
He had given the bike an almighty boot, using all his weight to get it to start. It backfired while he was still on the kickstart. The result was that his head hit the roof (it was a low corrugated one). There was no injury but the shed roof had a dent in it where his head had hit it!
During our times at the shed we were made aware of a chap that used to walk past on occasion, that he owned and rode a Vincent. This was considered by many that this was “the bees knees”. A couple of times it was suggested that we ought to get a real mans machine. All that we apprentices could afford was “run of the mill” bikes, amongst them was an old BSA Bantam. Now this early Bantam could be made for its engine to run backwards(reverse). On seeing this Vincent owner coming the Bantam was fired up to run backwards. Various comments were made by both party’s, the upshot was that our Vincent rider whose boast was that he could ride “anything”. With little persuasion he sat on the already running Bantam. Giving the engine some throttle, and putting it into gear, the expected direction of travel was not as expected! The boasting and comments were somewhat subdued for some time.
The first dept. that I went to following my leaving the Apprentice School was Holford Sheet Mill. What a culture shock!
The general machinist was obsessed with the need to beat the PBR bonus scheme, to achieve this he used to have all the machines running at the same time. Unbelievable I know, but he managed to get 2 lathes, a shaper, a milling machine, and a saw, and would using the radial driller all at the same time, how he managed it I don’t know but he did! Wow betide the PBR clerk if he was a penny short in his pay packet come Pay day. He was man possessed.
One day in the Sheet Mill, the main hot rolling mill had a breakdown, this mill supplied all the sheet for this mill, so to get it back up and running was a major priority. The overhead crane was needed and after much “faffing about” it was finally got into the correct position. It had taken the team, including the crane driver a long time to get it into the perfect position.
The crane driver had been in his cab for several hours, and badly needed to answer the “call of nature”. He was absolutely forbidden to leave his cab, it would have meant that the cranes position would have had to have been moved. A compromise was found a piece of string was thrown up to him with a bucket attached. Once “nature” was answered the bucket was lowered down very gently and disposed of! I cannot imagine such goings on would/could be envisaged in today’s workplace.
When working with one of the millwrights on some equipment below the floor plates, we found several off cuts from the copper ingots that were passed through the hot mill to produce the sheets.
The engineer happened to have a look down at what we were doing and asked if we had put
the scrap metal down there, our reply was that we had not. “Just leave it there” was his comment, which we duly did.
A couple of weeks later we found out that one of the operatives had been stealing the copper, and had been caught. Copper at that time due to an international shortage was fetching several thousand pounds per ton. For how long this had been going on we never found out.
There are a couple of my old work colleagues that I thank every month.
When I was a callow apprentice I was marched into the foreman’s office one day and told to “sign here” a form was on the desk. When I asked what it was for, I was told “you are joining the company pension scheme”. Protestations were ignored, and a pen was put in my hand, under duress I did as I was told. Each month when that pension goes into my bank account, thanks are duly given!
As one neared the end of their apprenticeship, a chat was given to explain the PBR scheme, this was the bonus scheme that was used throughout the Witton site.
Each job/task was given a time in which it should be done. Every clerk in charge of their departments scheme had a massive ledger that contained the times for each and every conceivable part of the job! The composition of this ledger was, looking back a feat of great skill by those that assembled it.
Having been given the guidelines about the scheme the clerk started to sharpen a pencil in his sharpener. Having achieved a point on it that was like a needle he presented it to me with advise that “ the pencil is mightier than the sword, always keep a very sharp pencil handy when filling out your time sheets” I did and was rarely out of pocket while I used this scheme!
While in the Research Dept. there was much excitement about the new super conductor product. This involved a great deal of manual work to draw the massive billets down to smaller rod sizes.
There then came the problem of how to join one rod end to another! The solution was a fairly simple one, it involved an explosive element. Where by both end would be imploded into each other. How and where to do this was soon overcome. A container was made into which the rods were placed along with the explosive material. What better place than in the middle of the road outside of the Research Dept. It could be monitored from the Department itself.
All went well for the first couple of implosions. The container merely “jumped” into the air a couple of feet. Unfortunately following another “successful” implosion, it became apparent that no thought had been given to what lay beneath the road surface!
The result was that a water main was fractured, a fountain of water sprang from the road several feet into the air, whoops.