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Kynoch's I M I 1950s Onwards

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13
Showing Off ; There were always a lot of visitors around the Witton Site, looking back it was obviously thought to be good publicity for the Company. There was an operative of a fly press that used to show off to the visitors A fly press has a large handle that is swung around to operate it. On top of this handle were a couple of heavy weights in the shape of balls to give it momentum. To facilitate the different strokes that may be required the position of the handle could be moved. The “party piece” of our show off was to spin the handle around with it stopping just short of his head, much to the concern of his audience. Not realising that the fly press had been “adjusted”, and with his audience in place the handle was swung with the show of bravado. The result was that he received a knockout blow to the head, and a trip to the ambulance room. No guilty party was ever found, and the showing off stopped.
Holford House; The house was mainly used for company training, and was felt to be untouchable with regards to it being demolished.
Nearby the house was a piece of water that in the 1960’s was quite mucky, it was not improved by what the apprentices put into it! If a test piece had been messed up then you couldn’t just throw it into the scrap bin because the instructors would find it and you were in trouble. The remedy for this was to nip round the corner and dispose of the said piece into the water. Later on we followed the route of this water and it led (much overgrown and filled in over the years) towards the River Tame. I have often wondered if it been channelled this way to provide the Kynoch family with somewhere to relax and possibly boat along, before the area became industrialised?
 
14
The Mint; a department that I never worked in was this one. It was a high security area because of the products. Most were for Commonwealth countries, although I know that the UK 50 pence blank pieces were done there, and finished off at the Royal Mint. With the foreign currencies many were of the same size as ours. This led to a problem, at this time most shops had a 1 penny slot machine outside their premises. Some enterprising soul found out that an African penny fitted them. On many a Monday morning several shopkeepers would present themselves to the works police at Witton gate with bags of foreign coins. These were cashed into UK coin, with no questions or complaint from our company. The loop hole was eventually closed.
 
15
Goings on at Witton Gate; Some little points of interest/amusement that occurred within site of the main gate at Witton may remind some of you of other “incidents”.
The first occurred during the “Winter of discontent”, as you may well remember Kynochs was in the enviable state of not having to lay it workers off during this time. This was due entirely to them having their own power station to generate its electricity. The power station at that time was able to switch from coal, to gas and also to oil. Because of this unlike, virtually every other company in the City they were almost unaffected by the various national strikes going on at that time.
Their lights “blazed” across that area of Brum. Such were the feelings of the residents of the Witton area who were having to go without heating and lighting that many of the “ladies” from there gathered outside the gate and threatened to riot if the company did not turn off the sites lights, as well as the large IMI sign that shown on the side of the ten story office block. The lighting and signs were duly switched off.
One of the jobs areas that Central Millwrights covered was the Witton main office block.
Access to the roof was up a fire escape ladder, no problem unless you did not like heights.
One of the supervisors had to go up to show us what needed doing and where. Unfortunately the chap was nervous of heights, he managed to get up there, showed us the job and was on his way down, when an ambulance went speeding past the gate with its bell sounding off. The result of this was that he “froze” and could not go up or down, it took a great deal of talking and cajoling to get him back onto the ground.
 
16
In Hot Water; At one time IMI (Kynoch) were interested in solar panels, those that heated water, rather than produce electricity.
As part of the scheme a director was allowed to have some panels fitted around his swimming pool. All went well until an unusually hot spell had taken place!
The director was delighted that he was able to get a nice free warm pool, ( as part of his helping the company, of course).
However the system did not have thermostat fitted, this meant that the water was extremely hot when the director, as was his want, dived straight in!!!
I understand that “sympathetic noises” were delivered to him!!!
Growth Underground; Many of those employed in the Research Dept. were very keen gardeners, most concentrated on growing vegetables.
Great discussions took place on which were the best vegetables and the ways that would produce the best results.
We were all keen on freezing the produce, so that a bumper crop could be saved.
One crop that was giving a problem with regards to freezing were strawberry’s. The best method, again because it was the Research and liquid nitrogen (minus 300f) was available, proved to be a very good way of freezing. Very slow because each individual fruit had to be frozen separately.
Around this time there were many mushroom growing kits on the market, again discussions took place, after all most were quite expensive.
Temperature, humidity and darkness seemed to be important to get a good crop.
It transpired that the underground service tunnels beneath the buildings would be very suitable to grow mushrooms. We gathered quite a number of wooden boxes in which to grow some. We were about to start filling the boxes with compost, when we realised that the occasional rats and mice also lived there. Another “fine idea” was still born!
 
17
Head Scratching; The manager of the Research Dept. was a very keen golfer, so that when his retirement came up he obviously going to get a gift with a golf theme.
At the time a revolutionary method of casting titanium was being undertaken in the Research.
This was using a spinning method, it was in its infancy and therefore quite expensive at the time.
The gift to give him was decided to be a cast titanium golf club head!
After many attempts to produce this a good head was produced, obviously the golfing fraternity was involved at to the type of head that it should be.
When completed it was tried out by a golfer, who found out that because of its ultra light weight it was not suitable.
After much head scratching a solution was found, tungsten plugs would have to fitted into the head.
Again more cost was involved, by now the cost had become “a state secret”, the cost was never declared but those that could add up said that it ran into several thousands!
We never did find out if this one off head was any good or not!
Relief at Hand; The foreman of the tool room was a “big” chap who decided to improve his health and lifestyle, He managed to lose a lot of weight, and in this he was very successful. However he loved to smoke a small cigar while at his desk. This he found to be the hardest part of his new regime. On talking this over with the departmental glass blower an idea was conceived. A cigar was placed inside a sealed glass tube, and placed on a little stand, where it sat on the desk. The idea was that should he succumb to have a smoke then all that was needed, was to break the glass, like a fire alarm, and hey presto, relief was at hand!
 
Brassed Off said:
13
Showing Off ; There were always a lot of visitors around the Witton Site, looking back it was obviously thought to be good publicity for the Company. There was an operative of a fly press that used to show off to the visitors A fly press has a large handle that is swung around to operate it. On top of this handle were a couple of heavy weights in the shape of balls to give it momentum. To facilitate the different strokes that may be required the position of the handle could be moved. The “party piece” of our show off was to spin the handle around with it stopping just short of his head, much to the concern of his audience. Not realising that the fly press had been “adjusted”, and with his audience in place the handle was swung with the show of bravado. The result was that he received a knockout blow to the head, and a trip to the ambulance room. No guilty party was ever found, and the showing off stopped.
Holford House; The house was mainly used for company training, and was felt to be untouchable with regards to it being demolished.
Nearby the house was a piece of water that in the 1960’s was quite mucky, it was not improved by what the apprentices put into it! If a test piece had been messed up then you couldn’t just throw it into the scrap bin because the instructors would find it and you were in trouble. The remedy for this was to nip round the corner and dispose of the said piece into the water. Later on we followed the route of this water and it led (much overgrown and filled in over the years) towards the River Tame. I have often wondered if it been channelled this way to provide the Kynoch family with somewhere to relax and possibly boat along, before the area became industrialised?
Click to expand...

I think George Kynoch would not spend more time than was needed around the factory!

There is a thread for the River Tame, and Morturn made an interesting post concerning the works close to Kynoch, did you ever come across this?

Kynoch's I M I 1950s Onwards

I worked on the Witton site from 1960 to 1978.
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk
 
Excellent memoirs, Brassed Off, and thanks for the trouble you have taken to let us read them. Are there more?

Chris
 
harryk said:
....Metals/IMI Monitor......I'm putting up issue 246 - Summer 1995 as example.......
Click to expand...

harryk was kind enough to post a sample issue of his collection of Metals/IMI Monitors for us to have a look at.

Any reactions from anyone who has accessed it? Useful? Interesting?

Chris
 
Although I did not work at Kynochs, relatives and many people I knew did, so I was interested. I had a look but pdf files are not the best files to post on the forum and I had to save the pdf files in my computer. This might put some members off viewing them. I did use Gimp to extract the images from one of the pdf files and inserted as a test here,
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/just-trying-something.38017/post-417784
Maybe the images from all the pdfs could be extracted and inserted in the post here but obviously I cannot edit other members posts.
 
Sample copy of Metals Monitor posted by harryk.....

Thanks, oldMohawk, for your comments.

Does any other member have thoughts about/reactions to harryk's post #558?

Chris
 
Brassed Off said:
I am scratching my head for any more, unfortunately most of them are extremely "rude" and would probably get me banned!
Click to expand...
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.
 
Anyone remember JACK HILL, my Grandad, who was a sheet metal worker at Kynoch. That would be in the late forties early fifties. He was later to become well known for a letter that was found in Charlie Chaplin's private desk.
 
I have managed to "find" some more titbits.
While in charge of the maintenance in the Research Dept. I usually had a hard time to get the carpenters to answer their phones, in fact one day I was so brassed off with them not answering that I left my phone still ringing them! I walked up the road to their department to see just what was going on. The phone that I was ringing, was still ringing, and all the offices were empty! However a chance to get some service from them arose when there was a threatened strike by the Central Stores was in the offing. Being in charge of the purchasing for the Research Dept. for such items as toilet rolls and other sundry products, I decided to increase our order by three. Enough to see us through the strike for at least two to three weeks! My manager was not too happy with our “shipping” order but when I explained my thinking he agreed that it was wise move.
The strike did indeed take place, with the result that most departments throughout the Witton site ran out of some vital supplies, namely loo rolls.
Word got around the Research had some of these vital supplies, and lo and behold the foreman from the carpenters came to see if an “arrangement” could be achieved.
All the outstanding jobs were duly done and “relief” was given to the carpenters, well some of them!

Along the rear of the Bond building was a veranda that ran the length of the building. I think that originally a railway line must have been there because this veranda was at such a height as one sees at railway stations? Again the name of the Bond could have come from the building being used as a bonded warehouse? below the floor level of the Bond, and was ideal area for the daily football game that took place during the lunch break. Being raised the veranda afforded a great viewing position for any spectators. No quarter was asked for or given, at times it proved a bruising event. Many “industrial “ injuries that were reported at the ambulance room owed their origin to the tackles made in this “friendly game“. The supervision seemed happy that this took place as it let the men vent any frustrations on each other, and it seemed to encourage a feeling of comradeship between the various departments that made up the Bond Trades.

In the 1960’s and 70’s the staff in the Research comprised of a blend of scientists and time served craftsmen. The scientists thought up their various projects and the craftsmen put them into practise.
The devolvement of a variety of tooling for the extrusion and power presses were “meat and veg.” to the craftsmen. During the testing of some power press tooling Horace one of the “mature” craftsmen was laboriously operating one of the smaller presses.
Because it was deemed to be research the stringent guarding that was normally fitted to all power presses was allowed to be removed. This guarding prevented the operator from accessing the tooling and so being injured.
During this time it was known that a power press setter/operator was usually without a full set of fingers, such were the tribulations of this particular trade!
Horace being of the “old school” well knew the risks of the way he was operating the press, he would always operate the press with one hand either in his pocket are holding his cigarette. By doing so he would place the component onto the tooling, and then pull the lever to activate the press, the stroke of such presses was extremely quick. “a blink of an eye” would describe the speed.
For some reason Horace was not working the press one day when one of the scientists who was involved decided to continue with the project.
Not having any “old school” training he went about it rather speedily. The result was that he lost the tip of one of his fingers. During the collection of evidence for the factory inspectorate, because such accidents were deemed to be reportable to them it was thought necessary to photograph the press and its gory content! Tim the resident Research photographer was called upon to take some pictures. Normally Tim only took photos of metallurgical subjects, and when asked how he felt about such an unpleasant subject, He said that as long as it was in focus he did not have a problem. Thankfully such injuries were a rare occurrence in the Research.
 
Astonian said:
I Think Its A Ashame That WE have lost all our industry over the years ,if we don,t watch ourselfs we will be the third world of the nation and people are not foresereing whats happening to our generation of industrial country . when i seen the the photo,s of the days gone bye of some of the lads from the rolling mills of ICI. it brought memories back to me , co,s i worked at ICI . in the rolling mills around that time for many , many years , i think i can reconise a face on it ,but i am trying to put a name to the face, my younger brother worked there as well ,he worked in the gate house his name his tony , after he came out of the army, he worked there for donkey s years , also my sister inlaw , rita she was aq secretary to one of the managers there until it eventualy closed down , and broken down into seperate companies , and of course its gone ,. just like leyland , and also now just like our famous HP SAUCE gone for ever so whom his next i am asking myself what other big industry s we have got to offer , have we already sold our bull dog ,or the flag yet GOD SAVE OUR QUEEN ,,
Click to expand...
Astonian, what is really very sad is that Brum is where it all started, industry that is!
 
Hi, my Dad worked at the IMI in Witton from 1959 for about 4 years. My mom mentioned to me that she thought he worked at the 'Berilium Plant' and that he had to wear a special kind of suit. Does this mean anything to anyone, and could anybody point me in the right direction to find more information or maybe photo's for around that time please? Thank you
 
I have moved the last post to this thread. Beryllium id used in special alloys (and is very expensive), It is also very toxic, especially inhalation, and so special protection to stop it being breathed in would be necessary
 
The Beryllium plant at Witton was specially built to produce this material. Witton also produced a number of other exotic materials at that time, over and above titanium, including hafnium, niobium, vanadium and, especially, zirconium. I think that beryllium manufacture had its own particular problems and this is why special facilities had to be created. It is highly toxic, as Mike mentioned, and therefore hazardous to produce. I have a vague recollection that, in addition, it was an activity which was surrounded by a fair amount of secrecy, perhaps for national security reasons.

There is only the briefest of mentions of this activity in the two Kynoch company histories. And they don't include any images. In fact, in view of the (possible) degree of secrecy it may be that none were ever published. My own potted history of Kynoch/IMI (see link below) reminds me that it probably started in around 1958 but I have no idea how long it lasted. I have a feeling that it didn't continue long into the 1960s, but I may be wrong. It would be interesting to hear if any other ex-IMI employees have any information about this specialised, and rather mysterious, chapter in the Company's history.

I hope you can make some progress, mandys19. Please let us know if you do.

Chris
 
Am pretty sure that there WAS a degree of secrecy involved. However....if you go back to harryk's post from last year (#553) and pursue the November 1961 edition of the IMI house magazine, we learn that two Russian engineers were invited to visit the plant in October 1961.....

Chris
 
mikejee said:
I have moved the last post to this thread. Beryllium id used in special alloys (and is very expensive), It is also very toxic, especially inhalation, and so special protection to stop it being breathed in would be necessary
Click to expand...
Thank you for that info mikejee
 
ChrisM said:
The Beryllium plant at Witton was specially built to produce this material. Witton also produced a number of other exotic materials at that time, over and above titanium, including hafnium, niobium, vanadium and, especially, zirconium. I think that beryllium manufacture had its own particular problems and this is why special facilities had to be created. It is highly toxic, as Mike mentioned, and therefore hazardous to produce. I have a vague recollection that, in addition, it was an activity which was surrounded by a fair amount of secrecy, perhaps for national security reasons.

There is only the briefest of mentions of this activity in the two Kynoch company histories. And they don't include any images. In fact, in view of the (possible) degree of secrecy it may be that none were ever published. My own potted history of Kynoch/IMI (see link below) reminds me that it probably started in around 1958 but I have no idea how long it lasted. I have a feeling that it didn't continue long into the 1960s, but I may be wrong. It would be interesting to hear if any other ex-IMI employees have any information about this specialised, and rather mysterious, chapter in the Company's history.

I hope you can make some progress, mandys19. Please let us know if you do.

Chris
Click to expand...
I certainly will, I had no idea about this at all, and my Dad didn't ever mention anything to me.
 
I’m not sure when I actually starting working on the factory floor at IMI. At a guess 1966. I used to inspect tuner boxes which were produced for television sets. Very occasionally I had to inspect what came of the power presses which was very daunting.
I also remember moving departments, and inspecting something that was cylinder shaped off a lathe. For some reason I thought it was something to do with airplanes.
Then I inspect bullet casing which was then taken to other parts of the vast site.
I had various jobs from the age of 15 to 18 both office, and factory much to the horror of my family. Both my siblings at that time had stayed in the same trades for years.
I had taken the job at the IMI it was extremely well paid for someone my age.I was saving to get married which never happened with that person lol.
I left IMI end of March 1967,and started nurse training. Loved it but what a shock money wise. In fact it was not until the early 70s that I earned the same in a week like I did at the IMI.
 
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