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A few old photos from Craven Manchester

Lurk

Cast Iron
Joined
Feb 10, 2014
Location
Peak District UK
Last week, a couple of our members met here in the High Peak to talk at length about machine rebuilding in and around Manchester UK - as things turned out we never got to say much as Tyrone & my pal Chris tended to fill the available air space as they chatted for 3 hrs solid and then a further 80 minutes in the car journey back to Rochdale ! I wish I had been able to record the discussions ! To hear that they had both worked on the same machines in the same shops at different times was entertaining - both run into the same access problems with a stansion right up to a machine... etc

Chris, my pal had served his time in Cravens and had brought along a stack of old photos from the period - I have photographed these with my phone and added them to this post. When time permits, I plan to sit and record some details from Chris and put together the rest in a short video for YouTube to share the information more openly.

Not sure if these should go in this section of the forum - feel free to relocate.

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Thanks to Duncan & John for joining me & Chris. It is so much better being able to put a face to 'name' from these forums. Hope to set something up again in the not to distant future.

Mat
 
I love this pic. Next time you get a bit miffed about scraping in your compound, think o these guys :D

The HardWork!

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Thanks for posting.

Moderator may move to old machinery/photos forum.

Yes but I will wait to see if these stories have any useful content first. And if I move them I will leave a permanent re-direct so you can find them easy enough.

I look forward to seeing more of this story and thank you Lurk for taking the time to share.

Charles
 
Yeah, REALLY hard work. You're doing the V-way while sitting astride it so it's an awkward position with an elbow cocked up and you can't get any body weight behind it. All arm, shoulder and back. I can imagine how fagged you'd be at the end of a day like that. All before we had names for carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive movement injuries.

And that's a boring bar and a half in photo three. I see the steadies don't need a third finger either on a piece this size.
 
Note how young those scraper hands are. IMO these were the days before you flipped burgers and ran a check-out line. Hopefully they'd graduate up to something more technical and less physical. It still goes to show how simple scraping can be.
 
I had a very enjoyable afternoon with the all the guys. We did a lot of talking and not much scraping. It was a pleasure to talk to Chris who is a mine of information regarding the British Machine Tool industry and also is a very nice, easy to get along with sort of guy. We found we'd worked at the same places at different times and that the same guys owed us money !

Lurk made some fantastic sandwiches that I gorged myself on and Demon finally relieved me of the burden of disposing of my remaining tools including my favourite " Hilger & Watts " box level. They've gone to a good home.

Thanks again lads, next time we'll have to do it in the pub.

Regards Tyrone.
 
Note how young those scraper hands are. IMO these were the days before you flipped burgers and ran a check-out line. Hopefully they'd graduate up to something more technical and less physical. It still goes to show how simple scraping can be.

In those days you would be starting your apprenticeship at 15 or 16 years of age. I came out of my time at 21. Then the fun started, although I thought I knew it all looking back I only knew the basics. Previously you were still under the guidance of a skilled man. On your own you have to learn fast. You come up against " The loneliness of command " when you have make all the decisions.

Regards Tyrone.
 
In those days you would be starting your apprenticeship at 15 or 16 years of age. I came out of my time at 21. Then the fun started, although I thought I knew it all looking back I only knew the basics. Previously you were still under the guidance of a skilled man. On your own you have to learn fast. You come up against " The loneliness of command " when you have make all the decisions.

Regards Tyrone.

Reminds me of the quip about a plumber saying things sure aren't the same as when he was an apprentice. Back then the foreman would let them lay the first two lengths of pipe. Then he'd turn on the water and they had to stay ahead of it. :D
 
Those scraper hands fuzzing down the ways on those bed sections reminds me of the rebuild shop in Dallas, Texas I used to visit on machine projects we had going on.back in the late 1970's. The long bed boring lathes we were retrofitting into trepanners consisted of using beds similar to those of the Craven bed design. In fact, a couple of them were old Cravens we rebuilt, not that big though. On one visit, watched two scraper hands, working about 80 foot of flat ways with Biax "blue" power scrapers and a hand full of blades at hand go at it, fuzzing down the freshly planed surfaces. And right behind them, a couple of guys hand flaking/spotting the ways. Took them about three days to do 80 foot of bed. These guys were old seasoned workers that came from the machine tool industry of the north that was starting to fade away for the USA. Their planer operator was from the same areas as those scraper hands came from, too. And to plane 80 foot of four 20 foot bed sections on a 16 foot stroke planer and get them to all match up within .010" in 80 foot was amazing to me. Ken
 
Do you know what the part is that is being made in the 2nd pic?
My first job out of tech school was to make replacement parts for steel mills. The part they are working on has alot of similarity to what we made. The piece on the end of the shaft looks like what we would have called a spade. It got pressed into the end of a large diameter shaft and then I believe it got welded...not certain tho.
 
Three more I missed out first time.

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The big 'roundabout' went to Ontario as best I can recall from our conversations.
The chap in the wellies atop the planer bed is Chris on a machine he owned for a while.

Mat
 
Found this when I looked up the company:

YouTube

There's a pic from above of the site, I was interested to find out some of it's still there

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The big 'roundabout' went to Ontario as best I can recall from our conversations.
The chap in the wellies atop the planer bed is Chris on a machine he owned for a while.

Mat

I've seen that when I did work at Westinghouse or General Electric in Canada, been so long don't really remember. I started scraping when I was 16 back in the 70's.
Neat seeing that stuff again, I'll have look for some photo's to post.
Thanks
 








 
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