Thank you! That was terribly fascinating indeed. Documentaries were so much better made back then, and all of us should be grateful that some were preserved.
I had the privilege of being a patternmaker for a number of years starting in the early 90s. It was a small shop with no cnc equipment. It was the most rewarding job I've ever had and wish I still did that work. It was an honor to work in this trade for guys who had been doing that work for decades. Great times!
I spent a day in a huge foundry in Colorado. The air was so thick I couldn't breathe. My hats off to the men who worked these places so that the rest of us could lead such comfortable lives.
I’m a skilled patternmaker who had an opportunity to see things made from the old way. I saw an old timer saw and sand and hand build tools in the wood room from paper drawings. I was 20 then fresh out of college with Cad/cam experience and Cnc skills. (45 now) To have the opportunity to learn from a couple guys like that I am forever grateful. These jobs are disappearing and it’s because the foundries drive the price for tooling down. Now they are going to have to start paying more because there are fewer places capable of tooling design. Thanks for sharing this video.
@barry rudge - Then I can pleased you, because here in Norway we still have model makers and education in this field (apprenticeship at factory and later vocational exam) :-)
Are you suggesting the methods in this video are old-timey? I worked in a foundry in Pennsylvania the early '90's that must have purchased all the machinery and patterns from this Renfrew facility. I'm not sure when this film was made, but we were using the exact same methods as recently as 25 years ago.
I served my engineering apprenticeship in an aluminum foundry in Cardiff, South Wales UK - We cast in aluminum, brass, and Mazak in either High-Pressure molding machines - sand foundry - low-pressure foundry - gravity foundry - as well as the Mazak foundry. I worked as a fitter/tool setter on high pressure. The brass molding amazed me because as fast as the brass was poured, the molds were opened ready for the next castings.
Absolute craftsmen n woman ,, sheer patience and dedication .. old fashioned engineering .. My father was a Moulder in Nottingham at Manlove & Alliot in the 40s for the war effort ... so she told me .
Bloody hell this takes me back to the times i worked in foundry's, i was 18 and an apprentice panel beater bit fed up with low wage 11 quid a week my brother who was a loose pattern moulder said they wanted labourers in the foundry where he worked, you seriously dont know what hard work is until youve been in a foundry, Each moulder at least 10 of them had thier own floor with apile of green sand which would be at least 35ft long, after all the castings where taken up each floor had to be shoveled through a machine called a royer ready for the next day, if i remember right i lasted 6month then went back in to my apprenticeship
Sounds like you worked in a much bigger foundry than I did. We pretty much had up to 5 moulders, 2 of which being olivene, one working with petrobond (oil based sand) and the other two working airset. Not tiny by any means but nothing like yours. Bigger than the one pictured in this video though for sure! Cheers.
@@mistershekel3054 i went from the cast iron side to the aluminium thinking it was easier haha i had to look after 4 ally furnace's plus the casting then getting the casting up and only if the cast iron lads had finished their sand, would one of them come and help me otherwise it was me to put 6 floors through ready for the morning, Good old day eh haha it gave me an appreriation of the foundry workers
Okay, I admit it: I'm a sucker for any vintage film about foundry work. Most of the stuff I've seen has been focused on making and pouring the steel. Mould forms, if mentioned at all, are treated very briefly. THIS however is amazing! These men and women are true artisans. Thanks so much for posting this.
We have so many home based cast making pattern and makers in our RUclips community that this is nice to see on a lager scale then from the back yards of our friends we watch online. This video is a great look inside how a casting is made from start through to finish. Pattern makers have such a skill, it is like an in-house artist working the woods to yield the form wow. We then see great automation in steel production casting equipment wow wee still a lot of labor for those times nice. We sure love the steel girders that are early day steel fabricated i-beam structure supports for the building the foundry is within we like those giant hot rivets used during the making. Thank you. Lance & Patrick.
This is what my grandad did all his life. You can bet we always had the best sandcastles on Blackpool beach, still very proud when I see castings made by his company.
Served an apprenticeship with Babcock Wilcox Blaw Knox in Rochester kent (England) late 70's, early 80's. it was the old Shorts factory on the river Medway that made the Sunderland flying boats. Some of the old guys had been there from the war and before. They made Trams, buses, sea planes then road pavers! I found some of these wood patterns in a storage area. They didn't cast anything there though. Great times, miss it.
As a lad I played with my friends in an abandoned foundry in Muskoka. There were hundreds, possibly thousands, of patterns strewn about and on shelves. I wish I had taken some of the more complex ones, they were works of art, often made of maple.
This was a great video. So many things we see and use everyday and take for granted. There is a lot of work behind something as simple as a manhole cover.
It's amazing to watch evolution of manufacturing. Workers mostly had no PPE while working with dust and small particles flying around in the open air and not just once but every day of hard work.
There's a tendency these days to mock "Elf and safety", but you can imagine the health penalty many of these blokes had to deal with after a decade or two of this work.
did some aluminum casting in high school it was fun, also when they made these models to make the mold , they had to be slightly larger for shrinkage in the cooled metal, that was the skill
Actually they used to make special rulers, for each metal type, that had the shrinkage allowance built in, but I expect that they will be virtually unknown, or unavailable now, as most design work will be computer controlled and built into the programs instead.
A member of the Wascasset, Waterville & Farmington. RR Museum in Maine learned pattern making on his own and makes patterns for locomotive wheels for the 100-year old steam locomotives. B&W made liberty ships in Brunswick, GA during WW II. So did the Atlanta-based highway construction company that I worked for during college summers.
Sure brings back memories of our 31 years in a steel foundry. In the later part of our time, other types of coring and molding where introduce. Hot shell, air set, cold shell.
Well....As long as the temporary world fair attraction called "Eiffel Tower" is still standing its not quite that amazing... Then again all that thing has had to deal with was Parisian weather.
My first real job was at American brass and iron foundry In San Leandro California I used to shovel the graphite I thought I was in HELL hahaha It was quite the experience.
5 лет назад
... and you felt good at the end of your shift. You KNEW how much work you achieved and how hard you worked... you learned the meaning of the word "work".
@@douganderson7002 The British state pension was set to be received at age at 65, because few if any men were expected to live to that age! It was actually a political stunt that backfired, because with better health care, and changes in work conditions, men started exceeding that age on a regular basis by the 60's, but no political party has the suicidal tendency to abolish it. Instead, they've started delaying payment by a few years, spread over several years, so the delay sneaks up on people. 😎
'They' probably still are in China and India etc...I worked in foundry in Britain 50 years ago.Already then the pouring jobs where even with very open buildings ,the fumes and gases were terrible,were being done by immigrants because the locals knew what the health risks were.
No "diversity". That's why the down votes. Those folks suffered and toiled and hardly if ever complained. NO VICTIMS WERE FOUND IN THE MAKING OF THIS VIDEO. Hahaha.
My Grandad was a a pattern maker in Birmingham in the 1940's , I now have a ward 2a lathe he might have made the pattern for. Its cast into the bed. BIRMINGHAM
The Ward lathes were pretty good - I used to work on a Ward 7 turret lathe in the late 80s. An old machine but it held good tolerances- should thank your grandad for that!
I used to fit dust and fume extraction equipment in these places. Walking into the casting shop was like walking into hell. Clay Cross Iron Foundry always sticks in my mind.
respect for thoose Brothers that spent an entire life working to build the world for us… unfortunely, something that has been turned into a hell due to someone… the same "someone" who used to take advantage from them and nowadays from us!
Greg... in case you are answering my message, In this case, allow me to tell you that you did not get the meaning of my message!!! I am not talking about something related to the colour… I am talking precisely about "that kind of whites that rule the world"... people without a natural place where to stay and so they go random around the world corrupting life styles, rules and governments... I don't know if you can achieve this but I hope you will.
@@MDB-amandrinksbeer : They still make complex castings like this to this day. Just like this. There may be more aid from complex machines to do many at a time, but you still have to make the casting forms and everything pretty similar to how it's done in this video.
When I was a kid we had a foundry not far away that had a casting shop as well as a massive steam hammer. No health and safety in those days...the fellas there let me wander almost at will around the place. I watched machine parts being made and then went in the company van to the mills where the parts were delivered and installed on weaving looms. Learned how to cast metal and how to service a loom and spinning mule by the age of 10....Happy days.
I tell you I really love these old movies watching the true way men and woman had and have worked bloody hard in what in today's eyes H&S would let the men and woman to work just shows how hard our ancestors worked bloody hard for so little of money ?? Love them thank you for sharing 😄😄😄
I was taught to do all that at school, but never got to use it. Most schools dont even have handicraft workshops any more. (Probably considered too dangerous for the little darlings!) How they expect to turn out engineers with no one ever making anything, except cardboard replicas like kiddie ''Blue Peter'' projects, is beyond me. A lot of this work is now redundant as it has been replaced with die casting, which is faster, and in many cases needs no ''fettling'' or further finishing processes, and is automatic, so labour costs are virtually zero. Just one man to maintain and operate the machines. Cant be bad, as it was filthy dangerous work, and most of the workers would die before they received their state pension at 65! In fact, this was the sort of film we were shown at school, to encourage us to seek employment in the industry!!
what this excellent piece of history doesn't convey is the NOISE throughout that foundry . walking into an iron foundry for first time , i thought it was hell on earth :)
I worked in a foundry in Lancaster, PA and the grinders there were all deaf. As a molder trainee I made 3.23 an hour. They made eleven dollars an hour.
Just to add some *additional* and i believe, *relevant* history to the subject of *Babcock Wilcox* and it's *mighty industrial* capabilities. I live just north of a major city in my fine state Penn's Wood. *during our struggle in the great US of America, against the adversaries of those years, the Soviet Union, and it's allies, we produced nuclear weapons. Then thermonuclear weapons. Around the same time, our awesome need for energy was being supplied by nuclear materials. One of many, of the facilities that processed these materials was located approximately 20 miles away from my house.* *the river is located about 1 mile from my home, however. And, our drinking water is drawn from this same river. Many people in my town, and in the surrounding area (immediate area
It’s the 3-D printing of the industrial age. I am proud to own a huge pattern for a rocker arm from an old paper mill. People can’t seem to see it as art.
Some of the old pattern makers were hobos and traveled the rails between jobs. I wonder if some of it was seasonal in the US, as the automotive industry got ready for the next year's model.
@@douganderson7002 but yes, it is! Don't you see it? With box sand casting You can prototype shapes at a fast rate, much faster than with die cast moulds. This video shows making final patterns, out of wood and well varnished for prolonged, repetitive use, but you can use modeling clay or similar compounds to sculpt even one-off parts or use old broken (e.g. cracked) parts after clay-smoothing etc. direct as patterns for casting. This is very much the role that rapid prototyping, 3d printing and CNC prototyping aim at nowadays.
You also said “unmatched by any other nation”. Really? You can’t be serious. Iron Casting began in China some 8 centuries earlier. The industrial revolution was easily matched by the US over the same period. I think if you look at it objectively, you will see that other nations of the time were also developing amazing engineering feats. Not just Britain, although they were pretty good at train stuff for a short while....
@@renhoek No mate, when I say unmatched I mean unmatched. Every other nation of modern times has copied our advancements from medical science to mechanical and electronic engineering. Railway building in India what they still use to this very day were built by the British empire 200 years ago, to the blueprints and masterminds of the very first atomic bomb. The telephone, TV , computer, word wide web, radio, radar, the automobile, steam engine, jet engine, fibre optic cable that spans the globe the list goes on, its not a case of national pride either lad that the facts only speak for themselves without any effort at all from me.
Gary Blockley Thanks for the effort you have put into this thoughtful reply. I appreciate it and have learnt lots. Can you ask your scientists and engineers to now turn their attention to Brexit, surely another worthy challenge! Regards.....
Very informative, cutting edge in its day, some very interesting techniques, ref gassing media. Foundary, most mines etc have always been the most arduous of jobs. Those "automatic" moulding machines look very dangerous, couldn't see any safety interlocking, but too much safety can kill, that is you take no responsibility for your own safety, and expect all to protect you. Thanks for sharing.
Lost a Pinky finger in one those machines (We called them Production Moulders) and had the finger seen to at the local hospital and then back to work the next day..... 70 now and can you imagine the youngsters today working one of those machines let alone getting hurt and most probably be off work for a month!!
I know a lad who worked in a foundry in the early eighties. There was an accident and he lost his eye sight. I think he was in his early 20's at the time.
I was wood and metal pattern maker i am 83 years old my dad was a floor moulder all his working life He would say to me you make them we will break them
@@tonygreen5267 About 10 years ago in a foundry in B.C. Canada called Highland Foundry a man died from one of those big grinding stones exploding and the shrapnel....well you can figure it out
From Hong Kong. After seeing a few documentary video about western manufacturing methods in the old days, I have to admit that European are hard working people. Although Chinese are also hard working people, the different is Chinese culture discriminate all working class(includes farmers). The worse is even the working class themselves are discriminating each other. Chinese culture only respect those who work in the air conditioned office. And because workers has no praise in their work, no one care about quality, no one care about efficiency. Workers only work for money and will quit once they earn enough to built a house in their mother's village.
We take great pride in our people who engineered the modern world, in Victorian times engineers were Celebrities in their own right for the revolutionary things they were building, not to say there wasn't any upper class snobbery from landed wealth class of old.
All the students in my 10th grade Metal Shop class spent a week pounding molds and setting castings for our projects. They were fairly small castings but what a hot and dirty job. I had more respect for my grandfather who did that for his work from the 1900's to the 1940's after that.
Absolutely awesome to see such professional craftsmanship and skill and in high speed all day every day. You don't see anything like that nowadays. I can't imagine what kind of hours those men and women put in every week. But when our government outsources all that type of business to places like China etc. that type of skillset gradually disappears. Then we end up with a country full of unskilled people. SMH
I lost a couple of fingers, suffered one crush injury and a toe from that high pressure sand blast. Apart from that, I am good for work next week boss!
Worked here as a pattermaker from 1965 to 1970...my gaffer is the guy in the suit Andy Cummings...Alec Stewart maybe any of my old pals can contact me on FB. great days
plus i learned from my grandfather, a genune master jeweler, sand casting rings & such, including the sand core. He also taught me lost wax k investment) 3:29 casting which is much more capable of precise complex castings that most custom and even amateur jewelers use today.
There are, they are few and far between. To add insult to injury many of the so called apprenticeships are little more than bloody schemes. How is anyone supposed to do anything resembling a proper apprenticeship in twelve or eighteen months. I got in just as the apprenticeships started to decline in 79-80. I managed to land an apprenticeship down the pit as a fitter/engineer. A damn good apprenticeship it was too. But me and another lad were the last, there was also one electrician started with us, but no more. This was 4 years before the strike. They knew behind the scenes that the industry was for the chop, as had many before it. It really is obvious though, when you watch someone who was properly trained as a craftsman. More often than not simply by the basics such as how they stand and use a hacksaw or file. Or how one addressed the job, as one old boy at our regional training centre used to like to say,
GREAT narrator! I really like his voice - perfect tone and speed. These old documentaries are the BEST!
Thank you! That was terribly fascinating indeed. Documentaries were so much better made back then, and all of us should be grateful that some were preserved.
I had the privilege of being a patternmaker for a number of years starting in the early 90s. It was a small shop with no cnc equipment. It was the most rewarding job I've ever had and wish I still did that work. It was an honor to work in this trade for guys who had been doing that work for decades. Great times!
I spent a day in a huge foundry in Colorado. The air was so thick I couldn't breathe. My hats off to the men who worked these places so that the rest of us could lead such comfortable lives.
their grandchildren have pink and green hair, pierced noses and don't want to work.
Which foundr
I remember a few but they're pretty much all gone (especially the ones that were run in such dirty smoky manner.
Which FOUNDRY 😉
@@leonardmolberg2167 : It was thirty years ago. It was south, down Santa Fe drive, like south of Hampton.
What a fun and exciting place to work!
I’m a skilled patternmaker who had an opportunity to see things made from the old way. I saw an old timer saw and sand and hand build tools in the wood room from paper drawings. I was 20 then fresh out of college with Cad/cam experience and Cnc skills. (45 now) To have the opportunity to learn from a couple guys like that I am forever grateful. These jobs are disappearing and it’s because the foundries drive the price for tooling down. Now they are going to have to start paying more because there are fewer places capable of tooling design. Thanks for sharing this video.
My 90 year old Dad worked as a pattern maker in St Louis at Scullin Steel. It's long gone now.
Skilled? Where you living.
@barry rudge - Then I can pleased you, because here in Norway we still have model makers and education in this field (apprenticeship at factory and later vocational exam) :-)
Are you suggesting the methods in this video are old-timey? I worked in a foundry in Pennsylvania the early '90's that must have purchased all the machinery and patterns from this Renfrew facility. I'm not sure when this film was made, but we were using the exact same methods as recently as 25 years ago.
@@charlesenfield2192 And these same techniques are still used today.
I served my engineering apprenticeship in an aluminum foundry in Cardiff, South Wales UK - We cast in aluminum, brass, and Mazak in either High-Pressure molding machines - sand foundry - low-pressure foundry - gravity foundry - as well as the Mazak foundry. I worked as a fitter/tool setter on high pressure. The brass molding amazed me because as fast as the brass was poured, the molds were opened ready for the next castings.
Surprisingly excellent.....so much human skill and ingenuity...great commentary also...
I love the precise, economic diction of the narrator. Those old paint-laden brushes and pots are wonderful.
Absolute craftsmen n woman ,, sheer patience and dedication .. old fashioned engineering .. My father was a Moulder in Nottingham at Manlove & Alliot in the 40s for the war effort ... so she told me .
Bloody hell this takes me back to the times i worked in foundry's, i was 18 and an apprentice panel beater bit fed up with low wage 11 quid a week my brother who was a loose pattern moulder said they wanted labourers in the foundry where he worked, you seriously dont know what hard work is until youve been in a foundry, Each moulder at least 10 of them had thier own floor with apile of green sand which would be at least 35ft long, after all the castings where taken up each floor had to be shoveled through a machine called a royer ready for the next day, if i remember right i lasted 6month then went back in to my apprenticeship
Sounds like you worked in a much bigger foundry than I did. We pretty much had up to 5 moulders, 2 of which being olivene, one working with petrobond (oil based sand) and the other two working airset. Not tiny by any means but nothing like yours. Bigger than the one pictured in this video though for sure!
Cheers.
@@mistershekel3054 i went from the cast iron side to the aluminium thinking it was easier haha i had to look after 4 ally furnace's plus the casting then getting the casting up and only if the cast iron lads had finished their sand, would one of them come and help me otherwise it was me to put 6 floors through ready for the morning, Good old day eh haha it gave me an appreriation of the foundry workers
Okay, I admit it: I'm a sucker for any vintage film about foundry work. Most of the stuff I've seen has been focused on making and pouring the steel. Mould forms, if mentioned at all, are treated very briefly. THIS however is amazing! These men and women are true artisans. Thanks so much for posting this.
We have so many home based cast making pattern and makers in our RUclips community that this is nice to see on a lager scale then from the back yards of our friends we watch online.
This video is a great look inside how a casting is made from start through to finish.
Pattern makers have such a skill, it is like an in-house artist working the woods to yield the form wow.
We then see great automation in steel production casting equipment wow wee still a lot of labor for those times nice.
We sure love the steel girders that are early day steel fabricated i-beam structure supports for the building the foundry is within we like those giant hot rivets used during the making.
Thank you. Lance & Patrick.
This is what my grandad did all his life. You can bet we always had the best sandcastles on Blackpool beach, still very proud when I see castings made by his company.
It’s like watching a classic black and white tv film, with the voice overs and musical score, very dramatic... bravo 👏
Made me get the old toolbox out and have a rummage through. Worked at B&W and Weir Pumps around 1955-80 in Glasgow and Renfrew. Great upload thanks.
Served an apprenticeship with Babcock Wilcox Blaw Knox in Rochester kent (England) late 70's, early 80's. it was the old Shorts factory on the river Medway that made the Sunderland flying boats. Some of the old guys had been there from the war and before. They made Trams, buses, sea planes then road pavers! I found some of these wood patterns in a storage area. They didn't cast anything there though. Great times, miss it.
As a lad I played with my friends in an abandoned foundry in Muskoka. There were hundreds, possibly thousands, of patterns strewn about and on shelves. I wish I had taken some of the more complex ones, they were works of art, often made of maple.
This was a great video. So many things we see and use everyday and take for granted. There is a lot of work behind something as simple as a manhole cover.
It's amazing to watch evolution of manufacturing.
Workers mostly had no PPE while working with dust and small particles flying around in the open air and not just once but every day of hard work.
There's a tendency these days to mock "Elf and safety", but you can imagine the health penalty many of these blokes had to deal with after a decade or two of this work.
I did this hand casting work in the past and it always feels like a artwork.
Can’t get enough of these videos - great to learn
did some aluminum casting in high school it was fun, also when they made these models to make the mold , they had to be slightly larger for shrinkage in the cooled metal, that was the skill
Actually they used to make special rulers, for each metal type, that had the shrinkage allowance built in, but I expect that they will be virtually unknown, or unavailable now, as most design work will be computer controlled and built into the programs instead.
@@niklar55 Different ones for different metals
A member of the Wascasset, Waterville & Farmington. RR Museum in Maine learned pattern making on his own and makes patterns for locomotive wheels for the 100-year old steam locomotives.
B&W made liberty ships in Brunswick, GA during WW II. So did the Atlanta-based highway construction company that I worked for during college summers.
Nothing like old school l machine every day for velmet& metso mineral. Awesome Doc. Well done🗿🇺🇸
Sure brings back memories of our 31 years in a steel foundry. In the later part of our time, other types of coring and molding where introduce. Hot shell, air set, cold shell.
I ran a shell core machine made in Germany date built pre war ran better than the 30 year old machine beside it from China
All while wearing a dress shirt and tie beneath their work coat. Amazing
Got to be better dressed to go in the pub for a pint at dinner time
Those guys were some working fools. If only we had this work ethic today.
Absolutely.
spent most of my life making castings for babcock wilcox in a foundry in barrhead,closed in 1990 with a full order book,all the work went south
My first job was working in an iron foundry. Great video full of memories
Many thanks for this - absolutely fascinating.
Great stuff. Love these older training movies.
Isn’t it crazy that some of the castings you see in this video could probably still be in use today
Things were made to last. Nowadays most things verge on disposable with short lifespans.
@@VenturiLife these are industrial parts, they are not consumer goods. Consumer goods are made to a cost, industrial parts are made to last.
Well....As long as the temporary world fair attraction called "Eiffel Tower" is still standing its not quite that amazing... Then again all that thing has had to deal with was Parisian weather.
@@volvo245 it was way over-engineered and requires a lot of upkeep and maintenance, like the Golden Gate Bridge
Me and my sledge likes to take them out
Hi thanks for the great video took me back to my first gob at 15.great days loved every minute
My first real job was at American brass and iron foundry In San Leandro California I used to shovel the graphite I thought I was in HELL hahaha It was quite the experience.
... and you felt good at the end of your shift. You KNEW how much work you achieved and how hard you worked... you learned the meaning of the word "work".
Amazing what burning a few calories can accomplish; no obesity problems for those foundry workers.
But they had quite dirty faces.
Widespread obesity stems principally from the use of high fructose corn sweeterers in food products.
I just worry what respiratory ailment the guy spray painting graphite paint died from!
Easy access and addiction to sugary drinks is our downfall.
@@douganderson7002
The British state pension was set to be received at age at 65, because few if any men were expected to live to that age! It was actually a political stunt that backfired, because with better health care, and changes in work conditions, men started exceeding that age on a regular basis by the 60's, but no political party has the suicidal tendency to abolish it. Instead, they've started delaying payment by a few years, spread over several years, so the delay sneaks up on people.
😎
Bloody hell they really worked hard in tough conditions in those days! 😵
'They' probably still are in China and India etc...I worked in foundry in Britain 50 years ago.Already then the pouring jobs where even with very open buildings ,the fumes and gases were terrible,were being done by immigrants because the locals knew what the health risks were.
And "crapped out" at age 50 or so.
No "diversity". That's why the down votes. Those folks suffered and toiled and hardly if ever complained. NO VICTIMS WERE FOUND IN THE MAKING OF THIS VIDEO. Hahaha.
Quá tuyệt vời thầy ơi xem thầy từ hồi chưa có gì trong tay đến khi có vợ con và thành công như ngày hôm nay .
My Grandad was a a pattern maker in Birmingham in the 1940's , I now have a ward 2a lathe he might have made the pattern for. Its cast into the bed. BIRMINGHAM
wow that's amazing. It's very sad that such craftsmanship is now somewhat lost.
The Ward lathes were pretty good - I used to work on a Ward 7 turret lathe in the late 80s. An old
machine but it held good tolerances- should thank your grandad for that!
What a lot of work and quality. Now stuff is made fast with cheap materials. And when he says pattern I hear patients
I love how all these guys are wearing ties! A different world...
I will not stand for the tie hate! ^.^
Michael Watson Do not forget the vests, and caps. And the Birmingham Boys...
I used to fit dust and fume extraction equipment in these places. Walking into the casting shop was like walking into hell. Clay Cross Iron Foundry always sticks in my mind.
Fantastic video. Thanks for posting.
We worked at the Diablo Canyon Nuke Plant in San Luis Obispo back in 1986. Babcock & Wilcox was the General Contractor
respect for thoose Brothers that spent an entire life working to build the world for us… unfortunely, something that has been turned into a hell due to someone… the same "someone" who used to take advantage from them and nowadays from us!
Life is so bad here!! I'm going to kill myself!!!
You do realise those 'Brothers' and Sisters were all WHITE???
Greg... in case you are answering my message, In this case, allow me to tell you that you did not get the meaning of my message!!! I am not talking about something related to the colour… I am talking precisely about "that kind of whites that rule the world"... people without a natural place where to stay and so they go random around the world corrupting life styles, rules and governments... I don't know if you can achieve this but I hope you will.
@Lastoria Nostra - Forgive me, my mistake.
@@gregtaylor6146 maybe it was my mistake for not being enogh clear to explain myself. greetings from Roma, Italy. ciao.
Fantastic video, thanks for sharing!
Very interesting and informative. The finale music also sounds like it came from a B grade Sci Fi movie serial. Loved it!.
The greatest name in boiler making !
I lot of skill these men have
The Lads & Lasses worked very hard for there money
You should have worked a bit harder in English.
Maybe some 'here-and-there' money to tide-over.......
@@mrswinkyuk I believe that doubleboost is Scottish, check out his channel, he is
by far more skilled then you will ever be..
Those guys and gals had to be tougher than the parts they made.
Yes, they were. Today to build anything you need $billions and bunch of banana eating snotty loosers standing around.
@@MDB-amandrinksbeer : They still make complex castings like this to this day. Just like this. There may be more aid from complex machines to do many at a time, but you still have to make the casting forms and everything pretty similar to how it's done in this video.
@@phuturephunk Don't worry about it, they're just the ramblings of a boomer, salty because his job was made redundant by a very simple shell script.
Gals... Yeah..
No kidding. 13:03 Imagine the forearm, hand and finger strength of these women. Can probably poke a hole through two plies of duct tape
I get grinder envy at 24:14 That thing is HUGE>>>>
Its amusing that its just a normal bench grinder scaled up....Or is a bench grinder just an industrial grinder scaled down. 🤔😳🤯
When I was a kid we had a foundry not far away that had a casting shop as well as a massive steam hammer.
No health and safety in those days...the fellas there let me wander almost at will around the place.
I watched machine parts being made and then went in the company van to the mills where the parts were delivered and installed on weaving looms.
Learned how to cast metal and how to service a loom and spinning mule by the age of 10....Happy days.
Awesome video.. thanks so much for posting it.
Gosh that are really skilled chaps yes they are Mr Chumly!!
I tell you I really love these old movies watching the true way men and woman had and have worked bloody hard in what in today's eyes H&S would let the men and woman to work just shows how hard our ancestors worked bloody hard for so little of money ?? Love them thank you for sharing 😄😄😄
I was taught to do all that at school, but never got to use it. Most schools dont even have handicraft workshops any more. (Probably considered too dangerous for the little darlings!)
How they expect to turn out engineers with no one ever making anything, except cardboard replicas like kiddie ''Blue Peter'' projects, is beyond me.
A lot of this work is now redundant as it has been replaced with die casting, which is faster, and in many cases needs no ''fettling'' or further finishing processes, and is automatic, so labour costs are virtually zero. Just one man to maintain and operate the machines.
Cant be bad, as it was filthy dangerous work, and most of the workers would die before they received their state pension at 65!
In fact, this was the sort of film we were shown at school, to encourage us to seek employment in the industry!!
@@douganderson7002
Couldn't find it!
Can you repeat it please!
I too work in an iron foundry we still use same process
What about sodium-silicate ?
what this excellent piece of history doesn't convey is the NOISE throughout that foundry . walking into an iron foundry for first time , i thought it was hell on earth :)
This is hard core video indeed!
Some things never change. I work at a place that does things exactly like this like it was 100 years ago...lol
Well, why change when something work like a charm ^^
Used to work at a foundry in the 2000s. Takes me back to that time. Everything was like in the video, except for hard hats and electric furnaces (-;
Same equipment, just updated controls.
A Place...mmmm
"Things"
Those poor guys in, , , I said THOSE POOR GUYS IN THE FETTLING SECTION. NO HEARING PROTECTION!
About as noisy as a contemporary shipyard.
sorry what did you say? lol
it was normal to see sign language used in factories when I started work in 1979( UK)
I worked in a foundry in Lancaster, PA and the grinders there were all deaf. As a molder trainee I made 3.23 an hour. They made eleven dollars an hour.
Brit metallurgy, main birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, is some of the best on the planet. Some people get to make a living having fun.
talking out your arse again?
Just to add some *additional* and i believe, *relevant* history to the subject of *Babcock Wilcox* and it's *mighty industrial* capabilities. I live just north of a major city in my fine state Penn's Wood.
*during our struggle in the great US of America, against the adversaries of those years, the Soviet Union, and it's allies, we produced nuclear weapons. Then thermonuclear weapons. Around the same time, our awesome need for energy was being supplied by nuclear materials. One of many, of the facilities that processed these materials was located approximately 20 miles away from my house.*
*the river is located about 1 mile from my home, however. And, our drinking water is drawn from this same river. Many people in my town, and in the surrounding area (immediate area
It’s the 3-D printing of the industrial age. I am proud to own a huge pattern for a rocker arm from an old paper mill. People can’t seem to see it as art.
Some of the old pattern makers were hobos and traveled the rails between jobs. I wonder if some of it was seasonal in the US, as the automotive industry got ready for the next year's model.
@@douganderson7002 but yes, it is! Don't you see it? With box sand casting You can prototype shapes at a fast rate, much faster than with die cast moulds. This video shows making final patterns, out of wood and well varnished for prolonged, repetitive use, but you can use modeling clay or similar compounds to sculpt even one-off parts or use old broken (e.g. cracked) parts after clay-smoothing etc. direct as patterns for casting. This is very much the role that rapid prototyping, 3d printing and CNC prototyping aim at nowadays.
I love that guy’s hair at 13:05, prefigures a really 80s look
My wife's dad was a paternoster for rolls Royce in Coventry, he worked on marlins for the raf, also always had an apprentice
Jeez... that poor guy on the pressure blasting hose 😨😓
At least he had some sort of mask hahaha
Looks brutal and in way is but you would think he is sweating his bag off but is not he has fresh air pumped into the suit and is nice and cool
British engineering heritage is truly unmatched by any other nation.
You gotta be kidding right? You obviously never owned a British car or motorbike of the period...
I'm referring to our general ingenuity over the course of history, as the saying goes Great Britain built the modern world.
You also said “unmatched by any other nation”. Really? You can’t be serious. Iron Casting began in China some 8 centuries earlier. The industrial revolution was easily matched by the US over the same period. I think if you look at it objectively, you will see that other nations of the time were also developing amazing engineering feats. Not just Britain, although they were pretty good at train stuff for a short while....
@@renhoek No mate, when I say unmatched I mean unmatched. Every other nation of modern times has copied our advancements from medical science to mechanical and electronic engineering. Railway building in India what they still use to this very day were built by the British empire 200 years ago, to the blueprints and masterminds of the very first atomic bomb. The telephone, TV , computer, word wide web, radio, radar, the automobile, steam engine, jet engine, fibre optic cable that spans the globe the list goes on, its not a case of national pride either lad that the facts only speak for themselves without any effort at all from me.
Gary Blockley
Thanks for the effort you have put into this thoughtful reply. I appreciate it and have learnt lots. Can you ask your scientists and engineers to now turn their attention to Brexit, surely another worthy challenge! Regards.....
Very informative, cutting edge in its day, some very interesting techniques, ref gassing media.
Foundary, most mines etc have always been the most arduous of jobs.
Those "automatic" moulding machines look very dangerous, couldn't see any safety interlocking, but too much safety can kill, that is you take no responsibility for your own safety, and expect all to protect you.
Thanks for sharing.
Lost a Pinky finger in one those machines (We called them Production Moulders) and had the finger seen to at the local hospital and then back to work the next day..... 70 now and can you imagine the youngsters today working one of those machines let alone getting hurt and most probably be off work for a month!!
Felt like i was in middle school again watching a film, actual film, not video.... nostalgic to say the least...
I know a lad who worked in a foundry in the early eighties. There was an accident and he lost his eye sight. I think he was in his early 20's at the time.
Babcock & Wilcox best boiler maker in the world..!
I read that the Flying Scotsman was re-boilered by a German firm as the UK couldn't do it.
@@alexhayden2303 Hi Alex which german firm...?
Thanks for your reply..
I'm boiler engineer from Paris-France
@@enthalpiaentropia7804 Meiningen Steam Locomotive Works en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiningen_Steam_Locomotive_Works
5:30 So that's where that term comes from! I always thought it was just about general drafting/design.
Magnifico video! Obrigado por compartilhar!! Thanks for sharing this video.!
Wow. Those are some big grinding wheels. Almost novelty size like those sunglasses from the 80s.
I was wood and metal pattern maker i am 83 years old my dad was a floor moulder all his working life He would say to me you make them we will break them
@@tonygreen5267 About 10 years ago in a foundry in B.C. Canada called Highland Foundry a man died from one of those big grinding stones exploding and the shrapnel....well you can figure it out
From Hong Kong. After seeing a few documentary video about western manufacturing methods in the old days, I have to admit that European are hard working people.
Although Chinese are also hard working people, the different is Chinese culture discriminate all working class(includes farmers). The worse is even the working class themselves are discriminating each other. Chinese culture only respect those who work in the air conditioned office. And because workers has no praise in their work, no one care about quality, no one care about efficiency. Workers only work for money and will quit once they earn enough to built a house in their mother's village.
We take great pride in our people who engineered the modern world, in Victorian times engineers were Celebrities in their own right for the revolutionary things they were building, not to say there wasn't any upper class snobbery from landed wealth class of old.
I did an apprenticeship in the foundry trade & spent the next 25 years working in it. The worst 25 years of my whole fucking life!!!
respect for all hard working peoples
Amazing stuff!
This is one of the very important skills that contributes to the industrialisation of a country.
Fun to watch and fascinating 👍👍👍👍👍👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Priceless!
Great upload hell from Australia :)
All the students in my 10th grade Metal Shop class spent a week pounding molds and setting castings for our projects. They were fairly small castings but what a hot and dirty job. I had more respect for my grandfather who did that for his work from the 1900's to the 1940's after that.
have a bit and brace . would love to find a screwdriver set for it. great documentary.
9:57 That is not a disk sander! THIS is a disk sander!
It's like three feet across! Oh my god. I bet you could feed a 4x4 into it and just watch it disappear.
Those men were true Craftsmen !
Absolutely awesome to see such professional craftsmanship and skill and in high speed all day every day. You don't see anything like that nowadays. I can't imagine what kind of hours those men and women put in every week. But when our government outsources all that type of business to places like China etc. that type of skillset gradually disappears. Then we end up with a country full of unskilled people. SMH
I suffered a lost-time injury just by watching this video.
Me too. I'm hurting all over!
Corpal tunel here 😳
I lost a couple of fingers, suffered one crush injury and a toe from that high pressure sand blast. Apart from that, I am good for work next week boss!
Ah, the gold bricks of RUclips. Thank you!
Worked here as a pattermaker from 1965 to 1970...my gaffer is the guy in the suit Andy Cummings...Alec Stewart maybe any of my old pals can contact me on FB. great days
plus i learned from my grandfather, a genune master jeweler, sand casting rings & such, including the sand core.
He also taught me lost wax k investment) 3:29 casting which is much more capable of precise complex castings that most custom and even amateur jewelers use today.
24:13 Now thats a GRINDER!!!!
Fascinating !
Pattern makers that was a true art also next to the guy who had the machine it after it was cast. 🇺🇸🗿💯
Steel and Garlands in Worksop was exactly like this. The fettling shop was he'll on earth.
There are no time served craftsmen anymore.
There are, they are few and far between. To add insult to injury many of the so called apprenticeships are little more than bloody schemes. How is anyone supposed to do anything resembling a proper apprenticeship in twelve or eighteen months.
I got in just as the apprenticeships started to decline in 79-80. I managed to land an apprenticeship down the pit as a fitter/engineer. A damn good apprenticeship it was too. But me and another lad were the last, there was also one electrician started with us, but no more. This was 4 years before the strike. They knew behind the scenes that the industry was for the chop, as had many before it.
It really is obvious though, when you watch someone who was properly trained as a craftsman. More often than not simply by the basics such as how they stand and use a hacksaw or file. Or how one addressed the job, as one old boy at our regional training centre used to like to say,
Back then things were labour intensive. So very litte automation. Mass production and economies of scale have changed the world we live in!!
Amazing foundry Steel Brazil