Post by harrier on Jul 13, 2012 18:08:51 GMT
How many other households benefitted from a bit of ‘borrowing’ from local industry? Was my family the only set of thieves in town?
The N.S.F. provided fascinating items which I was too young at the time to realise were electrical resistances; tiny coloured cylinders with various sets of coloured bands and a piece of wire sticking out each end. Hours of fun making models. These were obtained by a neighbours’ sister who borrowed them from the National Switch Factory which was on Ingrow Bridge where she worked. Years later I went to a modern art exhibition in London and there on display in various forms were dozens of these resistances used together with oils to create artistic pictures!
There was poker which we used to stir the coal fire into action when it was flagging … it was a steel spindle from a spinning machine(?) on which the bobbins were placed; these came from one of the engineering firms in the town. The spindle was a tapering thin cylinder with the handle slightly thicker but with a spiral finishing with a square (?) nut at the end.
Files, screwdrivers and steel rulers.
The axe we used to chop wood for kindling started life as a simple heavy hammer before it was put under a stamping machine to flatten one end to make the chopper, courtesy of Prince Smith and Stells. And I still chop wood with it sixty years later!
And of course, there was an endless supply of wooden bobbins employed as kindling to make starting a fire easy as the bobbins were saturated with the lanolin from the wool. Before they ended up in the fire grate we used them for games of skittles in the street. Although many were borrowed some of these bobbins were often ‘throw-outs’ being past their sell by date as they had been badly splintered over the years by countless razor blades used to remove any remaining strands of wool after a doff. When they were splintered excessively the splints used to snag the wool when a new run started and then a whole end of a machine would go down. Cleaning the bobbins resulted in getting splints of wood in your hand or getting cut with the razor blade because the wool at the ends of a bobbin was a sod to remove. Who remembers mill tea??? Disgusting. All mugs came with a layer of floating grease (lanolin?)!!
The best ‘borrow’ was Perspex, courtesy of Dean Smith and Grace where they had been used for levelling the machines, although as a kid I never quite understood what levelling meant. If the Perspex was in small pieces, they were used instead of kindling wood to start a fire, the spitting and the distinctive odour left an indelible memory. If the Perspex arrived home in reasonable sheets, they could be cut with an axe saw to be used either as a coin holder, a note holder or a 3-D shape. For the coin holder, two identical squares of Perspex were cut, a coin heated on the gas stove and then impressed as deep as possible into one of the sheets so the coin was embedded. Both then had to be quickly immersed into a bowl of cold water or under the tap to avoid the Perspex misting, the crazing causing a loss of clarity. The other square was laid on top and sealed by heating the corners on the gas stove to fuse them, To enclose a note [pre-war German inflationary multi million mark note which I collected] two rectangular slabs of Perspex enclosed a note and the two were sealed by heating the corners on the gas stove with much spitting and that odour. 3-D modelling was the best use of the Perspex because each solid shape was achieved by creating separately two identical halves of the solid by fusing on the gas stove. The two bits then fused at the corners to obtain the desired solid shape!! I only remember the latter because I found a stack of the German notes when having a clear out recently.
The N.S.F. provided fascinating items which I was too young at the time to realise were electrical resistances; tiny coloured cylinders with various sets of coloured bands and a piece of wire sticking out each end. Hours of fun making models. These were obtained by a neighbours’ sister who borrowed them from the National Switch Factory which was on Ingrow Bridge where she worked. Years later I went to a modern art exhibition in London and there on display in various forms were dozens of these resistances used together with oils to create artistic pictures!
There was poker which we used to stir the coal fire into action when it was flagging … it was a steel spindle from a spinning machine(?) on which the bobbins were placed; these came from one of the engineering firms in the town. The spindle was a tapering thin cylinder with the handle slightly thicker but with a spiral finishing with a square (?) nut at the end.
Files, screwdrivers and steel rulers.
The axe we used to chop wood for kindling started life as a simple heavy hammer before it was put under a stamping machine to flatten one end to make the chopper, courtesy of Prince Smith and Stells. And I still chop wood with it sixty years later!
And of course, there was an endless supply of wooden bobbins employed as kindling to make starting a fire easy as the bobbins were saturated with the lanolin from the wool. Before they ended up in the fire grate we used them for games of skittles in the street. Although many were borrowed some of these bobbins were often ‘throw-outs’ being past their sell by date as they had been badly splintered over the years by countless razor blades used to remove any remaining strands of wool after a doff. When they were splintered excessively the splints used to snag the wool when a new run started and then a whole end of a machine would go down. Cleaning the bobbins resulted in getting splints of wood in your hand or getting cut with the razor blade because the wool at the ends of a bobbin was a sod to remove. Who remembers mill tea??? Disgusting. All mugs came with a layer of floating grease (lanolin?)!!
The best ‘borrow’ was Perspex, courtesy of Dean Smith and Grace where they had been used for levelling the machines, although as a kid I never quite understood what levelling meant. If the Perspex was in small pieces, they were used instead of kindling wood to start a fire, the spitting and the distinctive odour left an indelible memory. If the Perspex arrived home in reasonable sheets, they could be cut with an axe saw to be used either as a coin holder, a note holder or a 3-D shape. For the coin holder, two identical squares of Perspex were cut, a coin heated on the gas stove and then impressed as deep as possible into one of the sheets so the coin was embedded. Both then had to be quickly immersed into a bowl of cold water or under the tap to avoid the Perspex misting, the crazing causing a loss of clarity. The other square was laid on top and sealed by heating the corners on the gas stove to fuse them, To enclose a note [pre-war German inflationary multi million mark note which I collected] two rectangular slabs of Perspex enclosed a note and the two were sealed by heating the corners on the gas stove with much spitting and that odour. 3-D modelling was the best use of the Perspex because each solid shape was achieved by creating separately two identical halves of the solid by fusing on the gas stove. The two bits then fused at the corners to obtain the desired solid shape!! I only remember the latter because I found a stack of the German notes when having a clear out recently.