THIS TAPE WAS RECORDED ON THE 10TH OF AUGUST 1978 AT VICARAGE ROAD BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS NEWTON PICKLES AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
You were telling me about three weeks ago about a big job you did at the waterworks on Whitemoor. Do you remember, you were down the bore and they stopped the borehole pump and water started to come up. You were telling me about making a new spur wheel.
R-Aye, spur wheel and pinion.
I copied them photographs the other day, I should have brought them down for you tonight but I’ve forgotten them. There’s a picture there of a big spur wheel, it’s not helical it’s a double helical gear. Was that the one?
R-No. No, this was that narrow set, that’s six foot six, it’s on the faceplate of the old lathe we haven’t got now. About six foot six in diameter and I should say about seven inches wide that it smashed in bits.
The double helical one, it’d be either John Grey’s at Livingstone or it’d be Pendle Street Mill. [Nelson] A thousand to one it’d be Pendle Street. It’s a big un.
Aye, this were about four foot six or five foot gear.
R-It might be Grey’s, I think Pendle Street were about six foot. Oh it were a big un were Pendle Street and it’d be above a foot wide. I think they were about three and a half inches pitch them teeth, second motion shaft broke off inside the first bearing.
Yes, well we’ll get round to Pendle Street later. I’m a bit mixed up here, you were telling me about a gear wheel that you got cast and when you got it the pitch was wrong on the teeth, was that the same one?
R-That was for the water works.
Will you tell me about that gear wheel, about doing the job?
R-Well, shall we start at the beginning?
We’d got as far as you getting the bucket out.
(50)
R-Aye, it took a fortnight to draw that out. We straightened the crankshaft and we filled the key ways up and planed new keyways in the shaft which I told you was twisted half a turn round. We straightened the shaft, filled the keyways and replaned them and we made a new short shaft from the end of the crank to the wall.
Can I just stop you there, you say you straightened the crankshaft, how did you do this?
R-We straightened it in the shafting lathe, red hot and with two jacks under it.
Aye, how big were that shaft?
R-Five and a half or six inch in diameter. About ten foot long with two cranks on. It were forged just like a loom crank but about ten times as big with round jigs and it were only planed on the crank pins and the journals where the bearings were. Beautifully forged it were, Just bent, like loom crank if you can picture one of them, a round loom crank. Say about ten times as big.
So in other words it had been forged out of straight…
R-Aye, it had been forged, bent out of a straight bar. In a press probably, a home made press.
Were it steel?
R-Yes, it were mild steel, aye. And then we made a new short shaft for the wall because we couldn’t straighten that out, it were too short to straighten it. We put a new pair of couplings on and all.
Now this spur wheel, we got it all together and it were the same month as I was married, middle of August 1939. We get this spur wheel on and I got it in gear and set it where we had had it before. We set the pedestals, we didn’t put bolts in the coupling. I said to Bob, We’ll just wind th’engine round now and it went round about a quarter of a turn and jammed. I says There’s something radically wrong here! I said Wind it round the other way. So we wound it round the wrong way, I barred th’emgine back, it had a barring rack in the wall and a round backed bar to pinch it through the flywheel arms. We pinched it back and it went back and back. It went about three quarters of a turn backwards way. Then I chalked across the teeth where it had gone to and we barred it round again the right way until it jammed and then marked the teeth again in that position. This left a segment of about sixteen teeth where it wouldn’t come through. So we barred it back to where we could see it and we just stood in front of it. I says to Bob, My God, look at ‘em! All the teeth were stepping up, sixteen of them. So I rang me father up and he came up, took one look at it and said This wheel’s no good Newton.
We’d never noticed it when it was in the lathe you know but there were one period when me father says to me it looks as though it’s leaning over does that wheel Newton. Well I says, No blooming wonder the weight that’s on that faceplate, it’s only a four-inch spindle in it! He said It’s springing a long way then, keep away from it. That must have been what he had seen, them teeth out of square when it was going round. Anyway he rang Roberts up [they had cast the wheel. SG] and they came on and had a look at it. There weren’t many words said and they went away and I carried on with what I had to do, I’d still to couple up down the bottom of the well. He came up one morning and said ,Come on, take me to Nelson, we’ve to go and see Arthur Roberts. When we got to Roberts he wouldn’t believe us, he said they never made any wheels like that. Me father says, You’ve made one yonder! He wouldn’t believe us because his foreman had come to look at it you know and Arthur wouldn’t believe that them teeth were like that. Well he says, If we can’t do sommat with that wheel it’ll finish us. They hadn’t been busy for a long, long while and if they had another to make at the price that was… Well, me father says, we can do sommat wi’ it. We can chip them teeth, there’s nobody going to bother about it as long as the wheel goes round and doesn’t make too much noise. He were a bit of an aristocratic man were Arthur Roberts and he says, Oh, well get them chipped Johnny! Me father says My lads aren’t chipping them teeth, you made the bloody wheel, you mun chip it. He were getting a bit annoyed about the job, No he says, my two aren’t chipping that when they’ve other work to do an all so thy man mun chip it. All right says Arthur, we’ll send someone on. Well the day after an old chap landed. A thin old chap he were, about sixty years old. Gets sat down and starts chipping, chipped all day and he’d done about one. Well, I reckoned up, that’s sixteen days for sixteen teeth if he comes on Sunday! I said to Bob, get t’chisels sharpened, let’s get started. So we shoved him off his buffet and got t’square across, you know from’t machined face, drew lines across and we started and we soon had ‘em off. He did a bit and we did a lot and within two or three days we had ‘em all chipped and it were going through. It didn’t growl in that one position you know, it were a reight good job and it never ailed owt no more.
When you talk about this a lot of people nowadays won’t realise that going back into the old days, metal work, or working with materials like cast iron and mild steel or even wrought iron, the techniques were very similar to woodworking in many ways.
R-Oh, it was all hand work.
You just got a chisel, I mean, if you had a big keyway to cut out, you just got a chisel and you chopped it down and then out.
R-You chopped it through.
Now tell me whether I’m right in what I say, I find nowadays that if you go and buy what they call a cold chisel they’re all these alloy steel chisels.
R-They’re useless. If you took one of them to an old fitter he’d throw it at you. They’re bloody useless, he’d say I can’t chip wi’ a shovel! They don’t know how to draw one out for a start. You see they try to make them so as they last longer don’t they.
Yes.
R-But we never did, we got a chisel and it had to be sharp and it cut till you took it back to the blacksmith and got it drawn out again. It didn’t matter if it broke, you’d say now then Harold, to t’blacksmith, that only stood up about half an hour and he’d say reight, we’ll run ‘em a bit further this time. There were a big variation in steel but we used to have ‘em right down to a feather edge. And you could chip away all day.
What did you make your chisels out of?
R-They was all cast steel, cast tool steel. But even then, it varied a lot did t’steel. You could harden steel to a certain colour off one bar and harden next bar the same and one ud go for hours and hours and t’next un ud happen break on the second bat you know. It took a bit, it were an art were that. But you’d find out by trial and error, if it were a brittle bar you ran ‘em off a bit deeper, a bit deeper blue.
Yes, I have a set at home that I had made out of an old rock drill from the quarry. Jimmy Thompson made ‘em for me at Marton and by heck, them’s good chisels, drawn reight down. [They were so good that Jimmy kept two for himself, his test of a chisel was to see if they would cut the stand of the anvil which was Swedish steel. All those out of the drill passed with flying colours. SG]
R-Aye you don’t get so many now.
The other day, John, me firebeater up at t’mill, he come in and brought a lump of steel and said look at this tramp iron I found in the coal. He says It’s a bit of scrap and he threw it in the scrap and it rang like a bell. I picked it up and rang it and said You’re not chucking that away, it’s a boilermaker’s drift and a good piece of steel. It’ll have got in at the pit somewhere, a reight good drift.
Anyway, you got that wheel running…
R-Oh yes, we got the wheel straightened out and running and that was the end of that job, it never ailed anything no more all the rest of its life.
You’d do a fair bit of work up at the waterworks?
R-Oh we were allus there. He used to ring up did Wilfred Dixon and say send Newton up to take t’crank pins up on’t crankshaft. Least bit of a tap or a squelch and he’d want us to take a few thou off the joints, they were marine ends were them. You know there were two engines in there. There were a Timkins engine that were put in when them wells were sunk, at far side, it were that that stripped the spur wheel. It ran the shallow well and had a governor on with a Stephenson’s link for the cut off and two eccentrics. [Meyer cut-off gear. SG]
And t’other one were a Burnley Ironworks and it were a bonny engine. A very simple engine like your tape engine up at Bancroft but bigger of course, it were a bonny engine that Burnley Ironworks. That were put in at t’other side to run the deep well pump, which were three hundred, and odd feet deep. But when they found out like, Eh, that engine’s close to that well, why not put a clutch on there. So I think me father did that job in the early days and they put this, they lengthened the shaft and put a clutch in so they could run both low well, which were ninety odd feet deep and the deep well, or bore hole you see. Well, that engine it’d run ‘em both. And it were the Burnley Ironworks they stopped while I were down the well, when the water started boiling through them rocks, I can see it now I can tell you. Have you ever tried to climb up a two foot pipe?
With scabs on!
R-Aye, with scabs and carbuncles on, aye, big flanges, Grief, I were scared aye.
No, I can imagine that. That Burnley Ironworks were a single cylinder were at?
R-Single cylinder, they both were.
No condensers?
R-No condensers on ‘em, no.
What did they do?
R-Puffed up t’chimney.
Aye, just blew out, that’s it.
R-They had no draught you know, only a little short chimney, it puffed merrily up t’chimney.
What did they have up there, a Cornish boiler?
(175)
R-A little Cornish boiler. It were a grand set-up, oh it were grand and it used to be spotlessly clean.
They’re talking about taking the chimney down.
R-Aye, you said so.
It’s a shame.
R-Oh it were a bonny set-up were that, it were that. And then in my time, in the top shop they had a big National Gas engine about forty horse power for running the top deep well pump, in’t spare engine house up at t’top. I think that were put in after the Fist World War, and that were three hundred and odd feet deep and all. The National engine were run off a suction plant.
In these early days when you first had anything to do with them, that wouldn’t be the Craven Water Board would it?
R-No, it belonged to the Local Council.
It were Barlick?
R-Yes, Barlick Council belonged it all, owned it you know just like the gasworks.
Yes, I wonder when they sank those wells, have you any idea?
R-No I haven’t. I think if you go up to Letcliffe Park you’ll find cores with some dates on, I can’t remember what it were when the bore hole was sunk at the back, that were three hundred and odd feet deep.
Wait a minute! I know where those cores are. I never realised that was what they were.
R-And I think you’ll find dates on ‘em and the depth they came from.
There is. They’re up by the potting shed up at the top.
R-If you want to go up some Sunday afternoon Stan, have a look and see where they are.
Yes, I know just where they are.
R-Aye, t’cores that come out of the top deep bore hole, it’s a big hole is that top one, I think it’s about fourteen inch in diameter. I’ve had t’buckets out of that some stock o’ times and the rods, you pull them up for ever. I had ‘em up twice about five years ago you know, One broke…
What, one of the rods?
R-I’d been running your engine for George Bleasdale for nine week and I went straight up from there [Bancroft] to the waterworks to pull t’bore hole rods up and one broke. And by gum, we were lucky to catch it the first time. It broke about half way down and we noosed it the first do, wi’t wire sling and noose and grabbed it. You know you can frig about , you can’t see owt and t’bore holes full of water you know, up t’tube. Nearly to t’top if it’s been a wet session and I grabbed it t’first time, we were lucky. And we pulled it out and replaced two bad rods. They’d to come from Liverpool had t’timber to make the rods on.
Timber rods in that…
R-Aye, it had to come from Liverpool to make new rods on. And we put it all back together and it ran one summer out and part of one winter. And then one morning they sent, they came for me, would I go, it wouldn’t pump and it were a funny job. When I got up there they wouldn’t start it up to see why it wouldn’t pump. They’d been running all morning they said and it wouldn’t pump, but they said we don’t want to run it again, there might be another rod broken. I said Them rods were sound what we put back down. Anyhow, me and Bob and Jimmy, we pulled ‘em all out again and there were nowt wrong wi’t rods. Nothing wrong with the bucket so they said, Well, it must have been dry. Well I said, Dry be damned, it wanted priming! Never known to be dry, it wanted priming, it were air-locked.
You see, it were a tricky thing you know, we were brought up with it, There were a two inch bypass pipe came back from the top reservoir. Before we started the bore hole we used to open that two inch valve and it used to pump itself if you understand what I mean. Pump and go back, pump and go back, until it got rid of all the air and filled the header well up. Now whether they’d opened that I don’t know but t’water board came to the conclusion, it’s an old-fashioned thing, let’s put a submersible in there and that were the end of it. We shifted all the gearing and they put a submersible down and we made all new plates for the top and that’s the end of it. It’s running electrically now. Which were t’best thing really, because it had to be manned at all times. It were run wi’t electric motor of course, the gas engine had gone, the steam engines had gone, it were the only one left which were run from t’big electric motor through gearing. So, they put a submersible down, they don’t take any looking after you know. It’s only the other week the buckets were taken from the shop, I think they’ve gone to a museum. Foot valve and delivery bucket. Aye, it were a grand plant you know as it was originally, it were something to see them engines grumbling away in a dry summer, 24 hours a day.
Aye, when you think, the water boards would be one of the biggest customers for those big engines.
R-Oh they were.
I mean, water and sewage pumping, ‘cause there were never any…
R-Well I mean, look at some of those engines that are still left in the Midlands at… They’ve preserved. Some of them like that chap had on the screen for us, They were big beggars weren’t they.
Aye, that’s a big one down at Rugeley, that Hathorn and Davies from Leeds. It’s the biggest pumping engine I’ve ever seen in me life. I’ll call in one of these days and get some reight pictures of that. They’ve got name plates there of some of the original Watt engines, it brought a lump to me throat when I saw them. Done away with the engines and kept the plates, the wrong way round!
Right, last week we were down at Long Ing and you were going to put the Buckley and Taylor on an alternator.
R-Two hundred and fifty horse, it were going to light both mills.
That’s it, and they never got on with it.
R-No, it all faded out after and they went electric. Where do we start now?
Let’s go to Barnsey.
R-Thousand horse Yates and Thom were Barnsey, cross compound, four foot six inches stroke and a trunk slide. Great big wide flywheel with about twenty six ropes on. It only ran at 64rpm, it were the stupidest thing you ever saw in a mill, a colliery winding engine really but smaller, it ran too slow.
What year was it put in?
R-1914’is, 15 or 13, somewhere around that. I ran that engine many a time.
Was it a new engine?
R-Aye, brand spanking new. It were a bonny engine, but oh it were a big lumbering thing. It weren’t economical, t’other engines in Barlick’d lick its backside off, coal consumption wise you know. It ran too slow. 64revs, four foot six stroke.
(250)
Miles too slow, it were 12 revs down. Me father wanted to put a new second motion pulley in years ago, you know, a bigger one and speed things up. It allus laboured as though it were overloaded all the time. I’ve seen figures from Barnsey lap. [Newton is referring to the diagrams drawn by the Dobbie and McInnes indicator or similar instrument. The ‘figures’ or diagrams drawn by the recorder overlapped when the cut-off exceeded about 75%. The point he was making is that the engine was using a lot of steam. Higher speed would have meant a shorter cut-off and more time for the steam to work by expansion thus saving steam and coal. SG.] You see she’d just be topping about eleven hundred horse, well she was only built for a thousand at speed she were running. 160psi and three boilers. But a good engine, don’t get me wrong, a good engine. It only had one fault, it used to allus have a trick of blowing t’front cylinder cover joint in’t trunk slide and it were a beggar making that in’t middle of summer at a weekend. Always stinking red hot. Oh, I ran it many a time as a young chap. Billy Eccleston were the engine driver.
That engine’d be condensing off canal water?
R-Yes, condensing off canal water, good engine though.
Tell me about condensing off canal water. They had to pay the canal company didn’t they?
R-They’d to pay their dues for how much horse power you had on. You’d pay canal for what horsepower you had on. When I used to drive engines on’t canal side in Nelson they were a bit fussy about that you know, one or two o’t shops like. We used to indicate five minutes before we set on or five minutes after we stopped. I shouldn’t tell them tales!
No, now’s the time to tell them, those days have gone.
R-At Spring Bank, at Nelson, afore work or I used to open t’stop valve again after half past twelve and get me oiler to keep his eye on it and then I’d take a set of figures at dinnertime. And just put lights on to make it look feasible. They said it paid.
Yes, and there was one famous occasion wasn’t there at t’Moss when someone slipped up and indicated it on Monday morning when all the load was on?
R-Aye, when all t’load was on, he’d about 1100 horse on. It made them scrat their heads, t’canal company when they came. They couldn’t weigh it up because it had run fifty odd years and it had never been like that. (As high) But yet to me you see it were so silly because you weren’t using the water. I know you should pay your dues for borrowing people’s stuff but you were only borrowing it up to a point. What are you losing out of that? 10, 12%, no more. You wouldn’t be losing so much you know, only a little bit of evaporation or a gland leaking or sommat like that. But your water it were condensed and you were putting it back in the canal again. You were doing ‘em a blooming good turn in winter, kept it thawed out for them when th’ice would have been two feet deep from here to Foulridge! They didn’t grasp that bit did they. And them mills at Foulridge picked it up again and it went right through to the Burnley Mills keeping it thawed out for them.
What were’t boilers at Bouncer? [Local name for Barnsey. SG.]
R-There were three Yates and Thoms eight foot sixes.
What did they run at?
R-160psi.
What were the governor on that engine?
R-It were an ordinary, now then, it were a Porter, ordinary standard Porter governor at Barnsey. It weren’t a Whitehead. And I went on to the Barnsey engine, and I’m not giving any names with this. There’d been a bit of a sacking do. I were working in t’shop on Saturday morning and me father came down to me and he just threw these keys on the bench. He says, I’m going home now Newton, tha’s to go to Barnsey on Monday morning. So I went to Barnsey on the Monday morning about sis o’clock.
Sorry to interrupt you Newton but if that had been me I’d have been going round there on Sunday and having a look round to make sure everything were…
R-Oh, I didn’t bother, I’d been there many a time. All through me life, I used to drive it for the old chap that were there long afore this chap that chucked up so I didn’t think owt about going to Barnsey on Monday morning at six o’clock. So I off to Barnsey at Monday morning at six o’clock, let meself in, walked in in’t engine house and finished up in the cellar! It’s a wonder I didn’t kill me bloody self and I wasn’t even hurt. I went flat on me arse down th’hole into t’cellar on Monday morning.
How did that happen?
R-Well I walked straight in in the pitch dark, there were no lights you know in them days in’t engine house. But in Barnsey engine house, up t’far side of t’second motion shaft we had a little vertical steam engine coupled to a DC generator and I mean I knew where the valves were to start it. It were always left with the drains open. You just walked in th’engine house, felt your way past the second motion with the railings, just open the steam valve and you’d hear her start, tut, tut, tut and as soon as it speeded up, on came the lights. When I went for to pass the second motion, I just put me hand on the railings, followed the railings round the corner and fell straight through the bloody floor into t’cellar!
Anyway, I came out of the cellar, went back up into the engine house, rubbing me arse and me back and me legs and I were all right but I were blooming wet. All clean on on Monday morning and I went very cautiously. Big shifts and little shifts and I got the engine running and had a look and t’bloody planks, all the boards round the engine after all those years were absolutely rotten. There were one or two holes where he’d had his feet through, the chap before me. Course it were me own fault for not having a flashlight weren’t it. Bloody hell. I were all right.
Well, I got cracking, nice chap were the firebeater and I went down in the boiler house and he gave me a dry off and I got me blooming boiler suit dry, which I wore in those days, and we got warmed up. [The engine. SG] And then, blooming heck, I’d forgotten me watch! I looked round th’engine house and t’bloody clock had gone! I went down in’t boiler house and I says to Arthur, Dosta know what time it is? He says No, but it must be nearly starting time now because t’weavers are coming. And there I am stood in’t end o’t yard asking everybody, one in about twelve, What time is it? Till I gets to one chap and he says it’s about two minutes to seven lad. I run like hell up into th’engine house, I were all ready, I’d only th’oils to turn on and whip the stop valve open and we were away. Well, I gets on to speed and I thought what the hell’s up with this thing? I’d never run it like that! You couldn’t stick to it, it were up and down, up and down, I mean, it were no toy were that you know. And t’governor were just stuck there. What the devil’s up wi’t engine? Anyway I got the drains shut and got some load on and just stuck to it by hand ‘til breakfast time. [By ‘stuck to it by hand’, Newton means he stood by the stop valve and regulated the steam by hand to control the engine, the job normally done by the governor.] , So I went in’t mill, found an old tin and I shouts at t’first tackler I see Where’s the loom oil? [Loom oil is very thin oil. SG] I gets a tin full of loom oil gets up in’t engine house, we stopped for breakfast at half past eight, gets stopped for breakfast time, gets a little ladder out of the boiler house and climbed up to the governor. We used to stand on the bed edge you know, to oil the governor, like we do up yonder (Bancroft) but we oil it.
You know, I’d oiled it before I started but I got up to the governor and I oiled it good and proper. I teemed it down from the top all the lot of this loom oil. It run down the pillar, it run down the links and arms you know, it were a biggish thing. Anyhow, I set on after breakfast and be ten o’clock you’ve never seen anything like that engine house wall in all your life, it were like a bloke had cut his throat stood on top of the governor, it were red all round!
With all due respect to t’chap that had been there before me, he’d never oiled that governor for twelve months, he’d never oiled em for twelve month. Well, within a day or two the weavers were saying, By gum lad, tha should have been here a long while since. I don’t know what they’d had that chap for, I don’t know how he’d run the place, I don’t honestly. The governor were stuck solid. It was just staggering up and down, up and down, jumping, wuff! Wuff! Like that instead of going down quietly wit’ revs slowing down and off up with speed going up.
There’s something I’d like to ask you about that. It’s always struck me as being very peculiar. Up at Bancroft for instance, now you know that’s the only engine I’ve ever run. You go up to Bancroft, I went up there and you get talking to people like Jim Pollard and people who know about weaving and there’s no doubt that there are two things that are critical to weaving, one’s the speed, the engine speed, the speed you’re actually running at, and the other’s the regularity of the engine, how regular it runs isn’t it.
R-Now, it has to be at that speed all the time, no staggering, I mean it could run at the right speed but still be staggering. If you, I could go into an engine house and I used to think , oo heck, I don’t know how they put up with this here. And you’d hear it, whoooo, whoooo, you could see it in't ropes and hear it in the gearing. Now that’s what they were on about. Not just constant, say running at 70 revs a minute from morning till night but keeping it steady. They wouldn’t be bothered if it was 69 or it were 71 as long as it were steady. Now with a governor that were sticking you got uneven running to some tune, you did that. It’d come up two revs and then it’d drop two and that were four revs! You know it’d come up to above it, where it ought to have been at 64rpm and it ud go down to 62 and it did that until the middle of the morning and then it got easy as the oil worked its way into it this thin oil and there were such a mess on that wall.
Yes, now the thing I’ve been quietly getting round to is this. Surely if a man, a weaving manager or whoever is in charge of that shed really knew his job, he should know that there’s something wrong like that. What I’m trying to get at is that when I went up to Bancroft there was absolutely no…..
R-I know what you’re getting at!
There was absolutely no liaison between the fellow that’s running the engine and the bloke that’s running the shed. In other words I had to go to Jim. I went to Jim at t’finish, and what first put me on to it was, up there in the desk, when I first went I had to go digging around in all the corners and there was so much wanted doing quietly. But anyway, I went to Jim, I had found an old report from the Gargoyle Oil Company , they’d done a report on the engine in 1928, and incidentally they’d recommended then that the oil ought to go into the steam pipe through an atomiser like you and I have made it now. But the thing that they stated in this report was that the engine should do 70rpm and when I went up there it was doing less than 67rpm. You could see from the governor set up that it was running at far less than it should have been doing, I mean the governor bars were drooping instead of being parallel with the floor.
Anyway I got on to Jim and I asked him, How come this engine’s running slow. Oh, he said, It’s been altered and altered over the years and he said you know the looms won’t stand the speed and what not and this that and the other. Another thing was, and I know this is meant to be an interview with you but this all comes in, it’s important is this.
R-Aye, yes of course it does.
Now one of the things they’ve always complained about up there and I know they’ve done it with you is…
R-The lights, they were always on about the lights. Yes, we’ve both had this, I told you about this didn’t I at the time you were going on about this job.
That’s it, yes. Now I know that they got on to you about the same thing.
R-Well, not exactly but I’ll tell you my tale after, go on.
Right, well I’ll tell you what I know. If you run that engine at the right speed the phases are a mile out, you run at about 55cycles. One day they were on to me, funnily enough it was the smallest motor in the mill that caused all the trouble, the little DC motor on the Barber Coleman knotting machine. They couldn’t reckon up why this motor wouldn’t run reight and they did all sorts as you know. The fellow that was on that knotter up there, Fred Greenwood, he isn’t a very nice gentleman. He told me I were frightened of the engine and I hadn’t got the alternator wound up enough [Referring to the adjustment of the exciter voltage which controlled the 450 volt output. SG.] And I’m afraid I lost me rag one day. I told him that they’d been suffering this for the last twenty years since that alternator was put in but that I’d bottom the job that day. Now the voltmeter on the distribution board were reading 440 volts, so I went down Birmingham that weekend and while I was down there I bought meself a Heavy Duty Avometer, it cost me £85, a lot of money. I thought we’ve got a reight clock now, let’s find out what the truth is. The following week I coupled this clock to the terminals at the back of the voltmeter on the distribution board and wonder of wonders, my Avo were reading 340 volts, not 440! They were 100 volts down. Actually, on single phase, the lighting was running on just over 200 volts instead of 250. So I sent for Ellisons the electricians and I said you’d better look at the resistance on the field coils for the exciter because I’ve got it screwed right out and I’m only getting 340 volts out of it. He came up, looked at the voltmeter on the board and said Oh no, leave it alone, you’ve got 440volts. I said Oh no I haven’t, put your clock on it. I didn’t let him know I had one. Anyway, he put his own on and said you’re right! So what we had to do was take the cover off the resistance box on the board and it were full of fluff! So we cleared all the muck out of it, and it were marvellous the needle on the voltmeter went reight up to the stop! What somebody had done, they’d altered the resistances in the box so that the voltmeter were reading reight for the speed of the engine but what somebody had done before that was alter the voltmeter so it read the right voltage for what they were doing!
Well, we were running on 450 volts AC now. What had been happening with the voltage being down, by the time they’d rectified it upstairs in the twisting department they were only getting about 70 volts instead of 110. I told them at the time, there’s something wrong here. There’s a 600 horse engine down there driving an alternator with a commutator on the size of a dustbin and if it can’t run that little DC motor there’s something sadly wrong. They said it was always all right when they were on the mains but not on the engine. Another thing as well was showing it up. On wages day I always had to put the office on the mains because the decimal point on the old adding machine used to float about. That were the same circuit that was running all the juice upstairs. So that meant that on Monday, when they were reckoning up the wages off Friday’s figures and they were on the mains the knotting machine ran like a dream because it were getting full voltage.
So, we made that slight alteration and cured what was a big problem and this got me to thinking that if it made such a difference in the knotting, what could it do in the weaving shed? So I asked Jim how many picks a minute the looms ought to be running at. [A pick is one double journey of the shuttle across the loom and back and is the criteria on which the speed and production of a loom is measured. SG] he couldn’t really tell me so I was left on my own. And you know what it is, if anything goes wrong in the shed its always the engine that’s running wrong, either too slow or too fast. Anyway, big does and little does I had a look at the balance weight on the speed regulator. It had been in the same position that long the threads were chattered and you couldn’t adjust it so I took it off and ran a die up the threads. I wanted to wind it up, the further up it went the faster the engine ran.
Then, every week, I put a quarter of a turn on the regulator rod, I didn’t put it all on at once.
R-No, just fetched it up quietly.
Once a week I did it at Friday dinner time when there’s always more looms stopped and you expect it to run a bit faster anyway. Anyway, in the finish I got it up to where it is now, 69rpm and I thought that’s enough because the looms are old. Later I told Jim and he told me that over that period the weaver’s wages had gone up thirty shillings a week on average. [There was a lot more to it than this actually. I also adjusted all the valves and greased the ropes so that the mill ran steadier. I used to ask Billy Two Rivers, one of the weavers who had been a tackler, every morning how the speed was and alter it to suit him. The reason for this is that leather belts tighten and speed the looms up if the air is drier and the engine had to be adjusted to compensate for that as well. SG]
R-To each weaver, you know I had all this thirty years since.
Aye, I know, but this is my point. It had made the difference. Now if it did it for the weavers it was doing it for the firm. Now my point is, why? If I was running a mill, and I know, a lot of ‘em had ‘em, I’d have a rev counter on the second motion shaft.
R-There were a lot of ‘em had ‘em and by gum, you’d to book ‘em down at night how many revs you’d done from seven in the morning until half past five at night.
Tell me whether I’m right or not. I’ve heard stories about the old spinning mills further down in Oldham and Bolton where the engineers used to run their engines faster on Thursday and Friday to get the reight number of revs for that week else they were on the carpet on Monday morning.
R-If they didn’t they were on’t carpet. I’d a lot of my mills had them on and they were to write down in’t book every day were them revs from seven in the morning until half past five at night and if they didn’t tally be weekend, woe betide them. I’d this experience at Bancroft thirty years since, just after the war was finished. When Uncle George Hogarth was on the engine. We didn’t do a lot of work at Bancroft at that period. Me father came to me and he says I’ve had Wilfred Nutter on the telephone to me Newton, he says he’s heard you run engines round town and will you go and run Bancroft, George is poorly. I says I don’t know, they haven’t been reight good customers of ours over the years. No, he says, but I’ve allus got on with Wilfred all right. I says all reight, I’ll go and run th’engine. So I goes to Bancroft, Christmas.
(425)
I starts up after Christmas, I’d been running, it were happen ten o’clock and into th’engine house comes Wilfred Nutter. I knew him because he had looms all over the place. Now then Newton he says, It’s rough weather, it is weaving rotten, can you slow the engine down just a little bit? I says course I can. It had Whitehead governor on then, it hadn’t that Lumb on, it were an ordinary old Whitehead. I says I’ll slow it down. We have a box nut you know, just work it by hand. [Same as Ellenroad, opposing threads and it shortened valve the rod to speed up and lengthened out to slow down. SG] First of all, I couldn’t get t’nuts loose, I had to get some rust oil on to them. In big shifts and little uns I got it loose and got it down an odd un. I went up into t'mill and I says is that any better? To one of the tacklers and he said Just a little bit more. I says all right and did a bit more. I went up into the mill again and he says That’s smashing, just leave it there.
But we’d put that alternator in, well actually, we didn’t put it in for Nutters, we did the installation for Jim ____ who had been head electrician for the Council, he started up on his own and we put the alternator in for him, did all the drive. He had that job, we didn’t have it in the first place but we put it in for him. Well, it gets to about three o’clock, middle of winter and I comes to put some lights on. [The lights in the mill and the shed were all switched from the engine house at Bancroft. When it started to get dark the engineer put some steam on the engine to compensate for the increased load and threw the three breakers in which controlled the lights. This put an extra 100 horse on the engine. SG] I just took one look at all the meters and I’d about 40cycles and 350 volts. The warning lights on the bottom [These lit when the breakers were in. SG] were like candles. There were just one or two fluorescents and they were flashing like it was a thunderstorm. I thought now then, we’ll put th’engine back to some speed for a start. So I went to the box nut and wound it up them two revs that I’d taken off, we’d still only got 45 cycles and voltage were about 400. So I would up it some more and I took the voltage up to 440 and the cycles to 50 which I knew were where it should be. I timed the engine and it were doing 70 revs. I thought lovely, we’ll leave it at that. I were there six month and I never had another mention of speed on the looms and that engine were never touched any more than what I did for variation in steam pressure when I altered it meself during the day. It were psychological, it were blooming rotten lights that were telling, that were making t’weavers want the engine slowing down for bad work.
(450)
The thing I’ve always found great difficulty in getting into their heads there and tacklers are the worst of the lot and the weavers are bad and all, is that the speed of the engine doesn’t necessarily have any relation to the speed that the looms are going at.
R-Oh no, it’s up to the belts from the shaft to the loom and that’s a big thing.
Now if you get a long spell of dry weather…
R-And they don’t attend to them
Aye, they’re beggars up yonder you know, they don’t attend to their belts at all. Because the thing is they don’t realise at all. I mean I know the tacklers would go up the wall at me but all of those belts should be dressed once a month on the back with oil so it goes through them quietly. But what happens is that you get a weaver who wants to get some picks on, they’ll put a bit of Golden Syrup on the belt you know.
R-Aye, they’ll put owt on. They used to buy Grippo at the local ironmongers at Harry Tinners and put that on and nowt dried belts up quicker than that stuff I don’t know what! And it only worked for about ten minutes you know.
That’s it, and then you’d see the tackler going round and sprinkling farina from the tape room on the belts to make them slip and slow them down because the speed made more work for him! What they can’t realise is there isn’t two looms in the shop running at the same speed. It’s the belts that makes the difference. And you can have that engine running, because you know yourself, you can run that engine, within reason, on the same load and the same pressure, at the same revs every day so long as everything is right.
R-Well, it will regardless of pressure really.
Yes but if your pressure’s up on light load, a big lift in pressure.
Aye, we’re not talking about ten pound. If it goes from 100 to 150 you could get a bit probably.
But I know for a fact, I know what I’d do, I’d have a rev counter on the shaft, never bother about the engine, put it on the second motion shaft. It’s amazing the difference there is day to day in the drive of the cotton ropes off the flywheel. I’ll tell you another thing that makes a big difference, dressing the ropes with tallow and graphite. If you do them regular. I mean, you know them ropes were dry , George had been putting belt dressing on!
R-Oh they were like straw. Never seen owt like them, I nearly had a fit.
When |I first put the grease on I expected the second motion shaft to slow down slightly but it didn’t, it speeded up! The grease goes sticky.
R- The grease goes sticky and gives a bit more drive at bottom and top, where they’re pulling into the taper.
And I’ll tell you something else and all, There’s three new ropes on the right hand side of that wheel when your looking from the back. Now if your running, as a matter of fact they want greasing now, if your running and you go into the cellar and watch those three ropes on the drive side underneath you’d see them hanging down. They’re not taking any drive. If you grease them they’ll tighten up.
R-Aye you know, years ago I used to think that rope drives were a marvellous thing you know and I used to talk to some of these old fellows, old chaps in’t weaving you know, managers and bosses like, and they said they didn’t like rope drives, they wanted gears because, especially in room and power shops, they knew they were getting exactly what the engine were doing. No slip you know on a gear drive.
Well, they’re right aren’t they. I can understand the logic in that having seen it work.
R-And that’s why they started, later on you know, they started such as Pendle Street (Nelson) and all that putting double helical wheels in you know, they ran blooming marvellous did them double helicals.
(475)
I mean, look at Victoria mill at Earby, they were straight cut teeth but they were all machine cut you know and they were fourteen inch wide. That engine ran beautiful at Earby Mill you know, it were noisy, but not like a wringing machine noise, it just rumbled away but you know it never slipped. They don’t slip don’t gear drives, you get the revs on the shaft that the engine’s doing.
In other words, it’s a positive drive where the engine isn’t.
R-Yes, they all said they all wanted that, the only belts they wanted were to the loom.
Well you see, that’s a pointer is that, that it was the room and power companies, where they were selling power, where they were interested in that more than private firms.
R-They were more interested in gear drive than they were in ropes. Yes, they knew they were getting their money’s worth. You know, I know it were a bit far-fetched maybe but it’s there. A tooth, two geared wheels running together don’t slip but a rope or a belt is only a friction drive.
Having had the experience with it I can see the point. All I can say is that them men knew what they were talking about.
R-They did know what they were talking about.
SCG/19 September 2000
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