THIS TAPE WAS RECORDED ON THE 11th OF OCTOBER 1978 AT VICARAGE ROAD BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS NEWTON PICKLES AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM
Now then, last time we were on about Dobson’s dairy and we’d just got to the end of the tape and I know the next thing you were going to get on about was when you coupled up , when your dad went and measured up at Dobson’s and you coupled up the new boiler to the old boiler, now tell me all about that.
R-Aye right, I went up with me father and we measured all this for new six inch cast iron pipes to couple both boilers together and then couple into the existing engine main. We got all these pipes made and I remember going up at Friday night to start of this job, we started about ten o’clock on Friday night to couple these two boilers together and we worked all blinking night putting them pipes in. Taking all the old pipes out and putting all the new ‘uns in and all at once one of me mates shouts Hey Newton, tha’d better come here! This were towards the engine house, further up, over the top of the connies. He says, There’s sommat not right here! I went up the side on the top of the connies, had a look, and there was a four inch gap. He says, We’ll have to make a bobbin to go in here. It were about six o’clock in the morning then. Oh heck, I says, What a mess!. I said, It’s sommat fresh for me father to measure pipes and make ‘em four inch short and a straightforward place to measure it as well. I said Just clear off on top of the boilers and let me have a look at this job, and I went in the other little boiler house and opened the junction valve, that boiler were in steam. I let it blow for about five minutes, muck and steam were flying all over the place. Shut it off, waited while the steam cleared. I said let’s go and have a look at it now. We went up and had a look, there were just enough room to get a packing ring in at a sixteenth gap. I said Old Johnny never measured no pipes and left a gap, and there were a four inch gap when we came to couple it up. It shows how much expansion there were on them steam ranges doesn’t it?
Aye.
R-It does that.
There was another job up there when the engine stop valve broke off?
R-Oh, the engine stop valve seat came up and stopped the job. There were thousands of gallons of milk you know. Me father said Get up to Dobson’s Dairies, there’s sommat wrong. We went up and old Charlie Plummer, the engine driver, says I don’t know what’s up with it Newton, it just stopped on its own! I said Well, there’s only one thing’ll stop it and that’s being ‘bout steam in the boiler house or ‘bout steam here. I tried to shut the junction valve but I couldn’t make moss nor sand of it. I could tell from the feel of it there were sommat wrong. So I whipped the top plate off, it were a pillar valve you know, up through the floor, we whipped the plates up round it, took the top of the valve off, lifted it off and the seat came out with the valve! No messing. What are we to do now? Spindle were about jiggered if I remember reight, the thread was getting done for, you know, the thread that was under the floor. Oh what a mess, it wanted a new spindle, a new valve and a new seat. Well, we can’t do with all this milk in t’shop so I sat about and thought a bit. I thought well, if I take the stop valve out I can put a bobbin in and we’ll run off t’junction valve you see, on the boiler. It were a long way from the boiler to the engine. So I says to Charlie, have we any old valves about this place, like any sort of valve’ll do. Aye he says, there’s some old feed valves in the boiler house and one Hopkinson slide valve, you know what them are like don’t you. I measured it and it were just the right length. A lot too small in the flanges but just the right length. So we made some clips and some bolts, some special bolts and we just clipped it in and got some steam on and we ran it like that for a week. You’d to get down on your hands and knees to start the engine, in a fashion. You can just imagine trying to stop and start can’t you with a Hopkinson’s boiler feed valve the speed they open and shut. Poor old Charlie didn’t know whether he were on his head or his feet. Did he heck and it were like that for a week and we put the old one back in the following weekend.
Aye, it ‘ud be one of the slide valves.
R-It were a Hopkinson slide valve.
Well, there’s only a quarter of a turn on them full shut to full open!
R-That’s all, that’s all. That’s all there were but if there’d been an emergency at least he could have stopped the steam.
Aye, there’s that about it, he could have stopped it quick!
R-He could have stopped it reight away. He frigged on like that for a week did old Charlie and we rebuilt the valve, put him a new spindle in and a new seat and all’t bag of tricks. There were never anything wrong with it any more right up to the end of its days. Eh, but it did some running did that engine. Sometimes in summer it were running 24 hours a day seven days a week, you know, from one engine driver to another one. Sometimes if they were fast for an engine driver I’d go up there.
How about any other troubles there.
R-It got a bit worse for wear later on in its life, it got so it wouldn’t drive the load. When all the lighting were on you know, there were two alternators on as well as all the compressors for the process and fridges. It got so as it wouldn’t drive at all so we whipped it down quick one night, the high pressure, and just had a look at it and the rings were jiggered and it were getting badly worn. So we made all the necessary arrangements, well they did as far as the milk producers were concerned to ship the milk somewhere else and we re-bored it in a weekend. I re-bored the high pressure skimmed the rods and cured it.
Yes. Now look, while we’re on about re-boring, we’re at the beginning of a tape here, take me right through re-boring a cylinder.
R-Oh, nathen, that takes a bit of explaining doesn’t it.
Yes I know it does but I’m going to tighten the bands on you now, we keep talking about re-boring this and re-boring that.
R-Takes a bit of explaining doesn’t it.
Well, let me help you a bit for a kick off. Was that a corliss engine?
R-Yes, aye.
Well, so when you bored that, when you talk about re-boring that cylinder, actually you’re talking about five bores because you’ve got four valves….
R-No, we just bored the working barrel…
Oh well, let’s talk about re-boring one where…
R-Where we did the lot.
Yes, but just hang on a minute. Let’s talk about doing a corliss cylinder that wants all t’valves boring and it wants cylinder boring and let’s talk about that. Now for a start off, tell me about boring valves on a corliss.
R-Well you see it were just, you just bored them like an ordinary boring machine but wi’ portable tackle that’s all. Just pull the valves out and mike ‘em mike ‘em at each end or calliper ‘em or make wire gauges.
Hang on a minute, hang on a minute, I can see we’re going to be in trouble here because you know too much about it…
R-Aye well, that’s it you see.
That’s it. Now then, Corliss cylinder valves, you tell me whether I’m wrong, the valve itself is actually just a passage bored straight through the top of the cylinder. [at right angles to the main bore]
R-Aye, that’s it.
And the steam goes in from the steam chest and it goes through a slit in the bottom of the valve and into the cylinder.
R-That’s it.
And the valve itself sits, the cylindrical valve, like a circular slide valve just obstructs that slit. Now then, what you’ve got to do when someone says re-bore these valves, you’ve got to do two things, you’ve got to bore the valve out and make it true and you’ve got to make a new valve because obviously, the old one isn’t big enough. Now then, you say that you just set up your portable boring tackle.
R-Yes.
Now that’s all right but just explain the process of boring first, what do you mean by boring?
R-Well, just to enlarge the holes and make them round again. They’re worn oval aren’t they with that valve just working on the bottom of the ports over the years and it makes that hole oval and once it starts getting oval it gets worse very quickly and then your valve doesn’t fit because it wears the edges off. The ovality of the valve doesn’t coincide with the ovality of the hole that it’s working in and it starts to leak and steam starts to blow through instead of it cutting it off. The admission gets all wrong and the exhaust gets all wrong, lack of power and your coal consumption romps up.
So what you’ll do then is set up a boring bar.
R-We have a boring bar that we made for this particular job and two dummy ends that we bolt on to the cylinder [to carry the bearings] and that forms a machine of its own and in the old days we drove it with a little steam engine. A little oscillating cylinder vertical one we had. We’d bolt it to the floor wi’ a couple of rag bolts , half inch rag bolts. Couple a steam pipe to it and stick an exhaust pipe through the first window we came to and we were away. And then of course as electric came in years later we went on to an electric motor to drive it. But the boring equipment was home made, to suit each job.
Yes. Now you’ve just reminded me of a story you once told me about taking that boring engine somewhere, where it were a reight clean shop and it were throwing oil out all over the place.
R- Oh yes, that were at Holdens at Barrowford. We’d to bore the high pressure cylinder and it wanted five eighths of an inch out of it to clean it up it were so badly worn. Of course, to bore 5/8 out you had to go through umpteen times hadn’t you. And that little engine were working 24 hours a day for four and a half days and you’re oiling it every few minutes to keep it going because it runs at a fair speed does that little engine. And of course you start packing it round with waste and it’s a nice beautifully scrubbed white wood floor that its fastened to and your oil patch round your engine spreads and spreads and th’engine driver’s assistant oiler as we used to call ‘em in them days keeps coming up and looking and saying ‘You’re making a bloody mess in here aren’t you? I’ll never get me floor clean again!’ And eventually over the days you could hear that engine sloshing about on its oily waste which you’d put in. He, he ,he oh aye, anyway it got finished did that job, but what a mess we made of that floor! He got ‘em clean you know after a week or two.
Aye, but I seem to remember that engine breaking down somewhere.
R-Oh, it broke down on another job but at the same mill, Holdens in Barrowford. And we hadn’t th’engine all to bits it were a very awkward job.
Let’s just point one thing out before you start on with that. That one of the important things about boring a cylinder is to keep the boring bar going because if you stop you’ll get a step won’t you and the temperature of your cutting tip alters and contracts and you don’t get an even bore.
R-That’s it.
Now, go on, you’re boring the air pump…………
R-Well, we started boring the air pump and we’d got down about half an inch and there were such a ruddy bang and the piston nut must have come off on the boring engine and jammed up in the bottom of the cylinder and bent the connecting rod and jammed it all up solid. We had the engine down in the cellar, not on the floor but bolted on to the entablature girder over the air pump cross head with a couple of slotted plates and four bolts through. You understand what I mean, it were straddling the girder were the engine. So we’d to get it down head first and strip it down and whilst we were repairing it, bringing it back to Barlick to straighten the connecting rod and the piston rod and put a new nut on, the oiler kept winding the boring machine round by hand while we went back. Him and the engineer between them and just kept that boring tool moving. We went back and put the engine together and we’d be what, a couple of hours before we got it running again about two or three o’clock in the morning. But we’d another experience one Easter with it. It did it again at Sunderlands at Nelson, we were boring the low pressure cylinder. A Roberts engine by the way, a triple expansion. And we got in about a foot or two and it did the same trick again, but this time it were t’valve spindle. Valve spindle nuts came loose and one jammed up in the ports, bent the valve spindle and also bent the connecting rod again because one of the nuts went through into the cylinder and got under the piston. Me and Bob Fort stripped that engine, came back to Barlick, straightened the valve spindle, straightened the connecting rod, re-screwed them, put new nuts on , took it all back, built it up and had it running again in one and three quarter hours. And that was when petrol were rationed during the war, them blooming pink coupons. And the mill manager wound that boring tackle round by hand while we repaired the engine because he were the only bloke there on the premises when it conked out.
Aye, now then, boring valves. Lets talk boring valves. We’ll go from boring valves ‘cause boring valves actually is just the same as boring the cylinder, the only difference is obviously that you’ve got to make a new piston and rings instead of a valve.
R- New piston and rings.
Now then, there’s one thing that I know can cause trouble when you’re boring a cylinder and I think that you once got into some trouble over this, and that’s when the boring tool reaches the slot where the steam comes in.
R-Well, most of your trouble boring them, having that trouble, were air pumps, especially Edwards type air pumps with a grid round the liner and you see, when I were a young chap I had to stick to the original ideas. You allus bored with four tools in following each other. Well the first air pump I ever bored were a horizontal one.
So in other words, the boring head had four tools in?
R-Always four tools in.
At Ninety degrees.
R-Aye, set out and divided into four.
Now were they, were one a leading tool and then the others would……
R-No, they were all set up together. All set together as near as ever you could get them. It were a big job were that, packing them up, you know, experience used to help a lot with that. But this first air pump I ever bored was a Burnley Ironworks horizontal air pump about 14” diameter bore and it ‘ud be about five feet of boring and when it got to the grate I watched them tools going round and I thought this is a fool of a job. Boring with four tools, one cutting and one up a hole. You follow what I mean don’t you, one would be hitting a bar to cut it and the opposite one would be in a port. Well when you tried your gauge into them bores it were always smaller in the middle than it were anywhere else. So of course I had arguments wi’ me father again like. Aye, well they’d allus been bored like that and they’d never been any trouble. I said well I’m not boring the next one like that you can rest assured on that! He says Well, how are you going to bore the next one? I said when the next ‘un comes, I’ll bore it. I did it with one tool and it were perfectly parallel and no bother.
You see what happened Stanley, when it gets into t’middle there were what, twelve bars round it, you know, twelve ports, twelve holes. Well, you’d only one tool [out of the four] cutting, or two at the most. Well it went all sorts of shapes wi’ the spring of your bar. That [boring] bar were six inches in diameter but it’d spring it. And when I used to try me gauges in, we used to make wire gauges, no mikes in them days you know, it were always right in the middle you know, ten or fifteen thou smaller over the grate reight away. Now when I bored a cylinder that had no ports in the middle they were allus OK were them. They were dead true and parallel, you know they were more parallel than you could bore them on a big posh boring machine, they allus came out parallel even the most expensive boring machine couldn’t compete with a bar like that.
Aye.
R-Boring a round and parallel hole like we could with them four tools in. They were always spot on, I never had a bad one all the cylinders I ever bored.
So when you were boring cylinders you used four tools?
R-I used four.
Aye, so that meant the bar weren’t springing.
R-But when I bored air pumps I used one tool.
Yes, now tell me something, sommat came up there, what do you mean by a wire gauge?
R-Well, you get, what we call a wire gauge, You had say a bit of 3/8 round ordinary mild steel. Cut it off [slightly longer than the bore] and point it at the ends, grind a point on each end and then set it to the size of the cylinder, keep filing until the ends fit, you know, like you’d use a mike. You’d adjust it yourself with a very smooth file and finish up wi’ a spot of emery paper and rubbing it on a fine stone. You used to use your own judgement on how much travel it wanted [from side to side] for clearance between the cylinder and the piston. You got so you could just do it without thinking about it. I never used to say Oh well, it needs 15 thou of slack or ten thou of slack to get it in, I used to give me gauge a travel of say, on a 24” diameter cylinder, an inch and an eighth of travel [side to side]. What I mean by that is you stand your gauge up in the bore [lean it until it touches the cylinder wall] and it travels about and inch and an eighth at the other. [until it touches the wall at the other side.] You file it off until it travels an inch and an eighth and then you take that back to the shop and if you weren’t making the piston yourself, say to the turner, make the piston the same diameter as this gauge. And when you took your piston back to the mill with a bit of luck it went in! And all through my career I never had one that didn’t.
So when you say, just let’s get this straight. So what you’re saying is you’re looking down the bore and you stand the gauge up in the middle of the bore and then you move it from side to side towards the side of the bore until it catches.
R-Within an inch and an eighth it wants to touch the bore on a 24” cylinder. It wants to move an inch and an eighth.
So that’s really a very accurate way of measuring ………
R-That’s right, it’s as accurate as a mike once you’ve had the experience on how much to give it. Now in the books, those reference books, it gives you this but they’re wrong. In my opinion they were all wrong, they give you far too much. On a cylinder of 24” they’d want a sixteenth of movement to an inch [of diameter] it’d say in the book. So that’ud be 24 times one sixteenth of travel, so that’s an inch and a half isn’t it? Well, an inch and an eighth was ample. That ‘ud give happen five thou of clearance of your piston when you put it in. But if you give it an inch and a half of travel you’d be able to get twelve or fifteen thou over it with your feelers which top me was far too much, you didn’t want ‘em that slack.
Yes, now then, can I remember you once telling me about boring valves on a corliss cylinder and you got a bright idea about stopping the borings dropping down into the cylinder. If you were boring valves on a corliss cylinder, say one of the admission valves at the top..
R-We used to have to take the piston out if we were boring an admission valve at the top. It were general practice again. You’d go at Friday night and strip all the engine down, get the metallic packing men there, take the back cover off, take piston rod out, uncouple it at the crosshead, take the piston out and put some sacks in the bottom of the cylinder so that you’d make somewhere for your turnings or borings to drop. I used to think what a blinking game this is, doing all this stripping just for the sake of a bit of muck. So me and me mate we’d say, well, can’t we stuff ‘em up? So we went on to one one weekend to bore the valves and we didn’t take the piston rod out or the piston or the back cover off. Me father had ordered the packing chap and we sent him home didn’t we, he he he! We got a load of cotton out of the mill didn’t we and we stuffed it in, big pieces, not little bits in through the port bars down below the level we were boring to you know and then we got some big lumps of bevel gear fat, that hard stuff you know, and we put that in and smoothed it all out, oh we made a real job of it. And we bored t’valves and pulled the rags out after and you know you could clean ‘em out when you got your hand in and cleaned all the fat off and it brought all the turnings out. There were no muck left and it were spotless, better than sacks in the cylinder. And I never took any more pistons out to bore valves but then we had a bright idea on one or two of the bigger engines, we fit boards in [the ports], we got a lump of old floor board [somewhere near the size] and shoved it up the ports, thumped it with a big hammer and made a pattern on it and then cut it to size with a saw and then tapped it in and covered it with fat. We got to be dab hands at that job but cotton and grease were all right. No messing but you’d got to be very careful you know that there weren’t any cotton sticking up that could catch on the tool and jam you up. I had an experience at Broughton Road at Skipton boring the high pressure cylinder and to this day I don’t know what happened. We’d a six inch boring bar for high pressures cylinders and we were boring it in a weekend which is in a big hurry. It were winter time and it were dark and we’d only a hand lamp or two and at Saturday night at eleven o’clock we were about three quarters of the way through the bore and the drive belt kept coming off, we couldn’t understand it and I said to Harry Crabtree, It’s getting fearful tight is this, what is it? He says I don’t know and I says We’d better pull up and have a look. So we and we’d be about a foot from the far end off being through. We got up the cylinder as best we could under the boring bar with a hand lamp. And what had happened, when they’d put the bar in I mustn’t have been there. I don’t know what had happened but we used to put a piece of leather belting or a piece of board in first in the bottom of the cylinder to slide the bar in on so as we didn’t put a big roke in the bottom of the cylinder or damage it you know. And we’d a blind end on of course, we’d allus a blind casting on, what we called a dummy, to run the end of the boring bar in. And they’d never pulled this piece of leather out and what had happened when the tools got to within a foot of the end of the cylinder they’d picked this piece of leather belt up and it wound round inside the boring bar and tightened it and tightened it until the traverse screw couldn’t shove it any further. It were jammed up between the end of the bar and the boring head. We were in a reight mess. So Harry says What are we going to do? I says, There’s only one thing to do, we’ll have to pull the boring bar out. So we pulled the bar out with the tools in, reight carefully and drew it back out of the cylinder, we cleaned it all out and the cylinder. We took the piece of leather belt out which were all chewed up, there were only me and Harry, and we put it quietly back in. We wound it back up to the cut and I could feel it with the handle, where it were you know and I says Well, it doesn’t matter, we’ll have to chance this and if it isn’t a clean hole we’ll have to go through it again. I said we’ll still be running on Monday. We started up about three o’clock on Sunday morning and got running again and we drew the tools back at about seven and Harry put the lamp up, I daren’t look! He says I can’t feel a mark and I can’t see anything. I says Let me have a blooming look. I climbed up underneath the boring bar with the hand lamp and I couldn’t feel a lump and I couldn’t see a mark. If any two blokes were ever lucky, we were. I’ve never known it happen before and I’ve never known it since ‘cause if you even stopped it it’d leave a mark just with the contraction of the tools. But it were perfect. We drew the bar out, swept all the muck out, made a gauge and it were perfect. Straight back to the shop, got the piston turned, let’s get the thing back together and get running!
How long did it take you , say on a 24” bore, four foot stroke…..
R-Four feet six stroke.
Aye, how long?
R-Eighteen hours.
How long?
R-About eighteen hours.
What sort of a cut was that.
R-Sixteenth a side, I never took less that a sixteenth out, I reckoned to take 1/8 of an inch out. Even if it were a bad #un you know, and it had to be a very bad ‘un, badly worn, to take more than an eighth of an inch. It ‘ud have to have been one that had seized up.
So you took it out in one cut?
R-I did, I allus do ‘em in one cut but you never wanted to try with a little bit. You always wanted some cut on to keep everything tight. It were a big fault, it were a big mistake a lot of these engine fitters made were that, Trying to take a little bit out of ‘em. There’s been some lousy bored cylinders you know.
In what way?
R-With taking too little out and the tackle all jattering and dancing about. I used to put a sixteenth a side on. I used to go and take particulars meself and always made an allowance to take an eighth out of it except for that one at Sam Holdens, it were badly worn were that and we took five eighths out of that but it had been bored twice before. It were a soft casting were that and then it ran fourteen years and then I put a new cylinder in and it wore again.
How about, one little thing while we’re on about that, when you got so as you were getting a spongy bore or something like that did you ever line them?
R-No, I never put a liner in one, never did. Nearest we ever got to putting a liner in were the low pressure at Pendle Street to try to make the engine smaller but it never got done. We were going to make it ten inch smaller. When the engine weren’t driving as much as it used to but it never got done.
Yes.
R-Low pressure were miles too big.
Now, what we’ve been talking about there is boring on the job. Tell me about boring cylinders down in the shop.
R-Boring them in the shop. Oh that were a good job that were, boring new cylinders. We had a floor plate you know, a big cast iron plate in the floor of the shop, concreted in you know. You get your cylinder casting on to that for a start. Tour first job you know, when you got a new cylinder in, they always cast a header on it to take the muck out of the metal. That header could nearly always weigh one, two or three ton. Now the last one I ever did were for Plumb Street and it weighed six ton odd did the cylinder and that were when the header were knocked off it. It weighed 55 hundredweight did the header, that’s two ton ten and the first job I had to do was to cut that off which took me oh, about a fortnight, happen longer, to cut that one off.
Now when you say header…..
R-About eight inch thick. Cast on.
When they cast the cylinder they actually cast that cylinder longer than it needs to be.
R-Longer, it were cast about 18 inches longer, eight inch thick. Spread out you know, like a big mushroom on the end of your casting. Now that’s to put extra weight on to your casting to tighten the metal. What I mean by tightening the metal, it’s to shove the grain up and also take the muck out, it allus swims to the top does any dirt that’s flying about in the ladle. Always rises to the top and that used to carry it all there. [Outside the finished cylinder casting]
How did you take that off?
R-Used to cut it off with a parting tool in me portable boring bar. I almost always used the portable bar but your ends were stronger, better made than what you did when you were boring on the job. They were properly made ends you know, to carry the bearings and driven just the same.
How thick was your heaviest boring bar?
R-I think it’s nine inches, we’ve still got it, nine or ten inches.
Yes, and so you part the header off?
R-Parted it off from the inside. In different stages you know. You’d set off and you’d bore about a three inch gap, keep boring it you know, about three inches wide and go deeper and deeper and then you start with the parting tools. We used to make the parting tools out of inch round high speed steel. We used to make ‘em swan necked and then if there were any swinging back it didn’t dig in, it sprung away from the cut and not in. It were a bit of a tedious job cutting them ends off. You’d just a set screw through your cast iron boring head and every time it came round you just tighten it a flat and that pushed your tool up in your toolbox and you did that every revolution. It were a tedious jib cutting them headers off. When you started getting down six or seven inches and you couldn’t see the tool you’d just to listen to it to know what it were doing, you know, and watch the muck dropping off to see how it were cutting. Interesting.
And how long would it take to cut a header off that size?
R-I should reckon happen a fortnight it took me to get it off that last ‘un. Course, if it was hard metal, and remember all the muck and scum up there you know. You’d leave yourself about an inch and a half on and then when you got your header off it didn’t matter how jagged it was you’d plenty left to face up for your cover flanges.
That’s it, and so you’d have to support the weight of that header when you were…….
R-No, we never bothered, just packed it up with a lump of wood and a couple of battens under it like a ‘V’ block when I were nearly through.
Just let it settle.
R-Couple of props up and just let it settle, aye, you could here it go and just get it off with a couple of joint wedges and put crane round it. I can picture it now, I can see it now. I could hear it when it were nearly through and me father ‘ud be about : Tha doesn’t look so far off through that now, See you don’t let it drop on thee! Put a lump of wood under it and a couple of wedges to take the weight and then split it off at the top with some joint wedges and catch hold of it with the crane.
Once you’d taken the header off what were the next operation? Did you face it then when you’d got the header off?
R-I faced it then, faced each end. I wouldn’t say I finished facing ‘em, I faced it off to a quarter of an inch off the length and then I started boring it. Now getting through the bore the first time were the biggest job. It took days and days because the casting were always rough in the bore you know. And you could only put so much cut on and of course you’d run out. You’d get in about a foot and the tools ‘ud be jiggered, you’d have to wind back and re-grind them and go back in again and you did that all the way until you got through. It took many a day to get through for the first time and when you did get through it didn’t look much like it were an engine cylinder bore, he he, all ridges, bumps, jatters, mucky patches and all that. Then of course you’d draw back again, grind all the tools and set all four up next time. I rough bored with two and set all four up and got going. Then I’d oil the tackle up and come home. I had it all weighed up how long it’d be I’ll go to bed a couple of hours and then I’d go back and you know you’d be going back all night like that and keep doing that. I never stopped it, go back and oil up, see if it were Ok and I bored them cylinders all by meself.
So you’d bore the cylinder and then measure it up for the piston?
R-Oh aye.
There’d be no such thing as someone sending you a cylinder and a piston and you having to bore it to that size?
R-Oh no.
That’d be just about impossible.
R- No, just bore the cylinder, take as little out of it as possible for a good clean bore and make the piston to suit. Then you faced the ends off and faced the cylinder to length and then after that you lifted it off your floor plate and up on to the boring machine which we had and you started then boring all the valve ports out. Especially on a big low pressure like that, it ‘ud be what, forty inches through the valves, bore them out, left the feet, machining the feet until the last. You marked it all out for centre height and machined the feet last.
Aye, that’s it, because you couldn’t……..
R-You didn’t machine the feet first, oh no. ‘Cause you never knew if you were going to have to move it. Say you machined your feet first and then you started to bore it and you says Oh Heck, it isn’t going to clean up in the bottom I’m going to have to drop me boring bar half an inch, where are you with your centre height? So we bored it first, Machined all the valve ports, faced all the valve ends and planed the feet after. In fact I didn’t plane the feet on the last ‘un, I machined them on the borer, the horizontal borer, faced ‘em wi’ the cylinder stood on its end. There’s some photos, you’ve seen them photographs anyway of that big cylinder.
Yes. Now tell me about, you were doing a big one one night and you nearly brought the shop down.
R-Oh well, I had it up on the borer, it’s this big one we’re on about, this last ‘un for Plumb Street. I had it up on the borer and it were first thing in’t morning. I’d been working at night on it finishing one of the ports and I went at morning, usual time, seven o’clockish or half past to me work, I were never at reight time, and I’d left it with, it had just run through and I’d run me table back ‘cause I’d seven ton on the table you know. And I’m running me table back and one of me mates shouts Oh there, whoa! But he shouted too late and at the end of that boring n]machine there were a pillar that held the roof up, a cast iron pillar and the back end of me cylinder casting had gone against the pillar and shoved it out at the bottom and it broke the pillar in the middle. Leave it, leave it everyone shouted, just leave it where it is. And we had some jacks and we got the jacks out of the stores and got them under the beam and me father comes out and he said What’s ta done? I said I’ve run into the pillar and broken it. He says Well done, best day’s work tha’s ever done, It’ll get bloody shifted now! And we shifted it and put a girder under and put a pillar back at one side so as the table missed it. Near do though! It were near, it’d have come down would all t’shop because that pillar it shoved out were carrying a baulk that carried a pillar which went right up through the second storey to the roof. All t’roof were on that one [pillar]. S that was that! That were the last big cylinder that were.
Yes. So let’s get back, getting back on to our job now, and we’re boring a Corliss cylinder we’ve bored the valves and made the valves, we’ve bored the cylinder and we’re satisfied with the bore and we’ve measured it up. Now then, tell me about the piston, that’d be a cast iron piston.
R-Cast iron piston. Now we’d all sorts of pistons. Sometimes we put junk rings on. By junk ring I mean you make a piston with one edge cast solid to full width and then the other end is bolted on with ten inch or inch and an eighth set screws. Now doing that they could put wider rings on, what we called Buckley’s rings which had a spring underneath which when the rig got worn, they used to reckon you could take the junk ring off and increase the tension on the springs and take the wear out of the rings, but I soon did away with that idea because they were rubbish. Ramsbottom rings, you couldn’t beat ‘em, that’s like the rings on your motor car. Narrower and better, narrower and better, These big wide rings were no good, no good at all.
I’ve heard you talk about this. Where did you first come across these Ramsbottom rings?
R-Well I’d allus known about Ramsbottom rings but Burnley Ironworks on their later engines always put ‘em into the high pressure. And I used to say why don’t they put ‘em on the low and there were no answer to that so I started to put ‘em on to the low. But finest rings out, for a steam engine, finest rings out were Rowan rings, they were made at Belfast. They were self springing rings, you can picture a key ring that you wind your keys on that you have in your pocket, well they were made like that but they were made wider they’d be about an inch and a quarter wide, they were beautifully made. And then inside there was a wavy ring in between your rings. You’d a wavy ring and then when you bolted your junk ring on and your piston all up together this wavy ring kept tension on, inside of the ring and out. They were marvellous things, they were made for ships so as they didn’t want any oiling. You know [cylinders on] a ship never got any oil. They used to put part tallow in but none of that if they could get away with it and once across the Atlantic and back and they’d have to strip it and put new rings in. Now Rowan rings did away with a lot of that, they’d last two or three trips.
Aye, I know a thing or two about that, the reason for that would be that they didn’t want to get oil into the condensed water because they were using it over and over again.
R-No, they didn’t want to get oil into the condensers, if it got into the boilers they were jiggered.
So on a marine engine they’d be running them rings with no lubrication in the bore.
R-Them Rowan rings were a big success and I put ‘em into loads of low pressures in Lancashire engines. I didn’t put any into the highs but I did the lows. I used to use Ramsbottom rings in the high pressures. But low pressures, they were a revelation, talk about shifting the coal bill down, they did that did Rowan rings. Marvellous, there were nowt went past ‘em, especially if they were getting some oil, they were fully efficient. And you could fit ‘em into a worn cylinder, if you came across an engine that wanted, you know, that were on that happy medium between it wanting re-boring and it looked a shame to re-bore it. I just, I didn’t do many, I put a new piston in and put Rowan rings on ‘em and fitted ‘em to bore.
When you say it looked a shame to re-bore it, why was that, was that because they’d got such a nice finish on them?
R-It had a damn good finish and it were little worn. See, it ‘ud happen only be a thirty second worn at each side you know.
Aye, because they go like glass don’t they.
R-Aye, they go like glass and it looks a shame to re-bore them and I’d say let’s put a new piston in and put Rowan rings on. You know there were a lot of these engines built and they weren’t particular enough when they made ‘em and the pistons were too slack from the start and Bancroft were one of them. [Bancroft was Stanley Graham’s engine] I don’t like running folk down but Bancroft were one of them. I re-bored the high pressure cylinder at Bancroft 25 years since and that engine knocked from being new to me re-boring the cylinder. I were only a lad and I kept saying it wants re-boring does this, it’s chucking the piston about. Every stroke, clunk, clunk and they used to say it wants crank pin taking up, it wants cross head taking up. I says It wants hell as like taking up, it wants re-boring. And at finish up, Wilfred Nutter says Newton what is it that’s making this noise in this engine? I says It wants re-boring Wilfred and a new piston. He told me to get it done. George Hoggarth went up the wall at me, I thought he were going to punch [kick] me out of the engine house. And I were that mad, it were about Monday and I got all the stuff ready and I had the piston casting ready and I bored it at weekend. I got it done and set on about 11 or 12 o’clock on Sunday night and Hoggarth were there, I says Now then, where’s thee knock? He says It’s gone but thee wait until morning and it’ll be back! So I were there at 7 o’clock in the morning after when they set on, and bear in mind all the looms were running then. And at five past seven I says to Hoggarth, Where’s thee knock now? He says It’s gone Newton, here how much does ta want. If he’d had any money in his pocket he’d have given it me, I think he’d have given me the mill! It had knocked since 1920.
Aye.
R-They even put a new crank pin in because it were knocking!
Well didn’t you do that job?
R-No, it were Roberts.
What a terrible job that was. I’ve looked at it many a time, that’s something I want to do a picture of. The back of the pin is like the craters on the moon! A terrible job that and the key at the back, God knows why they’ve done it but t’key at back is all brayed over like a big mushroom and punch marks all over it.
R-Why do that? When I put a new crank pin in I never bothered with the key, I put a wooden one in. No need to put keys in when I put ‘em in! Me father ud say What are ta doing? I’m putting a wooden key in because it’s easier to fit! What, with fourteen thou of nip and it wants a key in? Never, th’art spoiling it. You put a key into a hole that’s had fourteen thou of shrink put on it what are you doing besides trying to stretch it oval again. That’s just what you’ve tried to eliminate, with reboring it and putting a new crank pin in.
Aye, that’s right, it must be right.
R-Aye, put a wooden ‘un in.
Aye, anyway, we’ll get on to shrinking later, but…….
R-Aye, we don’t put no keys in ‘em.
Now then, we mentioned something in there that a lot of people won’t know anything about, and that’s metallic packings. [fitted in the cover to seal the hole the piston rod runs through]
R-Oh, they’re a marvellous thing.
Right, let’s go one stage back. Now on old engine it were just the same principle as the gland on an ordinary domestic tap wasn’t it.
R-Well, where t’piston rod puffed in and out of the cylinder it had just a plain cavity bored into the cover with a brass ring in and then a piece that fits in the cavity in the cover with three long studs that pulled another piece of brass down onto rope lapped round the piston rod and squeezed it into the cavity and that stops the steam puffing out round the rod. That’s a simple explanation for it isn’t it? Then in later years they found they were cleverer and they put some grease round the lap rope before they squeezed it in. And then later on they got cleverer still and put some black lead on the rope and squeezed it in, didn’t they.
Ate, graphite, yes.
R-And you were bloody covered in the stuff by the time you got it in weren’t you. You sparkled like a kipper skin!
And then the Universal Metallic Packing Company came out………
R-Aye, United States Metallic Packing Company. A bloke there came along and he said I’m not having any more of this, I’m going to make some washers and I’m going to make ‘em half moon shaped and I’ll grind ‘em all together and I’ll try ‘em and see if they’ll stop steam. And he did, it stopped steam a bit but it didn’t stop it all so he thought I’ll have to make sommat else now, I wonder if I can make some brass rings and cut ‘em up and put springs round. So he gets some brass rings and he turned ‘em to the size of the piston rod and he turned some grooves round the outside and he got some springs made and he cut ‘em into four and put them in. And he put two lots of them in so his joints weren’t opposite and they were a lot better than ever with them in. But it weren’t just right, didn’t last long. So he thought I wonder what I can do with that. I’ll try some metal that’s a bit softer, so he found out with boring his brass blocks out and filling them with white metal, that’s like lead, and making the number less, he put two in one side and two in the other, staggered opposite. And that’s what exists to this day and they’re a real job. But when they went on to high pressure, high superheat steam they’d to go back on to bronze ones. They wouldn’t do with white metal, the heat melted ‘em. I’ve heard the Metallic Packing chaps tell about when superheat started becoming popular after the first world war and all the white metal started running out of the stuffing boxes, oh aye, it melted the packings. It melted the white lead out of them and they’d to go back to bronze. And they took a lot more fitting of course did bronze ones to make ‘em turn because white metal ‘ud fit itself after a day or two. But they were marvellous things, I allus put me hand up to that chap that made ‘em. United States were a firm of its own in Bradford and one of their chaps decided to start up on his own, things were busy in them days you know. And he started up and that were Universal Metallic Packings and they’re still on the go today but United States aren’t in business any more.
Yes. Now then I can think of one engine where you did away with the metallic packings.
R-Oh, that were a little air pump, oh aye.
Now why?
R-Now then, they got some fancy ideas after the second war that they’d start putting metallic packings on air pumps, you know, on tail end air pumps, that’s between the low pressure cylinder and the air pump. We did a lot of these jobs for Universal and united States as well, skimming air pump rods and putting these metallic packings on but they were never a success you know, they wouldn’t last many weeks before they were blowing and drawing air and water squirting out. They’d slipped up with one thing, they didn’t recon on the piston rod going rusty at night between half past five and seven in the morning which, they weren’t stainless steel rods of course, and what happened most of them put up with this trouble and they used to send for the metallic packing chap and they’d come once or twice a year and put new blocks on. But there were one little engine at Bradley and we did that, they didn’t do it on our advice, actually they did it through metallic packing’s advice to put these new packings on and Oh, did it get in a mess. It wouldn’t stand it because their air pump’s a bit small it wouldn’t run, they’d no vacuum. Me father’d say, Go to Bradley Newton, do sommat wi’ yon engine, put it back on packings, put it back on ordinary stuffing boxes! So I went to Bradley I thought I’m going to do a bit of a job here on me own. And I altered it back to ordinary stuffing boxes, I’d to make castings you know because they’d turned all the old stuffing boxes off to make room for the metallic packings. I put a stainless steel rod in ‘cause the old un had been thumped about and brayed and rusty and I put a stainless rod in and that engine’s run, only last week or two and it’s never had any packings put in, he’s never repacked them glands for twenty odd years. And that were the answer, I never put any more metallic packings in on the air pumps, I put stainless steel rods in ‘em and put ‘em back to glands. You see what the problem was with the rods when you went on to stainless steel with metallic packings, and it’s been tried, it were coming out of the low pressure cylinder hot and going into the cold air pump. Well the packings couldn’t cope with the contraction and the piston rod coming out hot and going into the cold air pump, they couldn’t cope and they used to last a week or two and then start blowing or drawing air I should say and if your pumps drawing air, you’re doomed, no vacuum.
I put umpteen of them back on to soft packings with stainless steel rods in. I never forget doing the first one though, putting it off ordinary soft packings on to metallics, oh what a mess. It were beautiful at Sunday when we ran round, we’d skimmed the rod up and all you know. Engine driver rang up come on and have a look at this piston rod, about Wednesday and you’ve never seen such a mess in your life. You see it weren’t an ordinary soft packing that were keeping the rod wiped all day, it were going rustier and rustier while the engine were running. It were just like the bottom of a battleship, all barnacles, were that rod. You’ve never seen owt like it and leaking? The chap‘s stood over it with cylinder oil trying to keep it going while Saturday. Oh, what a job, and then they got a bright idea, they put some oil, some grease Stauffers on to them to keep ‘em full of grease, you know what I mean by a grease Stauffer, fill it with fat and wound it round and they also have a needle and spring loaded so that they can shove it down on its own while the mill’s running. Well they put a lot of them on to try and cope with it but they were no good. Metallic packings were never really any good on corliss valve spindles you know. There were always trouble, with them sticking because a metallic packing wants a full movement of the spindle, not a partial movement.
Yes, that’s it. So if they were on an air pump the answer was to go back to the old fashioned idea.
R-Back to soft packings with, and if they could afford it, a stainless steel rod and their troubles were over.
SCG/05 November 2000
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