THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON 19TH OF JUNE 1979 AT VICARAGE ROAD, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS NEWTON PICKLES AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right, this week Newton, what I want to do is to move down to Earby and talk about the mills there for a bit. This of course is going to involve talking about Big Mill, Victoria Mill where you did that big repair job. So, at the same time we’ll be talking about one of the main reasons why Henry Brown Sons and Pickles were in business, which was repairing breakdowns. We’ve already touched on one or two in Barlick. Now these breakdowns were your biggest jobs weren’t they, when something really went wrong.
R-Oh aye, they were, course they were, yes.
I mean that those were the times when you were stretched to the limit. Well, we’ll not plough straight into the Big Mill, we talked about Brook Shed in an earlier tape, how about Albion Shed at Earby?
R-Well, that were a Roberts tandem were Albion Mill at Earby. About 650 horse, somewhere about, and that were a direct drive engine, no second motion. Direct drive from the fly wheel shaft straight through into the shed. Straight on to your bevel wheels, no gearing between the engine and the mill. It were a slide valve low and the high pressure cylinder had been adapted. Burnley Ironworks had put a corliss cylinder in. It were one of those cylinders where they’d had to skimp, you know, for height and they put all the valves at the top. By all the valves at the top I mean that the exhaust and steam valves were all in the same line at the top, at the top end of the cylinder. This made them the sort of engines you’d to be very careful with your warming up and how you started up because you’d no way to get rid of any water only down your drains. You couldn’t get rid of it through your exhaust valves.
That little cylinder at Wiseman Street’s like that isn’t it.
R-Yes, that’s the same design, Livingstone Mill at Burnley were the same.
Yes. One thing I’d like to ask about that Newton, whilst we’re on about that. Some of Burnley Ironworks that had the valves together had them at the bottom didn’t they?
R-They’d put them in the bottom.
When did they start putting them at the top?
Well, they put them at the top on them engines that were built prior to 1900 you know. When they were [originally] slide valves and they could get a [corliss] high pressure in, if they put the valves at the top, without altering the engine beds. They couldn’t get them down low enough to have the exhaust valves at the bottom. So what they used to do on an expensive conversion, they used to cut the beds off and put half a new bed in and put high pressure and low pressure cylinder beds about six inch lower down which gave them room to get the exhaust valves at the bottom. You know what that engine at Harle Sykes’s like, at Queen Street Mill. Well that engine’s exactly the same engine as Albion was, originally, it’s exactly the same as Albion. With two slide valve cylinders, but what they did there, they went to a lot more expense and they put new beds in under it right up to the fly wheel shaft.
[Queen Street is still running in 2000 and is direct drive as well.]
Yes, and converted it to corliss.
R-And converted it to corliss with one valve at each corner. They’d got it low enough down to do this. So, to do a cheap job, Burnley Ironworks came along and made these high pressure cylinders with all four valves in at the top. They ran OK, they were no detriment in that respect you know. But I’ll tell you a little story about th’Albion. Low pressure cylinder had never been modernised and it still had slide valves in. Now this happened before my time, this is the story as me father told me because they did the job. One afternoon one of the high pressure valves stuck open and put boiler pressure into the low pressure cylinder and it blew the slide valve lids off and buried them in the wall. Aye, buried ‘em into t’tiles on’t wall, both of them. So me father went along like and they made two new covers for ‘em and made them half an inch thicker. The old type of cover like, they’d be about an inch and a half on the outside edge and then there were a moulding round the middle which made it only an inch thick there and a couple of ribs on. So me father put two new covers on and made ‘em two and a half inches thick with a big round ring, like a boss, in the middle and a lagging plate on, which made them, oh, four and a half inches thick in the middle to strengthen ‘em up. Aye it did, it blew them straight off and they sunk into the wall. He said, It buried ‘em in’t wall Newton, both of them. Broke all the bolts, they were bolted on, they weren’t studs you know, they could get the bolts in from the back if you dug under the lagging. And then later on in its life I put a new Edwards air pump on to that engine. A completely new air pump, I made it an Edwards type, that’s wi’ no rubbers on the bucket. It were jiggered in the foot valve and the casing were corroded you know, it were all eaten through with water. And then the last major operation on that engine, I put a new fly wheel shaft in it and a new crank on. It had about four or five new crank pins in like in it’s day. The fly wheel shaft had a bad crack in it, what I mean by a crack, it were a longitudinal crack not circular to the shaft.
Aye, a forging crack.
R-Aye a forging crack, it were a wrought iron shaft. But Wellhouse fly shaft broke, Earby Mill fly shaft broke and Bolton Crowther, him that were the manager [at Albion Shed] asked me to go down one Saturday morning and he says I don’t like that crack in that shaft, I’m going to get the boss in. She were a woman were the boss that owned the mill, through being the last in the line of the family. I took the cap off, the inspector was coming and all but long before he landed she came and she said what do you think? I says, Well, it’s not for me to say, this shaft could run another fifty years or it could break tomorrow but you can’t guarantee it. So they just turned round and said well, with what’s been breaking round here, put a new shaft in. [Victoria shaft broke in 1954 and Wellhouse in 1955 so this would be about 1956?] It were ordered as simple as that and I said Well, it’s had about six new crank pins….. Bolton Crowther chirped up and said put a new crank and all Newton. So that were a fair job. I think you’ve some photographs of that job somewhere or if you haven’t got them we have some of that job you know. I think I’ve got a photograph of the crank on the planer table and the shaft all complete, ready for going.
Yes. I’ve got copies of them. And of course we’re running into something else there now Newton. First of all, Now you want a fly wheel shaft for Albion Shed. Where did you go in them days to get one?
R-They used to get them, there were Webbs at Bury used to forge a lot of them but most of Roberts engines, the fly wheel shaft forgings came from Germany, from Krupps. It were what they call Bessemer steel, it were like a bit better stuff than wrought iron you know. But to me they were never a success; I think Robert’s engines had more shafts broken than any other engines I ever knew. I’d only ever had one Burnley Ironworks shaft break and that was Wellhouse you know. Pendle Street had been broken, fly wheel shaft. The second motion broke in my time and I did that job and same as I say, that at Albion Shed had a crack in it. Livingstone Mill at Burnley got the wind up wi’ their second motion shaft with it being all badly marked and that were a Bessemer one. I put a new one in there before it broke, coupling were only hanging on by the skin of its teeth. It were funny that Bessemer steel from Krupps, it were soft as, you know, like lead. When you come to chip a flat in it it didn’t chip like wrought iron nor it didn’t chip like steel, I never liked ‘em.
Aye, now them shafts made at Webbs at Bury, them ‘ud be forged, they’d be…
R-They were forged, they’d be all wrought iron in the old days. What we used to get while they were forging for us was what we used to call ninety ton steel which is nearly EN8 today. They used to take a bit of turning and all, they did that. But they’d never break for the size they were and what they had to do.
Yes, and when you say that there were one or two shafts breaking at that time, that’s very interesting because it’s getting us into something that can lead us to the Big Mill. [Victoria Mill, Big Mill and Earby Mill were all names for the same mill in the middle of Earby.] Would you say that I was correct if I said that one of the things that people forget about the steam engines we have running now is that they are all running at lower loads than they had in the old days. When you think about it people imagine that a steam engine is something that’ll run forever. But when you think about the hammer a fly shaft gets because of the weight of the flywheel and the fact that it’s getting worked all the time by the cyclic variation in the power that you’re putting into it. That’s one of the problems you start to run into with old engines, pieces of machinery the size of Bancroft engine, isn’t it. That if you’re going to continue running them at full load you’re going to run into fatigue.
R-What seemed to come into it a lot in my mind was when they all started breaking in my time were a lot of this, this modernisation after the First World War with new cylinders and boilers. Coming up from ninety pound pressure and shoving them up to a hundred and sixty and running ‘em on the same fly shaft.
Aye and on the same beds and shafts, yes.
R-Which your initial, your main pressure on your cylinders goes up reight away, even though you’re only driving the same horse power. But you get such a lot more thump at the start of each stroke and I put that down to breaking fly wheel shafts, wi’ the metal it were made on you know. You just think about it, them engines that had been running at what, 85 or 90 pounds to the square inch. They bang a couple of new cylinders on to the same crank and fly wheel shaft, still run the engine at the same speed, put the boiler pressure up to 160 pounds and make the cylinders smaller diameter to start making fuel economy and you’re still producing the same horse power for half the coal a week. This bangs up the initial thump on your piston doesn’t it, at each end of the stroke. That’s what broke the shafts, that’s what broke them.
Yes, when you really think about it, when you’re running an engine, that’s the time when they’re running unhappy, when your loads gone down, like we were at Bancroft [as we wove out] and if your pressure went up for some reason and your load went down and you were running on very short cut-off with high pressure it was like hammering the piston each time.
R-That’s it, it’s like a steam hammer running.
And they sound uncomfortable don’t they.
R-They do, they sound uncomfortable.
I mean, you know, they sound bad.
R-Well, that engine I ran at Queen Street a few months since, it were terrible when the load went off and t’boiler pressure were well up. It were really uncomfortable were that engine, really uncomfortable at stopping time and starting time.
Aye, you were saying about that, it had a broken ring hadn’t it?
R-Aye. It had a broken ring but we replaced that. But I’ve never known an engine to be so uncomfortable on light load as that were. And there didn’t seem to be a lot I could do about it either. I tried all in my power to keep it quiet, at meal times.
And like, gearing wouldn’t help, the fact that it’s gear driven.
R-No, it runs [without gearing] it’s direct drive, no second motion you know. It’s got no spin, you’ve no speed, you’ve no spin on.
There’s no give in the ropes. [like there would be if it were a rope drive]
R-There’s nothing spinning round, its your line shaft just trailing on at engine speed.
Direct on to the shaft.
R-Direct drive like Albion was, yes. And you know you get things like the low pressure valves banging across and lifting up and dropping off the faces when you’re running light like that. [Low pressures are the worst for this because on light load they have no steam pressure on them to hold them down, in fact they can have vacuum on them.] I tried all in me power to quieten it. First thing I thought was to open the drains and drop the vacuum but no, it didn’t quieten it. Only thing you could do to quieten it was to slow it down. Actually slow it down when they’d all gone home. We used to have to run the old do like we did at Bancroft. You’d run from twenty past four to half past and most of them would have gone. But they still expected you to keep running. So the only thing I could do, I shut the stop valve practically down till it were slowing down were the engine and it ’ud keep itself reasonably quiet. But even so, it were rattling itself to bits at that. I says to the boss, We might as well stop at twenty past four! Well, like, it’s the old tale isn’t it, the human element, you stop at twenty past four and they go home at ten past!
They’ll go home at ten past, it’s right is that.
R-If you start going on like that you’ll never start up after dinner. Now dinnertime were never bad at all at twelve o’clock. I could run right up to a minute off before it’d start dropping, t’governor.
Yes, I remember a feller once said to me, when I were running Bancroft, I were talking to this bloke one day and he says Oh, how long’s Bancroft been running a moonlight shift? I said Moonlight? We aren’t running housewives. He says, Well, I came past the other day, and I’d passed the bus down town, [Nutters laid a free bus on to take the workers down to the middle of the town] and you were still running when I came past.
R-When he come back.
Well, I said, That’s a funny thing. They pay me to run the engine while half past!
R-Well, that’s what I used to do Stanley when I did them half days for you. You give me the keys and I used to go in and lock all the doors at twenty five past four wi’ th’engine running and there weren’t a soul in the shed.
No.
R-But Bancroft were a marvellous engine to run light compared to that one at Harle Syke. It ‘ud have ticked away all night if we’d gone home and left it.
Well, that were one of the things when we were running down. Somebody said to me, How are you going to go on when the load goes off? I said no bother at all. I could run that engine on 140pound with the shaft disconnected never mind anything else!
R-No bother, no bother at all. Oh aye, a marvellous engine to run down at night and meal times were that.
Anyhow, wait a minute.
R-We’re getting off track a bit.
We’ll not take the big ‘un. We’ll not take the big ‘un yet.
R-We’ll keep that till last eh?
We’ll keep that one, yes. Let’s go from Albion down to…. Oh no, hang on a minute, you mentioned Wellhouse Shaft breaking. You didn’t mention that when we were talking about Wellhouse.
R-How it broke?
No, I can’t remember you mentioning it.
R-Well, it all started umpteen years ago, before I started working. Wi’ what me father told me about the engine you know, when I were working on it regular, me father used to say, You watch that engine at Wellhouse Newton. T’fly wheel shaft’ll drop off it one of these days. I used to pooh-pooh it sort of thing because it ran beautiful did that engine. Wi’ being on the doorstep it were looked after every day till one morning, they came for me about five past seven, knocked me up and got me out of bed. They asked me to go straight away as the flywheel shaft neck were hot at the new side.
When would this be?
R-Er, our Linda’s twenty two, it ‘ud be twenty four years since.
Twenty four years since, that’s nineteen fifty five. One thing before we go further, just to make sure that people will understand, anybody that’s heard all the tapes will know, but you said new side. Now say why.
R-New side. Well, that engine were modernised in 1926, [Newton is a year out here. At a meeting on 12th October 1927 Edward Wood recommended that the two cylinders on the old side of the engine at Wellhouse should be replaced with two larger and more modern cylinders to get more power and better economy. Had he been taking advice from Johnny and Billy Watson? On 9th of November the company discussed a report dated 8th November 1927 from Burnley Ironworks who, after inspecting the engine proposed two schemes: Scheme 1. was to convert the engine to cross compound on superheat steam. This entailed complete renewal of all steam pipes and valves, replacing the CI pipes with steel to withstand the superheat steam and altering the beds. Mill to be stopped for three weeks. This would result in a saving of 10 tons of coal a week. It was felt that this was too expensive. Scheme 2. involved modernising the left hand side of the engine (the old side) going on to superheat and replacing all the CI pipes. This would involve a stoppage of 10 days and a saving of 9 tons a week. The cost of this would be about £2,400. On 23rd of November 1927 Mr Metcalfe from Burnley Ironworks attended and in the end it was agreed that Burnley Ironworks take on the whole contract, providing all trades, at a price of £2,500 An entry in the Universal Metallic Packings order book dated 30th of November 1927 records an order from Burnley Ironworks for work to provide new and refurbished packings for the left hand engine. Newton Pickles said that the original pressure on the boilers was 120psi. It was put up to 135psi and Swansea superheaters installed when BI put the new cylinders on. They put heavier piston rods in as well and Newton said that that side would indicate at 650hp after that. NP says they should have re-boilered, gone to 160psi and put new cylinders on RH side as well.] It were a pair of tandems. [originally designed for 850hp] Thousand horse tandem with old type cylinders on. Well by 1926 the mill were all full up and the engine were taking it all its time to run the load so they decided they’d put two new cylinders on one side and make ‘em a couple of inches bigger. They modernised the low pressure, which were originally a slide valve and made it corliss and ever after that it were called the new side. I remember watching ‘em lifting the cylinders in through the window, I were only a lad. Anyhow, over t’years there were no bother with it. The trade broke and it never ran much full up and then we put a big alternator on it, big enough to light half of Barlick and that didn’t half put some load on. [Newton told me in November 2000 that Walt Fisher was in charge of installing the alternator and the first time they set it on it stopped the engine. He said it was the only time in his life he had ever heard the ropes scream on an engine!] We indicated it one day did me and Tom Marshall and we’d just short of 1200hp on. It were only built for 850 originally you know but it had been speeded up to 78rpm. Figures were touching in the middle. I don’t know whether the people that listen to these tapes will know about these things but cut off lines were crossing. Anyhow, you and me know about them. Like I used to think about what me father said to me, Keep away from that engine Newton when it’s fully loaded, that shaft’ll break. Anyhow, I used to put it on one side. This particular morning they came for me about ten past seven as I’ve said and I went up, the new side flywheel neck main bearing was absolutely smoking and stinking red hot. So I said to Tom Marshall, the engine driver like, What happened Tom? He said, I don’t know Newton, the oil was on. Well, reight away, with all the experience I’ve had, they all said that. ‘The oil was on’. Funny thing about that morning, I was due out at eight o’clock, I’d to go to Penrith to go and have a look at a clock in an old hall tower that Hindleys had bought. Anyhow, that’s not part of the story so I said to me mate, that’s Harry Crabtree, If this bearing doesn’t quieten down by breakfast time, take the cap off. Anyhow, before I left him we got water on, it had given up smoking. [I told him] give it a dose of Victory when it gives up smoking, you’re going to be alright. So I left him, went to pick me father up and off we went to Penrith. Well, I came home about five o’clock that night and walked down the mill yard, I’d noticed the mill were stopped like and in those days we ran till half past five. I noticed they were stopped and I thought Hello, what’s up, haven’t they cooled it down? I went down, walked into the engine house and the engine was about three quarters stripped. All the eccentric rods were off, both bearing caps off, crank pin brasses were out and I says, It’s like that is it Harry? Aye, he says, it is Newton, it’s a good job the crank were straight up at breakfast time when we stopped and I lifted the cap off ‘cause as I were lifting the cap up the crank was leaning over at the same time as I were pulling the cap up. [when they got the cap off] it [the flywheel neck] had broken like a blacksmith’s swageing edge, tapered like. Now think on, that engine were a four cylinder job. Now this is one of the things that can happen in your life time with a chap who was fully experienced, a real man, he were a real fitter. I says, Tha’s made a good job of stripping it in such a short time. He’d only a couple of lads with him more or less. Aye he says, and I’ve marked all the eccentric [positions] on the shaft before I took ‘em off. He he he! I says Good lad Harry, tha’s done reight! He he he.
He he! Just for the benefit of the onlookers we’ll point out that the shaft wasn’t going to be put back in so there wasn’t a lot of point marking it! Now, what I wanted to ask you, why did your father tell you to keep away from it?
R-It had always had problems with hot bearings, all its life because it were always overloaded.
When you say hot bearings, you mean the pillar bearings.
R-Fly shaft bearings, main shaft bearings, always been troubled with hot bearings because during me father’s career there had been some like a bit sloppy, slipshod engineers on it and they’d been a bit like, more interested in laiking with motor bikes in the yard than [watching the engine] and turning the oils on. He told me he’d seen that engine running with water running out of the door and down the steps with both bearings stinking red hot, through it life. He said he were never satisfied after they put them two new cylinders in that the shaft wouldn’t break. And it did.
[28th of September 1924. Calf Hall Shed Company minute book: ‘It was reported that the engineman at Wellhouse Mill (C Watson, son of George Henry Watson at Butts. NP says that George Henry’s son was called Frank, but he was talking about another of his sons who fired for him until he died while in charge of Brook Shed at Earby, only then did Frank take over the engine and didn’t last long.) was not giving satisfaction and that at a meeting of tenants, the secretary had been informed that the engine had been running slow for some time. During the meeting it was reported that the mill was stopped owing to shortage of steam. [The directors met at 2:30pm I think and the board room was at Wellhouse] It was resolved that the engineman be discharged forthwith and that the Managing Director be authorised to engage a new man and that the wages be £4-5-0 a week and that the engineer’s wage at Calf Hall be increased to £4-5-0. Resolved that in the meantime, Messrs. Henry Brown be requested to take charge of the running of the mill. Mr Pickles attended on behalf of Messrs Brown and Sons and undertook the management. At the next meeting on 10th of December 1924 a letter was read from C Watson asking for a payment of £4-5-0 wage in lieu of a weeks notice. The board agreed that he be told that there was no wage due to him as he had been sacked by incompetence. William Watson of Rochdale was mentioned at this meeting and he eventually took the post as engineer at Wellhouse. This was confirmed at the meeting on 24th December 1924. Further, probably as a result of reports from Johnny Pickles when he was in charge of the mill, Stanley Fisher was running the engine. The Secretary, Edward Wood, who, as Proctor &Proctor’s man, was responsible for engineering matters reported in detail on the bad state of the engine at Wellhouse and it was resolved that the repairs pointed out by him be carried out including Metallic packings for the two low pressure cylinders. This is confirmed by an entry in the Universal Metallic Packings order book dated January 26th, 1925 for two new packings, Hp front, L hand and LP front R Hand. At the same time repairs were ordered to the existing US Metallic Packings on LP back R hand, LP back R hand, HP front R hand and HP front L hand. The order was placed by H Brown and Sons. Newton says that his dad told him they should have replaced the cylinders then because the port bars were broken out of the HP cylinder, in effect it was running single ported.]
So go on tell me what you did then.
R-We got it all stripped and ordered a new shaft from Webbs [at Bury]. But it were a long shaft were that, it were about 22 feet long. It was a heck of a length on that engine because it [the beds] were a long way apart. You know, a pair of tandems a long way apart and it weighed over four tons.
Tell me something about that job Newton, I’ve never seen it done and it’s something I’ve always wondered about. Now when you’re taking a shaft out like that, obviously what you’ve got in the middle is a flywheel that weighs anything from 30 to 40 tons or sommat like that.
R-Aye, it weighs about 35 tons.
Now, your crane will only take about seven tons and you’re using that anyway, so how, what do you do with the flywheel? Do you block it up?
R-Aye, we jack it up. Get boards off, it were a boarded wheel. Get two arms horizontal, get some good big girders across your engine beds and then jack it up. Just as it happened then we had two new hydraulic jacks but it didn’t matter, years back we’d have jacked it up with a pair of screw jacks. What we call lifting screws, we had these, me father made these screws during or after the 1914 war for lifting them flywheel shafts. We used to use them under the flywheel arms. You’d a big bar four inches square in the middle tapped for two and a half inch diameter, long threaded bolts and a plate at the bottom with two countersinks in, half moon countersinks. And you’d got these two great long screws about two feet six long with a square on the top and case hardened ends and we put them underneath and wind away at each side and you could lift a flywheel like that. We would put a bit? under each crank and you’d a bolt at each end and just jack it up. But of course when hydraulic jacks got popular we bought two fifty tonners and I lifted it under the arms with them with one at each side. One side at once. Don’t get me wrong, I’d a girder under one arm and then I put a girder under the other arm lower and another girder behind it and me two jacks under and the a girder across the top of the two jacks and both pumped together. Lift it up and then put wood blocks under. We’d some blocks made out of sleepers we had cut. [What Newton is saying is that one arm was jacked and then blocked up and operations shifted to the other arm until the wheel and shaft were high enough.] We took the shaft up about two feet six I should say before we could get the swell of the shaft through the pedestals. Then we took the window frame out. Rolls were at Wellhouse then of course and we didn’t bother about sheer legs or anything like that, we just got Rolls to come with their new Coles Crane. We stuck a girder out through the window about two feet, slid the shaft out and the Coles crane just picked it up and dropped it in our shop doorway. One crank on and one crank off and that’s how we put it back. He just picked it up for us and popped it half way through the window and we collected it on chain blocks inside and put it back together. Now there’s photographs somewhere of that being done. Biggest bugbear about a job like that is having all them cotton driving ropes hanging about, they were a nuisance.
What do you do with them, obviously you have to take them off the grooves.
R-You take ‘em all off and you tie ‘em in a bundle as well as you can at each side and then you put some blocks up on the engine house baulks and pull ‘em up out of the way. They’re a blinking nuisance.
Dirty and greasy…
R-And I were lucky there you know, that flywheel on that engine used to run about half an inch out of true. And me father says to me I don’t think we’ll have to put that flywheel back running half an inch out of true Newton, when tha puts it back on the new shaft. He says, See if tha can get it true when tha’rt staking it. So, I’d never staked one before that size, I’d staked plenty of big bevel wheels but I’d never staked a beggar that big. I put the new shaft in and I put staking wedges in and got me marking board and me pencil [The marking board was placed in front of the wheel as close as could be arranged, clamped in place and as the wheel was revolved the variation was marked on the board with a pencil and the staking wedges adjusted until the wheel ran true. The staking wedges were fitted each side of the actual stake beds in the gap created by the fact that the bore of the flywheel boss was at least an inch greater than the diameter of the shaft. These were a temporary fix and were removed once the wheel had been trued and the stakes fitted and given their first nip.] Me mates wound the wheel round with a pinch bar , it didn’t take much winding with being on new bearings and new shaft with no ropes on. They wound it round and we only went round twice and I said Right, it’ll do now. And it never wobbled any more. Me father walked in and he said How arta going on staking that wheel? I said It’s all done Johnny! He he he! He said It isn’t is it? I said Aye, do you want to check it? No, he said, I’ll not bother, but woe betide thee if it’s half an inch out of true!
Now then, tell me something, you’ve just skipped through something that’s always fascinated me. If anyone asks me I’ll profess to have great knowledge on the subject but I’ve never seen it done. Now tell me, just go quietly, well not quietly, you can’t! Just go through the operation of staking a flywheel and truing a wheel on its shaft.
R-Staking a flywheel on, Right. Well, you’ve got this flywheel hung up on two girders so you put your shaft through, right. Now, the bore of your flywheel is about two and a half inches bigger than the diameter of the middle of your shaft. You have ordinary forged wedges but not flat at both side, they’re flat at one side and curved on the other and you have about a dozen of them. Now what you do, you wind your shaft round until the keyways on your shaft line up with the keyways in your flywheel. You lift your shaft up with your blocks at each end and if you like you can measure it with your two foot and say, eh, it’s near enough now, it’s within a quarter of an inch of being in the middle and then you start putting these wedges in. Now you don’t put these wedges in the keyways you put them on the round part of the shaft in between the keyways. You stick one or two in one side and one or two in the other. I always said the less wedges and the easier the wheel is to set. So if you’ve ever done any turning in a lathe and you use a four jaw chuck it’s the same operation as that but your using a hand hammer and you’ve got a twenty foot flywheel! But you pop these wedges in and you keep tapping ‘em all up until you get all tight. You measure it with your rule and you say well, it’s not bad now, it’s within the thickness of line on your two foot of being central. So what you do then, you get two trestles or two oil drums, it doesn’t matter, you go round to the back side of the flywheel or the front side, it doesn’t matter. Get a nice clean white piece of floorboard and lay that across your supports right across the front of the flywheel and put some weights on each end. Then you say to your mates, Just wind it round until you’ve got a set of your wedges opposite the board. You say Right lads and mark your flywheel down each side with your rule and a sharp pencil and also across it’s face. Then you say to your mates Right, bar it round half a turn.
Whoa, sorry, when you say across its face..
R-I mean across its face.
So have you got the board down the side of the wheel or is there a cut…
R-No, no, no. You just put one board across the face, across the rim of the wheel, across its rope grooves, let’s put it like that.
Yes.
R-One board and you put your rule down the edges.
Yes, I’ve got that.
R-You put your rule down one edge and put a pencil line on [the board] then you put your rule down the other edge and put another pencil mark on. Then you put a straight edge across the rope face and mark a line straight across.
Aye, so you put a straight edge across and mark the line on the opposite side, at the back side of the straight edge.
R-And mark a line, back side across the rope grooves. Doesn’t matter where it is as long as you’ve got the distance of your straight edge.
So when you’ve done that, let’s get this straight while we’re doing it. When you’ve done that you’ve got your piece of clean white board there and you’ve got three pencil marks on it.
R-Three lines.
You’ve got two, one coming out from each side and one across the face.
R-One from each edge and one across the top. That’s right. Then you say to your mates, bar it round exactly half a turn. So they wind it round half a turn till them wedges that you’ve marked are at the other side. You just do the same thing again, put your straight edge across the face and look at your line. If you’re lucky, it’ll not be so far away. And your faces, you put your rule on again, it’ll have wobbled one way or the other, if you’re lucky it wont be so bad. I think in my case it was about half an inch out.
Yes.
R-So right, you write that on the edge of your board, half an inch. So, now then, you bar it a quarter of a turn now, so they bar it a quarter of a turn and you put your straight edge on again and it might be a quarter of an inch out there, so you wind it back to your first mark and because you know how much taper you have in your wedges {If you know the taper, you know how far too drive the wedges to obtain a certain movement of the wheel]. So you start knocking two out, measure how far you’ve knocked ‘em, your opposite hand wedges you know, you knock ‘em out and knock the opposite side in [this is centering the wheel on the shaft, not affecting the wobble.] If it wants twisting [to take out the wobble] you knock ‘em out at one side and in at the other and watch your marks with your rule on until you can see you’ve taken half the discrepancy out. Then you say Whoa lads, that’s half of it. If it’s half an inch you want to go to a quarter, right, that’s it, that’s half of it. Wind it round again and in three does I had it true. But it’s not an easy job, you can be lucky or you can be unlucky.
Yes. Now, a couple of little things here. When you say that if you’ve got a wedge in too far, obviously these wedges are actually holding all the weight. You’ve four wedges each side…
R-That’s it.
Now getting a wedge to come back a bit might not be just as easy as it sounds.
R-No, you’ve got to be very careful. Use a drift from the other side and you’ve a chap holding the drift on the wedge and another doing the striking and in my case, it were probably me watching it come out and I’d have me hand on it so’s I could tell them how far it had moved. I’d say, Whoa lads, it’s come a sixteenth, knock your other wedge in. Then we’d walk round to the board and have a look at the board. A sixteenth of an inch on the boss is a heck of a lot at twelve feet six radius on the rim. And you put your rule on and say that’s gone a whatever so we’ll try it again. And that’s how it’s done but you’ve got to be very, very careful that the wedges don’t come out. Course you know, when we’re talking about putting wedges in we aren’t talking about tapping them in with a hand hammer, we’re talking about putting them all in and tapping them with an ordinary seven pound hammer and then leathering ‘em in with a fourteen pounder until they’re as tight as your stakes are going to be. [The stakes are the finishing wedges that go into the keyways. They are keys but keys used to fasten wheels of any size are usually called stakes.] And then you have a flat drift to keep tapping them out. It doesn’t matter about the other end, you can hit that with the bare hammer head. But it’s a job you’ve to be very careful you don’t lose it.
Yes. Now, we’ve got to the stage where you’ve got your wheel straight and true and you’ve four staking wedges in at one side and four at the other.
R-Yes, that’s it.
Now then, what you’ve got to do now is…
R-Make four stakes to fit it. [Wellhouse wheel had four stakes, two from one side and two from the other]
Now hang on a minute. Do you make the keys before you’ve got it straight on the shaft or do you have to measure for the stakes once you have it straight?
R-No, you just measure it up [after truing] and start planing keys, we had the forgings made ready. We put four new keys in, we didn’t use the old ones. We couldn’t use the old ones anyway because I’d made it run true. We had ‘em all ready, rough planed and we just measured ‘em up and started planing. Now this case. I’ll just give you an instance here, the old way of doing the job is that once you have the wheel true they’d probably have the pattern maker on the job with a lump of hard wood and he’d make a wood key because wood’s easier to fit than steel. They’d take that wood key back to the shop and use it as a pattern to plane a new steel key. Now I’ve never used that method with any job I’ve done and me father said to me, Seeing as we’re on the doorstep and we have a pattern maker upstairs Newton, let him make you a wood key and let’s see how you go on with it. So Jack Wright, who were our pattern maker, came down and he made me this wood key and then we took it back into the shop. I think Crabby planed the key and we went right through with this here job and it did seem to be taking us a long time. Messing about with a wooden one and then going and having to plane a steel ‘un. Anyway, when we come back to the flywheel and we put the steel ‘un in it only went in about half way through. Oh, I says, This is no bloody good, it’s a good job we aren’t at Burnley! ‘Cause as a rule we could measure them and plane the buggers and they were through first time. If they were happen hard on at the head or hard on the point and we’d too much to file or scrape we’d nip back and take ten or fifteen thou off it. But you see you’ve got to understand this, me and me father had never been used to using a mic’. How we used to measure ‘em were with the inside mark at each end, head end and point end, and we’d just write this down and take it up to the planer and work to the outside mic’ and plane keys to the length of the flywheel boss. If it wanted to be say two and a half at that end and inch and a half at point end and length of the boss we’d put a mark where it went and where we wanted it to go to and more often than not, when we took the key back it’d go up to that mark. But you see what happened with wood keys, when you drove the wood key into the ruddy flywheel to fit it, it squashed it didn’t it. Well, when it came out it were bigger weren’t it. So it didn’t pay off didn’t the wood key job in my case. [one thing that Newton forgets to mention is that you get the correct taper off the old keys. If it’s a new wheel or boss you know the taper because you cut the keyway.]
Now then, let’s just get this other matter a bit straight and all then….
R-Do you want some sizes of these keys like, just to give people an idea of how big they were? Well, they were two foot three long and they were five and a half inches wide and I’m guessing a bit now but I think they were two inch thick at the point and about two and a half inches at the head. One man could just carry it.
Yes. And that wasn’t a big flywheel.
R-That wasn’t a really big flywheel, no.
Them at Bancroft ‘ud be a bit longer would they?
R-Well, I don’t know, no, it wouldn’t be much Stanley. I don’t think flywheel bosses varied a lot in the length through the boss only such as Pendle Street. I mean Pendle Street were six and a half inches wide and three inches through at the head.
Now, obviously, the four flats on the fly shaft itself were parallel.
R-Yes.
The top sides, the keyways cut in the boss would be tapered.
R-They were tapered, they were tapered.
Now where was the fit? Did they fit all round? How important was side fit?
R-Oh we never bothered about side fitting. Never, side fitting keys were never any good. We used to make ‘em size you know, size on size. If you could get a five or six thou feeler in you were all right, you didn’t want any keys tight sideways. You didn’t want any pressures on you when you belted them in, to have to overcome side fit, you wanted all your pressure to be on the top and bottom. And you know they only fit at each end of your boss, they’d have five or six inches of casting at each end of your flywheel boss and then the rest of it were hollow in the middle. You see they didn’t fit all the way through.
So the boss wasn’t solid.
R-No they were hollow.
Right, one more thing about that. I’ve heard you say that you sometimes got a wheel boss that were a bad casting, spongy metal, a spongy boss.
R-Aye, spongy boss. They could be a bit tricky they could. We used to plane the middle out of the keys and get pressure on each corner you know. [A three inch key would have an inch groove planed down the middle. Newton once told me that it was Crabby who taught him this trick.] If you got a very bad spongy boss, Long Ing were the worst flywheel I ever keyed on. It dropped in bits as we were fitting ‘em. Spongy at the ends of your keyway you know. If you got too much fit on your point it just pulled a lump of casting off with it when it came through. It were so bad were Long Ing. Otherwise, I didn’t have a right bad ‘un.
Now then, when you were fitting a key like that, did you blue it up when you put it in or did you just let it mark it?
R-No we used to tallow them a bit, belt ‘em in and let them mark ‘emselves.
Yes, That’s it, tallow, that’s what I was getting round to.
R-Aye, just so it didn’t pick.
Tallow’s still the finest thing for stopping ‘em picking up isn’t it.
R-Oh yes, finest thing out to stop ‘em picking up.
And by picking up we should point out that what we mean is ragging up.
R-Ragging up, it’d spoil your flats on your shaft if it got hold you know. It’d pick steel cause you’re fitting steel to steel on your shaft. Cast iron to steel [like the fit to the boss] is a good metal to rub together but steel and steel aren’t when they’re not hardened. And if you don’t give them a good tallowing underneath the base, when they got tight they’d pick up like mad and either rive a lump out of your key or weld it on to the shaft. You’ve got to be very careful about that.
Now then, we’ve got to the stage where we’ve got the keys. Would they be all the same size?
R-Not necessarily, no, they could vary by a quarter of an inch.
No. I was just wondering when you were talking about making a dummy key, a wood key, because….
R-Aye, they made a wood key for each hole, but we only tried it on one.
Right, now we’ve made four keys.
Yes.
Obviously two going in from one side and two from the other side.
R-Two going from the other side, yes.
Now obviously, its no good just knocking ‘em up with a seven pound hammer.
R-No.
How do you knock ‘em up?
Well, what you did you fit them for a start, you fit them with a fourteen pound hammer and you fit them tight. Now the first one you put in, with new stakes, you want to be careful with that, it’s funny, you grow to it and you use your own judgement, you just say Hold on a minute lads, it’s only on wedges at the other side we don’t want to move it out of true. Then you bar round half a turn, leave that one in and fit the other opposite to it. When you’d done that you were getting a flywheel that were pretty tight on its shaft. Then you fit the other two and you use your own judgement how tight you fit them and you mark them all, how far you fit to at the head end. Then, when it comes to the final check up, when you’d got all four in, you knocked your staking wedges out. Me mate, Crabby more often than not, he could use a striking hammer, he’d turn round and say Have we to knock ‘em up now Newton? I’d say, Aye, go on then Harry. He’d say How much have we to put ‘em in Newton? Well, I’d say, let’s put them all in a quarter of an inch for a start. And you measured them as you drove them in and that kept your wheel true because you can understand, if you happen to put one to the top and drive that in about half an inch and then only get a sixteenth on the opposite one you were going to get that wheel out of true again. You’d got to be very careful how you tightened ‘em. You’d to keep ‘em all level which weren’t always possible. You might get all four in a quarter. Then you’d go round again and you might say you might get all of them in a quarter again, you wouldn’t, you’d get one in a quarter and the other an eighth. But by that time you were past getting your flywheel out of true because all you were doing was stretching the metal, that’s all.
Yes, I see what you mean.
R-You were only stretching metal. You weren’t moving that wheel in any shape or form. You were just putting tension into the boss under them steel hoops.
Yes, now wait a minute, steel hoops? A cast iron boss on a flywheel, was it hooped?
R-Cast iron, they had hoops round, they were nearly all hooped. Just odd ones that weren’t hooped. Now then, Albion at Earby, that weren’t hooped. But I noticed at Harle Syke while I was there, that had been hooped. Aye, you’d to be careful when you tightened that flywheel at Earby, me father used to tell me Tha’ll split that wheel! It had no hoops on. I had a Musgrave at Plumb Street, that weren’t hooped, I keyed that on twice. Because you daren’t tighten them and that had six keys in and you daren’t tighten ‘em when they weren’t hooped. Talking about hoops you know, two inch thick and six inches broad, six inches deep, steel hoops shrunk on. Well, you had no need to be frightened of tightening them with them sort of hoops on.
What weight of hammer were you using, fourteen pound?
R-Well, after we’d finished [the initial tightening] we went to twenty eight.
A twenty eight pound hammer.
R-Aye, we’d a twenty eight pound hammer and four hits apiece were enough with that, aye.
Aye, that were it.
R-Crabby could use it. We tried, in the old days we used to tighten ‘em with a tup. Swinging on a pair of blocks or a rope block. They couldn’t tighten ‘em with a tup like we could with that hammer. And a tup ‘ud weigh anything up to half a ton. But they couldn’t tighten ‘em like we could with a hammer.
When you were tightening those keys, when you were striking them to tighten ‘em did you strike the key or use a dolly?
R-Oh we used a dolly to finish ‘em because we’d filed the heads up then. When we were fitting we used to strike the key and knock it out with a drift you know. But to knock it in we used to fit them by striking the key. I allus made them three inches too long which gives you a better chance, you can get ‘em a lot tighter and get a better fit because you weren’t messing about wi’ drifts jumping off. But when we finally fitted ‘em we drift tightened ‘em. It were a reight short stubby piece of about four inch diameter stuff that the blacksmith had made to suit your key. It had a wire handle on or a clip round it and two blokes holding it, one at each side. There’s part about yet[at the shop] unless we’ve thrown ‘em all away.
You’d use fairly soft iron for the dollies or did you use….
R-No, forge ‘em out of ordinary mild steel. Harold, blacksmith ‘ud forge ‘em for us. I allus used to make a drift to suit me key when I’d finished.
When you say to suit your key…
R-Size, same thickness of head and the same width and then there were, it never dug in nor made burrs on it ‘cause there’s nothing looks worse than the head of a key all thumped and brayed.
No. you’re right, you’re right.
R-‘Cause we used to finish ‘em off you know and put a half inch bevel on ‘em all the way round and then file ‘em up before we put ‘em in or else we were in trouble. If they didn’t shine when we put ‘em all in we were in bother aye. Old Johnny ‘ud say , Tha’s not polished the end of that key before you belted it in! Aye, even yet we’ll do it, file four bevels on and file th’end of the key up even on small stuff. It’s how we’ve been brought up isn’t it?
Aye.
R-Aye, or it happened we had an accident you know, and you missed , striker missed or something like that and caught a corner. It all had to be chipped and filed up again, would that while it were in, make it look respectable, he he! Or else you were in real bother, we were that aye. You know when you’ve been keying these flywheels on and you’ve been out of bed a couple of bloody days, you know what , t’bloody striking hammer did get heavy Stanley when you picked the bugger up. When you were giving it the final do, aye it did an’ all. It were no toy of a job weren’t keying flywheels on. Even t’lads today’ll say, Haven’t we a flywheel to key on? ‘Cause if we have tha’ll go to it yer bloody self! He he he! They were all sick of flywheels when the end of the engines came, they were an’ all. Last flywheel we keyed on were a big Pollitt at Greetland at t’side of Halifax. It were a big engine, it were a double wheel, it had eight keys in. What I mean by a double wheel , it were two wheels keyed on to one shaft running rim to rim. They allus had trouble wi’ it and I told the boss you always will have trouble with it I said My lads, when they key this wheel on I’m going to part it half an inch. Eh he said, t’belt’ll go down! I said It can please itself but I’m going to part it. That’s what brings it loose them rubbing together. If you’ve two wheels running together and one is dead true and the other isn’t reight true it’s like you putting up a pair of shed drums. If you put shed drums together, the little shed drums that drive the looms, you shove the buggers up together and they’ll be loose in a day, wi’t spring o’t shaft.
Aye.
R-Working big keys loose.
Aye.
R-And that, I believe that engine at Greetland had had that flywheel keyed on umpteen times. So what we did, we parted ‘em, only half an inch or so, three eighths I think. There were no more bother with it up to it being scrapped, aye. We had another at Finsley Gate but that were a second motion job. Trouble, trouble, trouble, allus loose. I believe Burnley Ironworks lived on the doorstep, keying the second motion pulleys on. After Burnley Ironworks finished I started going to all them engines at Finsley Gate, big Musgrave verticals, spinning mill jobs, two four foot belts on’t flywheel. Rung me up, second motion pulley’s loose, could you come and key it on please. It didn’t come loose any more, same trouble, rim to rim. They said, Oh, you can’t leave a gap in it like that, the ruddy belt’ll go down! I said Don’t be bloody stupid, belts an inch and a quarter thick, it’s only half an inch gap. He he!
{Laughter from Stanley] When you say it was, how wide did you say the belt were?
R-Four foot, and two on ‘em on.
What were it made of?
R-Leather.
Is that reight?
R-Aye, course it were, they were leather ‘uns.
Copper riveted.
R-Copper riveted together. Like boss said when he saw the new belt laid on the floor, he said, Hey, what’s all them pieces in that belt at this sort of money? And th’engineer just turned round and said, Well, hast’a ever seen a bloody cow so long?
{Tape ends with Stanley and Newton laughing.]
SCG/17 November 2000
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