wood goes to war

[t8hants]

Thought someone might like this

http://ssa.nls.uk/film.cfm?fid=1509&search_term=world war&search_join_type=AND&search_fuzzy=yes

Gareth

 

[bugbear]

I have a rather odd book about Morris - there's a nice anecdote about a senior (and rather old fashioned) machinist carefully and slowly explaining how to set up a planer to a young girl they'd taken on.

It turned out she had come from operating machines for Rolls Royce...

BugBear

 

[AndyT]

Fascinating find that - not the sort of thing I have ever seen documented before. Presumably, for the furniture factory, a rifle stock was just a rather complicated table leg, and they were making it with their existing machinery. If that's so, it's interesting to see how many separate little operations are needed, and consequently how specialised some of the machinery seems to be. I could spot Condesteeso's old mortiser, just before the row of Wadkin overhead routers, but many of the machines were much harder to understand.

Thanks for sharing it.

 

[bugbear]

Fascinating find that - not the sort of thing I have ever seen documented before. Presumably, for the furniture factory, a rifle stock was just a rather complicated table leg, and they were making it with their existing machinery. If that's so, it's interesting to see how many separate little operations are needed, and consequently how specialised some of the machinery seems to be. I could spot Condesteeso's old mortiser, just before the row of Wadkin overhead routers, but many of the machines were much harder to understand.

Thanks for sharing it.

I can't remember the exact quote, but essentially Goering was "most put out" by lots of piano and furniture factories using existing tooling and skills to fabricate curved plywood panels for mosquitos.

Edit: found it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilla ... s_comments

On complexity, factory machines have always been much bigger and more complex than "one man shop" machines. Even Ellis in 1900 lists multi cutter head moulders.

BugBear

 

[jimi43]

I also spotted some recently reviewed vintage machinery at work there...for instance the Wadkin radial arm saw that was discovered at Minster and now rests with Richard in Lincolnshire....was there at the beginning cutting the stock blanks from the kiln dried wood.

It says at the beginning that they made machinery specifically for the work...the stock shaper for instance has a lock and locate mechanism at the back designed specifically to fit the end of the stock to allow the front end to be shaped.

I loved also the teamwork involved in the simple efficiency location project for the factory using the tapes. Work like this relying on the ingenuity of the human minds working together gave work satisfaction which no longer exists as we rely on computers to work this out. Yes they are better...but the operators don't have anywhere near as much fun!

Beautiful archive...and yet another example of the power of the Internet to distribute and educate a wider modern audience in the genius brought about by aversion.

Jim

 

[Henning]

An absolutely fantastic film!

Thanks for sharing. Oh, to be working in something like that at that time. Imagine the possibilities with a separate metal shop and a fully outfitted woodworking shop :shock:

 

[wallace]

I loved seeing all the wadkin stuff, that line of over head routers :shock: Most of the work looks so tedious, I wander how many accidents there were due to lapses of concentration. I also wander how many got lung disease.

 

[Halo Jones]

If only we had any piano factories left, or even any kind of manufacturing industry :?

 

[Tony Spear]

Bentley Pianos, who were at Woodchester Mill, just outside Stroud in Gloucestershire made parts for the Gloster Meteor, the first jet fighter to actually go into service.

 

[condeesteso]

Excellent - the chain morticer in particular (to me anyway). Now, where did they get all that walnut (I assume)??
Yes BB, I saw that too, Goering really peed off that we had 'furniture and piano factories' making a plane way faster than anything they had. Nowt wrong with balsa, birch and dope. And some truly intuitive engineering thrown in of course.