Thursday, 18 June 2009 - 12:47

Metal bashing

It seems metal has taken a bashing in the Midlands. For the last twenty years there has been a steady decline in the traditional heavy 'metal bashing' industries in this part of the UK.

I was at Marshalls Pressings where 80 years old Connie Marshall runs the show. Mind you, she is a spring chicken compared to the 150-year-old Taylor and Challen press in the background on my photo of her. It made a wonderful clacking rhythmic noise, which combined with all the other presses sounded almost like the background beat for a piece of music.
In the true spirit of muti-media, click on the button below to hear the press working away,(thanks to my friend Armando for explaining how to do that!)
The enormous spanner seen on one of my photos was used to adjust the old press-heavy metal!

Lets hope Connie's factory keeps going for a lot longer. While I was there they were turning out hundreds of pans for baking pork pies. The scrap offcuts of steel filled several bins and were carted off for melting down at a nearby foundry.

Press -

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2 Comments:

At 19 June 2009 10:30 ,  Bob Caddick said...

This reminds me of whe I was ina school play in Wolverhampton -at waht was then The Technical High School where the plan was to turn out engineers for the future Brave New World of manufacturing... in a great act of subversion, the English and Drama departments (of which I was a BIG fan, not being overly fond of sticking my hands into Swarfega every night) put on a performance called simply, Clickety Clack. the action took place in a pressings factory (one of the twon's staple industries) and featured a young press operator who was slowly being driven mad bu the sound of the press going clickety clack all day long - I played the ghost of worker past, who spent eternity hearing the noise.... "you must come back to clickety clack" was the key line repeated often...
The engieneering dept didn't get the message and wondered what type of press we were referring to!!!
Bob Caddick

 

At 19 June 2009 10:35 ,  JR said...

Hehe-sounds like a Taylor and Challen one to me :-)

 

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