A nicely done film that allows appreciation of the complexity of some of the casting, machining, and assembly operations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRsYIiUxZeQ

PC

I marvel at the lack of eye protection and hearing protection in the foundry. Wonder how many of these guys ended up blind and deaf?

Hearing loss was very common, to the point that deaf workers were valued in some foundries as better able to stand the noise, and their local pubs took drinks orders in sign language.

I recognise the test track at the beginning of the film, which was at Crewe, marked by the stone walls on the right. After Crewe closed a friend of mine persuaded the council to give the track away to a heritage railway and I led the crew who lifted it.

Tim

I marvel at the lack of gloves when working with hot metal. It seems the British have never developed the habit of wearing work gloves. I have a number of DVD's from the late Fred Dibnah, the spokesman for British industrial prevervation (search Fred Dibnah on YouTube). In them, he virtually never wears gloves, and lays his hands on surfaces I would never dream of touching bare handed. Others that he interviews in his videos doing forge work, foundry work, and firing hard working boilers are almost never wearing gloves.

Australian engine crews don't use them either - they grab a rag, wrap it around the hot metal they need to operate, and use that for insulation. Learning to fire with a loose rag on the scoop handle was a bit challenging at first, you just had to grip a bit harder on the throw........ or on the stopping the throw, actually. The thought was the ability to quickly drop the fabric from your hand was a safety feature, since if your glove caught fire it would take longer to remove. How many of us have suffered glove fires recently?

Many blacksmiths prefer to work with bare hands because they feel gloves reduce their manual dexterity and so may actually be less safe overall despite protecting the hands from burns. Having puttered at my own backyard forge both with gloves and without, I can definitely see the merit in this argument.

That said, Fred Dibnah was amazing, both in his skills as a steam mechanic and machinist, and in his unlikely talent as an advocate for Britain's industrial heritage. I never tire of watching him, and enthusiastically second the recommendation to search for his name on YouTube.

-Philip Marshall

If you touch or pick up something hot, you can get away from it. A big chunk of scale in your eyeball is a different matter. I see lots of WWII photos of gals running turret lathes and milling machines and grinders with no eye protection.
You only have two of them and they are damned important.