Hand driven blower, that brings back another memory. Alldays made a range of these for 'Field Forges', the army used loads of these. They had a gearbox on it and one of my first jobs was drilling various holes including tapping some blind holes. I was put to work doing this on a pillar drill fitted with a reversing attachment. Unfortunately the drill speed was that fast that the tap bottomed out before I could blink, talk about sweating blood. The machine shop foreman came up and told me 'Don't be afraid of your machine son' ushered me to one side to show me how it was done and promptly did the same. 'Carry on' he said walking away and puffing on his pipe.

Some of you will be aware of Alldays cars and motor bikes. An old fella there had a load of envelopes on top of his cupboard ( in my innocence I was not aware of the phrase 'plain brown envelopes&#39 plucking up courage i asked what they were and he showed me loads of photographs of cars, bikes, vans hot pie trikes. I regret not having the cheek to ask him if i could have some.

Another old fella (youngsters were in their 60's, old fellas in their 80's) in the fabrication shop came to work on an Alldays push bike, about 50 years old, it had an enclosed oil bath chain which had never been removed, the rusty spokes finally gave up the ghost one day. I think he retired after that

Bill D.

That's brilliant, thanks Richard. I may have even made some of the bits on those hammers if they were circa late fifties.

The castings were machined on horizontal borers, the machinist Joe looked like a chimney sweep after raking out the swarf which of course was cast iron.

The anvil blocks on the largest hammers weighed about 10 tons and I had the job one day of 'slinging' it on the crane. The crane driver a welsh man Glyn, was a tease and poised the hook just high enough for a strong man to lift the chain but not me, a 7 stone dripping wet 'man'.

This was the first time i pinched a finger in a large chain link and I can tell you it hurts!

H&S would have a blue fit these days of course.

Bill D.

Just caught up on last weeks country file on the beeb. There was a young (20's ?) woman featured that was a blacksmith, not your farrier type as far as I could see, an ornamental blacksmith I suppose. What caught my eye was her using a pneumatic hammer together with all the other blacksmith aids to produce some wonderful iron art creations. Worth a look on catch up.

Bill D.