Amazing skill, it said….

Thick and Useless Iron, it said….

Iron is not noted for being bright, but actually the screw material looked quite decent steel, while the cast-iron for the nut appeared of the aerated grade to reduce weight.

I thought my workshop was untidy and material stocks of the come-in-handy variety!

Note the lack of trip-hazards so as not to catch the safety-sandal shod workmen, the air-cooling system for the motor and belts driving the planing-machine, and the type-approved V-profile lifting-sling. At one point we see a man using an off-hand grinder in the background – I think he was wearing contact safety-glasses.

Also the little chuck-clearance rebates carefully machined in the lathe’s tool-post.

The chap in the brown robe a seemed the more patient and skilled of the two, but had he not heard of using a saw to cut that last bit of the “parting off”?

.

To be fair to them, they were doing their best with ancient machines quite likely knackered before they arrived there, very pre-loved materials Grade ‘Enniold’, and in very poor working conditions in a ruinous building (does it have a roof? – and I have seen worse cruelty to a lathe.

In this country.

One Dean, Smith & Grace lathe of similar size to that, alongside a Bridgeport turret-mill, static at the time but obviously both used for machining architectural components in….

…… sandstone.