Mechanical Engineering Craft Practise historical apprenticeship UK

[Blankton]

Hi, I hope this post is allowed. It is a bit random. I am an engineer, but this isn't my area of expertise!

Probably due to spending too much time in decomposing factories, I have a bit of an interest in old bits of industrial stuff. I recently found what I believe to be an old apprentice training school piece. It was in an open air junkyard in Norfolk (UK), so I had to save it from rotting away in the rain.

As far as I can tell it would have been mounted on the wall in either a college, or maybe the apprentice shop in a big engineering firm. It seems to show examples that the students would have to make. The title of the board is "Mechanical engineering Craft Practise". I can find a book with this name from the 1960's. Would there have been an apprenticeship scheme built around this book? I entered Industry in the 2000's, everything was HND's and HNC's farmed out to the local college to teach. I didn't know if some of the more senior members on here might have some recollection.

The second clue is that a couple of items have a persons name (I assume the person that made the pieces) and "C.ILW" (I think, it could be C.IIW)stamped on them. I thought this might be the name of the institution that made them.

It is all housed in an oak case. I'm not really sure what to do with it. I have just opened it and vacuumed out some dust. Some of the labels have come loose, which I will re-glue. There is some surface rust on some of the pieces, I'm not sure whether to polish these up and apply some clear laquour or leave as is....

Sorry for the long post. Here are some pictures. It would be great to hear of anyone who has memories of one of these, or similar.

This one is my favourite - would they have had to do this with a file?

 

[CWB1]

Cool find. I collect various trades' texts as reference and have studied American industry being on this side of the pond, unfortunately I'm woefully ignorant of industrial history on your side. If nobody here can assist then I would recommend posting this on the practicalmachinist forum in their antiques forum as its probably the largest forum for professional machinists/fitters/etc and has many UK members who could likely point you toward the school and any associated texts. It does appear that you are correct, these appear to be various parts that students would have to make in trade school. Your favorite, the "exercise in dividing" wouldn't likely have been made with a file but rather an indexer or "dividing head" on a milling machine, the indexer or dividing head providing precise rotational control of the part while cutting. YouTube has many videos on dividing head usage if youre curious to learn more.

Personally I would recommend lightly touching up any rust spots with WD40 and Scotchbrite, steel wool, or very fine emery cloth if necessary then clearcoating. Its an interesting display worthy of much more than the scrap heap, if you don't care to I'm sure somebody would love to display it including industrial museums. Just a forewarning however - its like many antiques in that its old but doesn't really have monetary value.

 

[Blankton]

Thanks for the reply. Oil and scotchbrite sounds good.

 

[ewh]

Cool find!
forum769 would be a good place for this thread.

"Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."
-Dalai Lama XIV

 

[chicopee]

The Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, USA could be interested. Give'em a call. It is unfortunate that most trade schools in the US were disbanded but here in Chicopee,Mass there is one called Chicopee Comp

 

[Jboggs]

I really enjoyed seeing this! Thank you for posting.

It is so easy in our day of CAD, CNC, internet, and smart phones to get any understanding of how truly difficult it was for our fathers to do what they did. I am absolutely blown away every time I get into the details of how they did anything! Take that piece labeled "EXERCISE IN DIVIDING". Each segment has a different number of surfaces. My guess is that the student was taught how to use a manual divider (look it up) to achieve the precise angles for each plane surface.

Students (and most teachers!) today don't even know what a slide rule is, or how it was used. So much history and knowledge is just lost.

 

[Hoxton]

Back to the old days. I have not seen one like that. I was a student apprentice in a large electrical machine factory in the UK in the late 60's (Brush Loughborough). As such I had a three month rush through the craft apprentice school. The Craft shop had pieces on display similar to what you show, but on shelves not in a frame.

I bet yours had a similar ancestry, pity that the actual factory is not identified. I was doing HND Electrical, I think that the Craft Apprentices (2 year course 16 - 18 years old?) were on 'City & Guilds' courses. City and guilds still exists as an instruction of training. Google it.

Even in those days, we had 'fitters' who literally used files and scrapers to get components to fit together properly. Modern machining techniques have probably got rid of most of the fitters.

Finding where it came from may not be easy. Why not ask a local newspaper for help, some old timer may just remember it! Plenty of agricultural machinery manufacturers were in Norfolk, including Laurence Scott & Eletromotors (LSE) on the electrical side. Perkins at Peterborough not too far away.

Well done in saving this. Why not see if a local museum would be interested?

 

[Blankton]

I'm glad everyone has enjoyed it.

Hoxton- you must be fairly local to me. I am familiar with Brush, as I live in Leicester and pass it if I go through Loughborough on the train. I believe that there is still some work going on there, but I think a lot of the engineering has been sent out to Eastern Europe, from what I read in the local paper. Unfortunately its one of the places locally that I've never managed to get my foot in the door for a tour. I'd love to have a look around, if not just for the sign:

I also used to work at another place you mention - Perkins Engines. I have some retired colleagues who went through their apprentice shop, I might send them a picture. When I was there I think the hands-on apprentice stuff was outsourced to a local college, although I do remember them being tasked with refurbishing a 1960's Massey tractors that the groundskeepers used for maintaining the grounds.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Any of you Brits in the Peterborough area? Anyone heard of Baker Perkins Ltd?

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[Blankton]

I have heard of them - but only because I used to work for Perkins Engine Co Ltd (who manufacture Diesel engines) in the same relatively small city of Peterborough and people used to get us confused! I assumed that there must have been some historical connection between the two, but as far as I can find out there wasn't.

 

[JohnRBaker]

There's no connection between the two Perkins. The Perkins of Baker Perkins was actually an American who immigrated to the UK in the early 19th century. He was trained as an engraver but also dabbled in the use of steam in unusual applications, like his work on a steam powered gun intended to destroy fixed fortifications. It was his son who founded the company which eventually became Baker Perkins Ltd. The company grew by making acquisitions as well as being acquired themselves, and over the years had many different names, the last being APV. However, APV eventually sold off most of the different divisions including the food machinery division in 2006, which reestablished themselves as Baker Perkins.

Note that I worked for the company from 1966 to 1980 at their Saginaw, Michigan division while it was known at Baker Perkins Inc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Baker Perkins Ltd, which was headquartered in Westwood, Peterborough. We designed and manufactured large capital machinery for the food and chemical processing industries. I was a design engineer working in the food group designing machinery for what we called the 'pan-bread' industry. In other words, the bread you buy in a grocery store or the buns on the burgers you eat at fast-food places like McDonald's. A couple of years after I left, they moved the Saginaw operation to North Carolina (that way they could get rid of the union since North Carolina was a 'right-to-work-for-less' state). They eventually moved most of their machine-shop operation back to Michigan, this time to Grand Rapids, since they just couldn't find enough employees with the skill levels needed to operate precision machinery in North Carolina (gee, I wonder how that happened).

Anyway, what counts is that 30 some years later, I stared to receive a pension covering my 14 years of service, but the checks comes from APV, the company that ended-up with the pension assets from the old American operation. In fact, I get three defined-benefit pensions, all of them from companies that I never actually worked for. In addition to my rather minor BP pension from APV, I get substantially larger pensions from Boeing, for my 11 years of work with McDonnell Douglas, and HP, for my 11 years with EDS. The last company I worked for, 14 years at Siemens, did not have a pensions program for its American employees, but they did have a 401k, with a fairly substantial match, so it all worked out in the end (I retired in 2016).

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without