by Euan Dunsmore
As a pupil of Bathgate Academy, I was well aware of the North British Steel Foundry (N.B.S.F.) across the town and close to Paulville and the town cemetery. I had heard of Menzies’s from talk in the town but knew not where it was!
A long time ago in the depths of the fifties I started in the N.B.S.F. as an apprentice metallurgist. The early months were in the sand laboratory but I progressed through the various stages to being a qualified metallurgist with a brand new Higher National Certificate. This story is not about me. As metallurgists, the complete manufacturing of the castings was the end game and saw us in all the stages from order entry to dispatch and giving me a real understanding of how to make things. This article will take you through Menzies’s touching all the processes with my little vignettes of my experiences.
Names of the folk I worked with are given. Any errors are those of my memory. It could be said I grew up in Menzies’s and certainly I learned so much that became useful in later life, and so much from these men and women.
Apprenticeships were on offer in many industries and the foundry was no different. It has to be said that in many cases at the end of the time the newly qualified man would be paid off.
The company was owned by the Menzies brothers who also owned Bonnington Castings in Leith as well as another company that imported and sold Wyoming bentonite clay, an essential addition to moulding sands. MacBeth Menzies was very much hands on and would be seen almost daily. His brother George ran Bonnington Castings. The third brother was a director and had served in the war. The continuing improvements in machinery and ideas kept the business to the fore in foundry circles.
What did we make? Our client list covered marine engineering, earth moving equipment, general engineering, mining, valve manufacturers, boiler makers, etc, etc. In my time I crawled all over large rope guides for the Forth Road Bridge, tested piston heads and cylinder covers for large marine diesel engines, and radiographed high pressure safety valves for electricity power stations. We had the capacity to meet orders from the smallest to the largest, from diesel engine flywheels and earth-moving axles by the hundreds to single wheels up to 15 feet in diameter. Our steel specifications ranged from very low carbon steel for large industrial magnets to 18/8 stainless steel grades.*
How did we make them? From order entry to delivery took the work of many trades within the following departments:
Drawing Office
Pattern Shop
Moulding Shops
Dressing Shops
Heat Treatment
Machine Shops
The Planning Department with the assistance of department managers ensured the process for each casting was planned and integrated with the others through the works.
The work could not be performed without the support of other vital trades each with their own bases:
Inspection
Electrical
Fitting
Blacksmith
Joinery
Metallurgical Laboratory
Then there were the labourers and cranemen as well as the few individuals performing unseen but nevertheless vital work. We had a greaser pushing his little trolley of oils and greases as he serviced machines of all sorts scattered round the plant. We had a nurse in her little surgery looking after us and treating the plethora of cuts and bruises and removing sand and grit from eyes. Two ladies were busy looking after the breathing masks with which all workers were issued – foundries are very dusty places to be working in.
It all begins with a drawing from the customer, usually showing the desired result suitable for their end use. From this a drawing is made resulting in the casting suitable for machining to their required dimensions. These casting drawings are needed because of restrictions in the process. Some sections may restrict the flow of liquid steel into other parts, sharp corners are not easy to create in the mould, shrinkage from liquid to solid, and from metal-solidifing temperatures around 1500 oC to room temperature is complex to manage in a part with variable section thicknesses. A sand core might be needed for hollow castings such as valve bodies and needing special arrangements in the moulding.
The drawings are passed to the pattern shop where these most excellent of tradesmen make patterns, often in two or more sections as well as for the cores needed to create the inside of hollow castings.
The foundry lay east of the Edinburgh to Glasgow railway and north of the Bog Burn. It had a line into the railway system running into the loading bay that had essentially split the original plant into two with access across a little bridge but with later additions at the south end and expanded across the bay.
The visitor would first be welcomed by the gateman in his little office and be directed to the main office that stood apart from the main complex. Here was where the clerks and finance folk worked. The reception area was decorated with a huge coloured photograph of Jimmy Ramsay in the middle of a blow-down on one of the electric arc furnaces. Huge billowing flames and a lot of orange-flaming heat enveloping him as he stands leaning into the boiling steel and slag with his oxygen lance burning out the carbon from the steel. It was here quotes and orders were processed.
To the north were two buildings, a large store, and the bomb building. The foundry had produced a lot of bombs during the war and a small shop had been constructed for machining and finishing before being sent off. An example stood in the Steelyard for many years. The last of the bombs had been supplied in the months prior to my start. My boss Willie Ritchie was invited to a demonstration down at the test site at Bovington in Dorset. It was shot from a gun several miles from the target. When he and the team arrived at the target, a huge berm set back from the cliffs, there were several of the range personnel peering out to sea. It had passed through the berm and made its way out into the channel. It was hoped it missed anything. Was it a success? Opinions were divided.
There was another building, a store or something as well the billet for the two cheery ladies who cleaned and refreshed and issued the anti-dust masks; each worker had two masks. Foundry workers are exposed to sand and dust leading to silicosis, a slow death as the lungs stop working. Melting shop personnel were also exposed to asbestos. The masks perform an essential job although on some cases the masks were hung round the neck rather than across the face. Understandably sometimes in the extreme heat. Most folk did don them when dust was created.
One of the ladies was proud to tell me of her work as a welder during the war making the floating piers for the Normandy landings.
We humans have been making castings since we found out how to melt metals. The major part of King Tut’s golden mask was cast. My wife and I have seen the evidence of the sand mould to be seen in the inside of the mask.
Walking down the loading bay the first shop on the right was the three-bay machine shop. There was a selection of vertical borers, lathes, planes, mills, and drills as well as a couple of gear cutters. All machining was controlled by the machinist. There were no computer or other automatic systems available and as the black casting could be rather rough and out of roundness the first cuts needed the skill and care of the machinist to avoid tool breakage.
There was a line of ancient belt-driven lathes. Apprentices were engaged in this line of machines. They were engaged in the machining of diesel-engine flywheels made on the jolt/squeeze moulding machines. The machine shops were supported by the tool room issuing tool sets and sharpening tool tips. This was in the days before carbide inserts.
The machine shop was supported by a staff of inspectors who checked dimensions and geometry of finished items against the drawings issued by the drawing office. George (Doddie) Trainer was in charge.
The tensile strength, hardness and impact test machines were in a booth at one end of the shop, a place where we metallurgists were in charge. Test pieces were machined in the tool room. Alex McCrindle was engaged as the sample-passer taking test pieces from the raw castings ensuring traceability from the cast-heats through to the final testing.
Care was needed to walk through the machine shops as long curls of turnings spilled off the machines, few chip breakers in these days of hand-sharpened tools. Kenny Mathieson, a fellow metallurgist from Whitburn, was fortunate as a turning from the large vertical borer coiled round his ankle as we were on our way to breaking some test specimens and I helped him limp to the nurse where we were told he had avoided his tendon being severed. One machinist, Mr. Love, lost an eye in the time I worked with Menzies. Safety glasses were a thing of the future.
Next in line was the heavy or dry-sand moulding shop complete with sand mill. All sorts of castings were produced here. Moulders were sturdy folk. They shovelled a lot of sand into the moulding box before ramming it firm around the pattern with pneumatic rammers. Eventually a modern sand-slinger machine took a lot of the hard work away from the men. It ran on rails the length of the shop making life easier for the moulders. Much of the real skills came in the finishing of the mould with the various sleeks and trowels followed by the ceramic wash to prevent liquid steel burning onto the sand. I became quite friendly with some of the moulders and particularly with Joe Logan. I came to know his family as my wife was friendly with Grace, wife of Joe junior. Both his other sons became well known, one as a chemist who developed that well-known kitchen detergent BYPROX. The other became a Bishop in the Church of Rome. Joe senior introduced me into the role of removing sand from eyes, a most useful skill.
Supporting the moulders was the pan-mill mixing the various sands needed. Each batch taken to ready-use bins scattered round the moulding shops. As part of the modernisation the original was replaced and with a system of conveyor belts taking sand to appropriate bins. As well as Belgium Red landed at Bo’ness, or Levenseat from Forth, much of the sand was renewed. After the mould has cooled down the casting has to be freed from the box of sand and before a new shaker system was introduced it was the task of labourers to break into the box with mauls. For large castings this could take anywhere up to 30 minutes for two or three men hammering the striking plates before with a thump the whole lot released. The shakers dumped the sand into a belt conveyor system removing much of the back-breaking work of mauls and then shovelling hot sand into skips.
Greensand moulding used similar sand but the moulds were not dried out in the large low-temperature stove but cast as soon as possible. Again, much work was hand-moulded but there were jolt/squeeze machines with semi-skilled rather than time-served men to operate. The boy’s work was greensand moulding and thousands of hutch wheels and diesel flywheels were made in my seven years of service.
Eighteen months or so after some experience in the chemical laboratory under the eyes of Dan McPhail and Eddie Adair, the melting shop manager, I was considered capable of looking after the shop on my own. This meant nightshifts which I shared with Ken Mathieson and Jimmy Cochrane and, on occasion, Ken Sharp. Three girls conducted most of the analysis of the steels both from ladle samples and those from the furnaces during the day shifts. Samples were sent from the melting shop via a Lamson vacuum system and processed in less than 10 minutes for the three most important elements – carbon, manganese and phosphorus.
When I began my career the melting shop was in the throes of change. I did manage to witness the last days of the Tropenas side-blown converter method of making steel from pig-iron melted in the hot blast cupola. The two electric-arc furnaces now melted down scrap steel and processed it into a series of specifications. This is where a drama is played out. Most of the foundry workshops are noisy from overhead cranes whining along the rails, pneumatic tools pop-popping all day long but the noise of an arc furnace settling down to the task of melting down a mixed charge of scrap steel is quite the full orchestra of noises. All accompanied with a vision of dancing electrodes and swaying cables and beams of sunlight from the arc and sudden pulses of torrid heat when the door is opened. The arc hits a piece of sandy steel and the fiends of hell screech before setting down to a loud grumble. The meters swing around 110 volts and anything up to 20,000 amps in the first stage. Once of an early evening, when busy, in summer with the Glasgow fair too soon for street lights, both furnaces hit a sore spot at the same time and full power came on for a minute or so. I had a phone-call soon after from the power station close to Alloa. The spike of the power had caused a bit of a stushie with their automatic systems attempting to bring on an extra generator! Sometime later I heard that the substation at Paulville was being used to trial anti-surge gear. When all is melted there is a contented grumble as lime is added to give a proper slag until the appropriate temperature around 1600oC is reached when the next act in the drama is played out: blow-down.
Carbon is arguably the most important alloying element in steel and is controlled to tight limits in all specifications. Although bought-in scrap is checked and the foundry-generated scrap is known it is preferred that the steel is brought to a low carbon content and to do this the bath of liquid is subjected to pure oxygen blown deep into the bath via a long lance. In the N.B.S.F. this was done manually by the leading hands; Stan Kazakniki and Jimmy Ramsay. They stand a few feet from the open door draped with a leather apron from neck to ankles, helmet with leather collar to the shoulders and leather and asbestos gloves to the oxters and a pair of deep purple eye shields within a large face mask. The lance is fed with oxygen through a connection next to the control panel. With a nod to the second hand, David Hare or Jack Smith, oxygen is fed through the lance and an envelope of a big blousy flame engulfs the open door and through every loose opening between the roof and furnace body. Carbon is being turned into carbon dioxide. The lance tube burns down and may need to be replaced depending on the amount of steel and carbon in the furnace hearth. While this is ongoing, sulphur is burned off and phosphorus is taken into the alkaline slag. Sometimes the slag threatens to boil over and a shovel of fluorspar is needed for control. Step forward the man in charge, sometimes me, taking up a shovel and stepping into the flame zone tossing the spar across the boiling slag. The big blousy flame dies down as carbon is lost and a breaker-sample** taken to determine the state of the melt. If this is okay a proper sample is taken for analysis. Calculations are made and additions of pig iron, spiegeleisen*** and other materials needed, depending on the specification, passed to the squad for addition to the melt.
Meanwhile a ladle has been prepared. Tam Shaw and Canty Young are the ladle men. A skilled job ensuring the integrity of the lining and stopper arrangement is capable of handling tons of liquid steel safely. A leaky ladle saw much theatre with skilled actors, cranemen, ladle handlers and labourers dancing around to manage the molten stream into a place of safety, a pile of sand being preferred. A rare event but one managed without serious damage to men or plant.
With the ladle in position under the furnace-launder, the three graphite electrodes are raised, and the furnace is tilted to let a gentle stream of molten steel pour into the ladle with a bit of a splash, and in a glorious fireworks display, sparks rising high in the air. The ladle has been prepared with some aluminium, and ferro-silicon lying ready to interact and add to the specification making the steel boil. I was not long in the melting shop before a bunnet was procured in a bid to secure all my hair. Checking the pour involves a little dance move as the eyes and brain catch the trajectory of the heavy sparks and the ladle is soon away to the moulding shops to fill prepared moulds, four or five times a shift from each furnace.
For really heavy castings such as the rope guides for the new Forth Road Bridge both furnaces would be used and both close to the end of the planned programme. The refractory linings would wear down and the hearth deepen allowing for greater volumes to be melted. The total nominal tonnage for both furnaces was 8 tons but my memory is of 13 tons for a particular large and heavy casting. Some serious planning was undertaken to synchronise the furnaces so both were ready at the same time.
* Stainless steel with 18% chromium and 8 % nickel. Much used in kitchen utensils, medical equipment, and car exhaust systems.
** A sample of about a cup-full is taken and chilled to solidify it. It is broken and examination of the fracture gives an indication of the carbon content.
*** An alloy of iron and manganese.
Bathgate Old Times 