Metal bashing
When I went to Secondary school, the children were segregated by sex for two subjects- Physical education and technical skills. Us boys did the crafts;- metalwork, woodwork and (eventually) technical drawing, whereas girls did what was originally called homecraft, then “domestic science” which was mainly cookery, as far as I recall. (There were rooms with typewriters as well for clerical skills).
This was based on the traditional role models of pre-war UK working class society where the man learned a skilled trade and the woman stayed at home. I’m sure it is much less rigid than that these days!
My first experience of metalwork was with “Metalwork Johnson”, so called because there was another teacher called Johnson, “Geogga Johnson”. This was in the lower school craft room which covered both woodwork and metalwork skills. This was a fairly large room with rows of benches, a vice at each position. Around the room were various kinds of machinery and a number of large red buttons which activated the emergency tsop system, cutting off power to all the machines. As we stood there with our overalls (there were no seats in the workshop) he explained that everything we made at Kenton we would be able to take home, apart from our first project which was for the benefit of everyone that year. The project was to make Vice Grips, pieces of folded tin used to protect whatever you put in the vice from damage. We started off with two rectangular pieces of tin and we had to do safety folds (using pliers and hammers) so that the edges weren’t sharp. We then used the big folding machine to put a right angle bend in so that they would rest in the vice accordingly.
I can’t say that I remember much else we made at school over the years (other than a fish slice) as when I was Eighteen GEC had a substantial training school where we re-learned machine room skills on full size machines, not the scaled down toy ones the school used. I can recall making a chain wrench which included shrink-wrap on the handle (the chain was supplied!) but that could have been at either site. The GEC work was more precision than practical though, often designed for the intention of showing ability and understanding.
Woodwork remains nebulous in my memory, I can remember doing lots of stuff but not much of the outcomes. Understanding the different types of wood and join techniques was important of course, as well as grasping working with and against the grain. I made a pencil box and a crocodile (which my mum still has, it isn’t very good but she is proud of it!) Mr. Martin, the woodwork teacher had a catch-prhase- “Wood is tree-mendously strong” which was made funny because of his slight lisp that made it sound like “Wood is twee-mendously stwong”. He was very active in the school in my day, doing Judo lessons and playing trumpet in the Brass Band. He is still involved with the school even into his retirement, I was delighted to recognise him in the Saturday show singing in the choir and disappointed not to have a chance to say hello at the end (the show overran considerably, it was very late, we had a two hour drive home and David was tired).
I gave up the crafts in favour of the more academic studies when we were able to choose our subjects, possibly in the fourth form. Others that carried on with them made quite interesting stuff then, I remember one lad making furniture,
When I reviewed my photos, I realised that I had a number of shots that roughly equated to “then” & “now” although I was a bit too distracted on the Saturday to consciously frame them so that they were similar angles. However here is a shot of the west block metalwork forge area and how it looks today.
The lower school craft room was a big surprise- it was now a music room and full of piano keyboards (& computer keyboards as well). It was a fair bit smaller as the far end of the room had been partitioned off for two smaller rooms and I puzzled over a raised area which was now the teacher’s snug; it eventually dawned, this was where the forge was, along with the anvil. Another recollection popped up- us all crowding into the cupboard where metalwork Johnson had an old fashioned Epidiascope that looked like a magic lantern. It had a big handle that lowered a platter, where he would put pictures from magazines that projected onto a white bit of wall. He used this to discuss aesthetics of shape, form and style, whilst we stood in the dark poking each other & sniggering.
I never visited the cookery rooms during my school career, although I often saw the outcomes in class. I worked out which room the 1961 shot was from and snapped it for comparison. (There were two other rooms, although the contents were similar).
On one occasion we had to have a lesson in the typewriter room, or commerce & office skills, as I think it was known as. I don’t think this is actually the same classroom as the 1961 photo, but this is the room I remember it as being in my time. It is now the pottery room within the art department and david is playing at being teacher.
I did have one trip back to the metalwork room during my fifth form days, when one of the handles snapped on the school switchboard. The dimmers had never been lubricated on their moving parts and one of them stiffened up, shearing at the pivot point one day when being strained too much. My friend Paddy was well in with the metalwork staff so we took down the two pieces of bar and made a replacement. the original was alloy and this was steel rectangular bar slightly thinner than the original (as it was all they had) but after being assured that this was not an electrical component (it wasn’t) we were able to sort it out. It required a white bakelite golf ball type knob on the end and I discovered the joys of forming threads without the use of a lathe- we filed it down to a circular shape then used a die to thread it. This was the first time I had seen a tap & die set and I had no concept of how threads were made before then.
