Long Day

[custard]

In the workshop at 5.00am, stoking up the woodburner to lift the temperature to 15 degrees for a UF glue up, then needed to keep it there for seven or eight hours as the glue sets.

How did the old boys manage with hide glue on a winter's day? Plus they didn't have double sided tape, compressed air, or Besseys!

 

[NazNomad]

Ah, but they had moonshine and porridge. ;-)

 

[novocaine]

Scotch was cheap. Walks were thicker and heat was on through the night.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I'm sure I've read somewhere in Charles Haywood's writings that during his apprenticeship in Shoreditch just before the first World War, it was not uncommon for veneers and groundworks to be warmed over a shaving blaze before gluing up. It would have been a junior apprentice's job to keep the stove going for the glue-pot, using offcuts and waste. As for clamping, there were all sorts of dodges - springing laths between the job and the ceiling joists, Spanish windlasses, and frames used with folding wedges for example. Tough lot in them days. Mind you, life expectancy wasn't what it is now, so it must have caught up with them!

 

[bugbear]

I read in one book (author and title forgotten) that tea breaks were always
taken in the French Polishing area, which had to be kept warm - for the benefit
of the work, not the workers, of course.

BugBear

 

[undergroundhunter]

open fires, wood stoves and hot cauls. As has been mentioned it was the apprentices job to keep the fire burning and the cauls hot. Watching the ever popular hands cabinetmakers at the weekend, the young lad brings warm cauls when they are gluing up the marquetry panels.

Matt

 

[custard]

I wish I'd have had a hot caul at 5.00am this morning. Pretty nippy, and I'm on the coast, up in the hills it must have been properly bracing!

 

[John15]

You are one hour ahead of me Custard. These cold mornings I get up at six to turn the two half kilowatt heaters on, then back to bed with a cup of tea, then a bowl of Alpen at 8, then into the shed at 9. By then temperature has risen to about +10, still chilly but slowly getting warmer as the morning goes on.

John

 

[hammer n nails]

John 15 must cost us a fortune

 

[Bm101]

If it makes you feel any better this is what I'm abseiling tomorrow. Lancaster Hotel. In this weather we have to use cold water to clean the windows because hot water freezes solid to glass faster when it's -2. Mind your faces don't get too warm near those woodburners lads.

 

[Droogs]

I remember reading an account by a late Victorian/Edwardian apprentice that when they were doing work on-site at a customers house they used to ask the housekeeper if they could have all the irons from the kitchen and he would then have to keep them warm on the range in the room along with the hide glue sor that they could iron the substrate just before glue up