Steel Making @ Firth Brown Sheffield 1957

[toolsntat]

http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/fil ... tour-works

That must have been hard and dangerous work :shock:

Andy

 

[AndyT]

Wow, yes, it certainly was. Excellent film showing how much has been lost since then.

 

[deserter]

Both of my parents worked there but a bit later on maybe 1970 ish.

 

[JimB]

I was in Sheffield in the early '60s and seeing steel workers come into a pub after a shift was a revelation. The first pint would go down without touching the sides though I'll swear you could hear sizzling. The next would be a bit slower then things settled down.

 

[matthewwh]

Watching the film you can see why - 8 hours of swinging red hot steel around would get a bit of a thirst up.

Worth noting also that Yorkshire and the North East still knock out a tidy 10 million tonnes of steel a year. There might be an Indian or Thai company's name above the gate, but the British steelmaking industry is far from done for - quite the opposite in fact!

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Worth noting also that Yorkshire and the North East still knock out a tidy 10 million tonnes of steel a year. There might be an Indian or Thai company's name above the gate, but the British steelmaking industry is far from done for - quite the opposite in fact!

Quite so. The reason why Tata bought Corus was because it was the most technologically advanced steelmaker in the world.

One thing that you do note from the film is the vast number of people employed - at huge cost. We now make a similar volume of steel (to much higher quality standards) with a workforce about 90% smaller. We have to do that to compete with low-wage economies. The alternative is to lose the whole industry entirely.

 

[AndyT]

The source that Andy linked to - the Yorkshire Film Archive - has loads of other good things as well.

More from Sheffield of course, such as this 1940 film of women munitions workers - which is mostly about making Paramo vices: http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/film/women-munitions-workers-sheffield or this from 1929 on how to make a knife http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/film/hand-forging-blades-spring-knives or this 1954 film in which a smartly dressed visitor to the Cutlers' Hall is escorted to some of the workshops where cutlery is made http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/film/made-sheffield.

But there's woodworking as well, such as this 1948 insight into the works of the "Mouseman" of Kilburn, showing the blended approach of machine and hand methods http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/film/craftsman-kilburn.

It's a useful reminder that there is plenty of good video that's not on YouTube - and plenty more just on this one archive site.

 

[matthewwh]

Fascinating how little has changed, most if the Ibberson film could have been shot at Ashley Iles.

 

[carpenteire2009]

Thank you for sharing this, I have a lovely old Paramo vice (not so old as the archive film I'm sure) and I plan to show my children how fantastic tools like this were made in times past!