{"id":736,"date":"2020-07-24T14:16:30","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T04:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andyjenner.com\/?p=736"},"modified":"2020-07-24T14:16:30","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T04:16:30","slug":"the-stone-firms-portland-u-k-a-first-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/?p=736","title":{"rendered":"THE STONE FIRMS, PORTLAND, U.K. A first job."},"content":{"rendered":"

We were having a baby, who is the eldest son Bartholomew now, and had rented a tiny cottage on Waycombe, Portland, having run away from home and family.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Funds were non-existant, and I was lucky to get a job with the Stone Firms, a conglomerate which encompassed all the quarrying and stone-machining on the island, and which employed thousands of men. Employment which soon collapsed, whilst I was actually working there, putting those thousands out of work, and an entire island economy in free-fall. Really, it wasn’t my fault.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My actual job was horrible. I worked in a huge tin shed, vacant except for two large bench-grinders, which machined the quartzite slabs, stacked in their thousands in the yard outside. These slabs were of a sort of laminar granite, which could be cleft into sheets, like slate, at roughly three-quarters of an inch thickness. They were extremely heavy, hard, and abrasive; an ideal paving stone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wearing massive steel-studded leather gauntlets, I would carry a slab to an iron bench and mark out an over-size yard-square on it from a template, then carry the slab to a primitive hand-operated guillotine, which, with great effort, could crunch away the excess to the line, leaving an under-cut shattered edge, but a reasonably neat top.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This rough edge had to be machined to a perfect and accurate yard-square paver, on one of the bench-grinders. The carborundum discs screamed as they reached cutting-speed, and icy water sprayed all over the sliding work-surface. A rough-cut slab was wound through the grinding-wheel to produce one finely-milled side, then turned through ninety degrees to mill the adjacent side. The angle was then checked with a steel set-square, then the third side milled to an exact yard, angle checked, then the remaining side.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The foreman checked my work. Was horrified. Suggested sacking if I couldn’t get the slabs square and accurate. I tried again, with great care; all the angles dead-on, the size exact. Well……I hadn’t checked the fourth angle, assuming it to be ok if three were right. Oops! What had I done wrong?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course the steel square itself was out, the inaccuracy compounding itself with each rotation of the slab. In fact this was an impossible method of arriving at a perfect square, and the operation had to be completely redesigned. No steel square proved to be absolutely accurate. Even the work-bench had play in what should have been perfect movement.\u00a0 The foreman apologised.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Using the available equipment made accuracy almost impossible, and I made a perfect full-size steel template to mark the slabs from, grinding to the mark and adjusting the bed of the grinder with each cut; very slow, deafening, very cold, wet, heavy and frustrating work, slab after slab.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Working through a pile of guillotined slabs stacked next to the screaming, spraying grinder, and wearing a huge rubber apron, steel gloves, ear-mufflers, wellies and waterproofs, I screamed along with the machine, yelling songs and swearing and shouting obscenities at the world, to out-noise the horrible machine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One day, as I was finishing the last of the slabs of my guillotined batch, perhaps an hours work, and clicked the dreadful grinder off, and its water-spray, I pulled off my earmuffs and turned around to face an audience of laughing, clapping workers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Attracted by my lunatic screaming, they had assembled a semicircle of benches behind me, the bastards, without me being the slightest aware, waiting for me to\u00a0 finish.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Later, a new cutting-rig was designed, with a diamond-toothed blade on a nicely-engineered rolling bed, aiming for trouble-free and perfectly accurate machining of the quartzite slabs. I was there for the inaugural test, and it was to be my job, using the new equipment. A large group of engineers and bosses stood around.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The diamond blade was started, and whined to cutting-speed; strangely, there was no water-lubrication. The first slab was wound slowly to the blade, and as it touched, a strange and frightening shock-wave hit the assembly, and the slab progressed no further. The motor was switched off and the costly blade was inspected. No teeth.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A perfect row of holes sparkled sunshine through the corrugated-iron roof, holes made by the diamond teeth as they were fired through. Luckily no-one had been standing either directly behind or in front of the saw.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was soon after this event that I, and thousands of others, were laid off, made redundant by the mis-management and over-pricing of the end products of the Stone Firms. Factories around the world had opened-up the industry and put Portland out of business. Even in my short stay, my wages had increased almost on a weekly basis as our blind union forced change on a hopeless management, until a point of no return was reached. The decision was to close the entire operation, sack the workers and the union, mothball all production, and re-open with a clean sheet, new staff, no union. I don’t know if it ever happened. We were on our way to Guernsey and a new life.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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We were having a baby, who is the eldest son Bartholomew now, and had rented a tiny cottage on Waycombe, Portland, having run away from home and family. Funds were non-existant, and I was lucky to get a job with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[582],"tags":[584,585,583],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-stone-firms-portland-england","tag-machining-quartzite","tag-mismanagement","tag-portland-stone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":738,"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andyjenner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}