The laboratory consisted of a chemical laboratory and a phyiscal laboratory. The labs were staffed by a few experienced staff and a wide range of apprentices at various stages of their apprenticeships. The wages appeared to encourage apprentices to move on once they had completed their "time". The labs were managed by Mr Beeney, chief metallurgist and his deputy - soon to take over completely on Beeney's retirement - Mr Whitaker. The chem lab was managed by Denis Wilkinson and the Physical lab by Les - whose surname I think was Wells. The group on the right show the merry bunch with me at the back, far left. Mr Beeney is 3rd from left on the front row with Mr Whitaker on his right. Next right, with a somewhat haunted look, is Denis Wilkinson - possibly looking forward to the almost continuous grief he would encounter daily once Mr Beeney retired. He is worthy of note as he had developed a useful test method for determining the corrosivity of cutting fluids which, in line with the practice a the time, was promptly named the Lloyd-Beeny method after the chief metallurgist and relevant director, both of whom, I was informed, had little input into the test development. The lady on the front right was the bosses secretary who shared my passion for the Goons and engaged in many goonish correspondences with me for a while until she got married and then thought it wasn't appropriate.The chem lab tasks comprised mainly wet analysis of ferrous and non-ferrous metal samples, including gravimetric carbon determinations on an apparatus jokingly called the "carbon train". The analysis methods were grouped, with one person carrying out all of the methods in one particular group. The most monotonous job was to operate the carbon train, carying out up to 150 determinations per day.
The physical laboratory, or met lab, contained a couple of ancient hardness test machines and an Izod impact tester with a more recent tensile test machine. There was also a ferriscope - a form of magnetic sorting machine - and also a few pieces of machine shop equipment for drilling, cutting and grinding. The works boasted a large and well equipped heat treatment shop but they would not operate a cyanide salt bath so this lived in one corner of the pysical laboratory and produced frequent amusement as it would empty itself with a loud bang when new salt balls were added without previously ensuring they were completely dry. The room also contained an area for the intial stages of preparation of metallurgical samples. The photo on the left shows Michael meek on the magnetic sorter while I am lurking behind the tensile tester. I believe the photo was taken for an open day, which would explain why the place is spotlessly clean and devoid of any junk around the floor. Later new equipment included a neat, but potentially finger removing, balanced impact machine and a light load hardness tester for determinations on the crests of thread taps.
With so many young people in the labs, particularly in the chem lab, the atmosphere was generally quite jovial with much whistling and singing at work. I had started on the same day as two other unfortunates, Mick Barnet and John Randle shown far right and far left in the accompanying photo. I am 2nd left and a previous year's apprentice John Garrett makes up the group.
The works had its own iron foundries. Three were two grey iron foundries for items, such as lathe beds and jig borer bases, up to two tons weight and also a white iron foundry for the production of the harder wearing material for use in the proprietary drying and pulverising machine called the Atritor. The apprentices went through various "training" programmes "on the job" and one of these was to "supervise" the metal control in the foundries. Afternoons were allocated to metal control alongside the ladles containing the iron. Various additions, e.g. ferro-chrome or ferro-silicon, would need to be made to the iron as required as it was tapped out into the ladle and test pieces had to be taken for subsequent analysis to confirm the material composition was within requirements. The analysis was carried out by the same indiviual the following morning in the chem lab, apart from carbon content which was the responsibility of the "carbon train" driver. I went through 2 foundry "modules" and found them enjoyable as it meant I was out of the lab every day for half a day and got to shower before going home.
One of the delightful jobs in the chem lab was dealing with the raw materials and trial products of the Atritor machine. The moisture content of the raw materials was required to enable the Atritor trial set-up to be made more accurately. Raw materials could be as offensive as chicken giblets (gas masks were provided) or as useful as instant tea. The latter was a fairly extensive trial and kept the lab in tea for over a year and this was 2-3 years before the product was available in the retail market. The end product of the trials would need to be passed through a stack of varying grade seives to determine the grading of the powdered product. Often very fine material would "ball-up" and would not pass through the fine sieves. In these cases, the residues were washed through the sieves, although I always wondered about the validity of this method as the material would be likely to re-absorb water and swell. Eventually, a lady lab assistant was taken on to do this work. Although Alfred Herbert Ltd is no longer with us, the Atritor was too good a product to go down and survives to this day as Atritor Ltd on the same Canal Road Site. Click this link for historical material on this machine.
In line with the others before me, I left almost as soon as I had completed my apprenticeship, in my case for a princely extra 10s a week but I would have left for less. I had gained an HNC in metallurgy but again flunked out of the higher level, professional LIM qualification due to my dislike of educational establishments. I went on to Massey-Ferguson's experimental engineering site at Maudslay road, Coventry where I enjoyed a much more supportive management regime - but that's another story.