After moving to Batchley Estate at the age of ten there were Muskett’s and Brockhill woods in which to make camps and light camp fires. Brockhill woods was also the venue for our annual ‘Dawn Chorus’ trip (See letter to the Redditch Advertiser, right.) I could also indulge in the 5th November bonfires and fireworks. Later, when ‘standing in’ as a scoutmaster for Webheath Scouts, I was able to organise large 5th November celebrations with really large firework displays.

    But, getting back to the early days, the house in batchley Road had asbestos guttering and down-pipes and we soon found that pushing crumpled newspaper up the pipe and lighting it at the bottom produced a loud mournful groaning hoot that echoed around the crescent, with plumes of smoke and glowing flakes of ash.

    I also found that if one stripped the brown ignition strip off a box of safety matches and laid it on our cast iron stove, lighting the strip caused the red phosphorus of the strip to convert to yellow phosphorus which then condensed on the cold iron. Rubbing some of this on the finger and snapping this finger would produce a cloud of white smoke and also made the fingers glow in the dark. One evening I produced a quantity of this phosphorus and persuaded my brothers (still a gullible crew!) that the house was haunted by a ghostly hand. Leaving them in a dark room I returned to the kitchen and smeared my hand with phosphorus and, making suitable noises, gradually stuck the glowing hand round the door, leaving them in a frightened huddle.

   Another little trick involving my siblings (willing or not) was to subject them to the ‘gas chamber’. Our coal-house had a lift up latch with a finger hole. Placing one or more of the lads in the coal-house and lifting the latch I would place a roll of film negatives in the finger hole, light it and drop the latch. The highly inflammable negatives would fill the coal-house with thick smoke and they couldn’t get out until either I let them out, or they waited until the roll had burned out and they were able to use the finger hole.

A similar game was played later with the Batchley Gang at the old Anti-Aircraft site just up Brockhill Lane. (OS map 135 GR 029685) This had deep underground shelters and one day one half of the gang descended into the depth, when the other half collected arm loads of dry grass and threw the flaming bundles down the steps until the troglodytes were forced into the open air. I was one of those that came staggering up. After waiting for the air to clear, the second team descended while we collected grass. The flaming bundles seemed to have no effect on those down below, which got rather frightening, until muffled laughter from behind the hedge informed us that the b******s had crept out whist we were collecting grass! Sadly, the site is now occupied by a house.

Fascination with fireworks continued and, in the bonfire season, bangers especially proved much entertainment. There were large ones like the ‘Cannon’ and smaller, vicious ones such as the ‘Boy Scout Rouser’. The former were used as ‘depth charges’ in Batchley pond. A lump of clay would be moulded around the bottom half of the firework, the fuse lit, and, while fizzing, chucked into the pond where it would explode under water. Especially scenic at night. I tried this with a Boy Scout Rouser in Dad’s best galvanised bucket, and blew the bottom out and opened the bucket out flat down the seam.

The local lads would spend hours in the dark, roaming the streets with ‘firecans’ - a treacle tin punched full of holes with a wire loop handle. One could swing the blazing can over our heads to get a good blaze whilst hunting for bits of wood to feed it with. A very popular pastime.

However, my love of fireworks led to long and futile attempts to make gun powder. In the fifties one could go to a chemist and buy a packet of ‘Flowers of sulphur’ or potassium nitrate over the counter. Using the traditional mix of sulphur, charcoal and nitrate I tried many times to make the explosive but only succeeded in making ‘Vesuvius’ types of fireworks - quite pretty especially with the addition of strontium nitrate (red) copper nitrate (green) iron filings (sparkle) or magnesium clippings (bright white stars). I purloined a shot gun cartridge from Granddad Taylor’s and having dismantled it I was amazed by the flash when a match was applied to the heap of cordite.

From detonating match heads or by pistol caps wrapped in foil and hit with a hammer, I progressed to doing the same with potassium chlorate/sugar mixture or potassium chlorate/charcoal/sulphur mixture which gave an ear-splitting crack when used in the same manner. I decided to upgrade my detonating method by the following way: At this time many surplus copper tank aerial tube was being sold off as fishing rods. Having acquired one of these, I cut a 3’ length, pinched it in about 3” from one end and filled that end with about 1.5” of molten lead. (Melted on the gas-stove in the kitchen and poured into the freshly washed tube. It taught me never to mix water and molten material by spraying out blobs of molten lead which stuck to my eyebrows!) However, putting a goodly pinch of chlorate mixture on top of the lead and fitting a tight bolt in the end I carried it up stairs and, leaning out of the window above the kitchen, let it drop. Mom had just walked into the kitchen to get some water from the sink at the kitchen window when this thing detonated. I had enough sense to start withdrawing my head after I  had dropped the device, thank goodness, as the shaft came screaming skywards just missing my nose and sending Mom into hysterics.

During my years at Redditch County High School I enjoyed especially chemistry and biology classes. I also joined the extra-curricular geology classes, part of which involved the analysis of minerals by borax bead and charcoal-block testing. An especial friend of mine, Dave Reade from Longbridge lane, Cofton, misinterpreted an instruction on a test we were given. This test involved sampling and analysing various rocks from around the area, one of which was a sample from the main entrance to the school. What was meant was a piece off one of the rings of edging rocks around the small turning circle there, but he took his geology hammer and removed a chunk from the imposing limestone portico of the entrance! He wasn’t thick, honest!

    Cripes! The masters and mistresses made an undignified entrance, skipping about amidst crackles and clouds of violet smoke. I was sat at the back in the fifth form rows, this being my last day and I crouched down thinking we’ve gone too far this time, especially as my hands were stained brown from the liberal double hand full of iodine that Nobby had poured into my cupped hands. Gradually, things quietened down, and as I sat there, I noticed a brown blob on my trousers. What did I do? I scratched it off. All heads turned in the direction of the crack and small cloud of violet smoke! As soon as the ceremony had finished, I was away, with my brown hands and hole in my trousers, on my bike and I only returned to a school dance one year later.

A few weeks later after leaving school, I started work as a lab assistant at the BSA Redditch. Duties included hardness and mechanical testing of metals. Analysis of plating solutions, broaching fluids and cyanide pots, furnace temperature checks, thermocouple manufacturing and fitting and the chemical analysis and micrographical testing of steels.

   Fortunately I had a Gaffer who had no problems with my ‘pyromania’ and quickly introduced me to guncotton manufacture. I made a small 5 mm cannon which performed very well with a piece of copper wire in the touch hole which was heated with a bunsen burner and, reverting to the old chlorate mixture, made a hand grenade, using the same method as the ‘tank aerial’, from a gudgeon pin off one of our 440 cc stationary engines. Throwing it on the floor didn’t work, so I stood on a bench and threw it down. It shattered completely, leaving sherds of metal studded in the cupboard doors and the flights, that I had attached, stuck in the ceiling. Good job I’d took to the bench!

One day, I was filtering some mercury through a shammy leather to remove the dross. This entailed filling the shammy with mercury and squeezing it through. When one sees the fuss over mercury nowadays if any escapes, one would think I’d have been dead a long time ago, but we were taught that mercury and mercuric compounds were benign whilst mercurous compounds (being soluble) were poisonous. Considering that the early treatment for syphilis as the ‘blue pill’ ie. mercury triturate with hog’s lard, we had mercury amalgams in our teeth for donkey’s years and the prevention of club root in brassicas was mercuric chloride in a powder filler. Its difficult to understand what all the fuss is about.

   Anyway, there was I working away (I’d already lost my new signet ring on a previous session - dissolved by the mercury.) When a visitor from the works appeared and asked me what I was doing. Explaining my job, I mentioned the heaviness of mercury and invited him to lift a pint earthenware jar of the substance. Now this wasn’t like lifting a pint of milk - more like lifting a dozen bottles of milk and the gent expressed suitable amazement at the weight. The Gaffer, who was watching, said “So you think that’s heavy? Try lifting this!” and with much groaning and heaving he dragged a cardboard box out from under the bench, I looked on in amazement - I knew it was filled with keiselgurh, a very light diatomaceous earth that we used to insulate any lab furnace that we repaired and weighed nothing. The visitor bent over the box, took a firm grip and threw the lot in the air. He and the surroundings were covered in the fine powder. Guess who had to clean it up?

Some three years later, by which we had courted, married and had our first child, Kim, I was summonsed to serve my two years National Service and here is a portrait of that arresting creature, my wife, she had taken to accompany me whist away. She certainly ‘arrested’ the passage of sergeants and officers on their rounds of the various barracks I had found myself in.

   The Royal Artillery! Home of the Thunderflashes, .303”s, SLRs, sterling sub-machine guns, 25 pdrs, 5.5”s, guncotton and mortars! A pyromaniac’s delight! Fortunately the Regiment in their wisdom kept me well away from all but the first few of these fascinating objects, but I must relate two incidents from that period: Picture the firing butts, a line of soldiers firing their Lee-Enfields fitted with peep-sites. One ‘intellectual’ there (There was a lot of ‘intellectuals’ doing NS. during the last few years) was missing the target completely. The sergeant kneels by his side and finds he’s not been using the peep-sight at all! When he does, he hits the target first time and with a sweet smile turns to the sergeant and says “My, that’s a cunning little hole.” I’ll leave you to imagine the sergeant’s reply. This person was not me!

Picture a ‘defended locality’ deep in Salisbury Plain, a wonderful hillock ringed with slit trenches in snow. A night after a pitched battle of blanks, smoke screens and Thunderflashes. Sentries posted, all others trying to sleep in the bottom of their trenches. At about 3 am a gaunt figure rises from a trench and mutters “Sod this for a game of soldiers” and using his old skills to build a fire on the edge of his slit. Slowly from the darkness other shivering figures appear and gather round the blaze. The owner leaves the position to find more wood and arrives back to find his seat taken. Oh! lying on the ground is a discarded Thunderflash. A moment later, the thunderflash appears in the fire, scattering the surrounding figures and the fire. The owner resumes his seat and, gathering the scattered embers, rebuilds his fire.

After demob, I returned to the BSA, now with a much larger laboratory doing much more wet analysis, mainly for BSA Precision Castings. One day we were assigned a new lad, a likeable new lad, but completely clumsy, happy-go-lucky and completely scatter brained, called Neil Moore. Letting him loose amongst so much glassware and chemicals was asking for trouble. He broke more round-bottomed flasks in a few months than the rest of us had broken in 10 years! (R.B.Fs were the lab’s kettles - N.M was the junior and therefor the tea boy.)

   One day I was showing him how to neutralise a hydrochloric acid solution with diluted ammonium hydroxide. We had a row of neutralisations to do and the procedure was that one poured a small amount of AH into the flask producing a cloud of ammonium chloride in the flask, which one blows out and then tested for excess ammonia by wafting the hand across the neck of the flask, gently sniffing. Repeat till one got a faint whiff of ammonia. “Now you have a go.” Neil splashed in a large quantity of ammonium hydroxide, producing a characteristic dense cloud, and then stuck his nose in the flask and I watched appalled as the ammonia/ammonium chloride mixture disappeared up his nostrils. He managed to put the flask down and then proceeded at a stumble to run round and round the bench, eyes streaming. The gaffer had seen the occurrence and in exasperation roared out “Sniff the acetic acid!” Of course the proper procedure would have eased Neil’s raw nose and streaming eyes, but not Neil - he took the stopper out of the bottle and took an almighty sniff of the contents. This of course, neutralised the original problem but gave him the same, in reverse, so to speak. It was some time before he could gain his breath.

   Below is a picture of the scene of the incident. In front is a great mate of mine, Allan Duffill, who spent a few months in the lab on his way to obtaining a Doctorate at Birmingham University. He’s in front because his lab coat is less acid eaten than mine. You might be able to make out, written in the ammonium chloride fog that coats the windows, the words ‘Smelly Nelly’ to commemorate the occurrence.

We had a dark room for the development of photographs and the Gaffer had fitted a shallow aluminium cup above the bench to hold the selvyt cloths and diamond paste for final polish of the samples before etching. He had bolted to the leg of the bench an electric motor, quite large, which would, with a bang, go from 0 to 1600 revs in a fraction of a second and the cup was fitted to the motor’s shaft protruding through the bench. When not in use, the cup was covered by a round rubber developing dish to exclude any dirt. One day a work’s electrician, with his apprentice, was fixing something in the dark room and this lad was not paying attention to his Gaffer, but leaning on his elbow over the polishing cup and playing with the various switches to see what they did. First, ah! the Vickers Microscope. Second, mmm - the red developing light. Third - well the rubber dish took off like a flying saucer and slapped him under the chin, frightened the frogs out of him and sent him into a daze. The electrician: “Serves the little b*****d right - he’s always messing about!”

On the home front, whilst living at Alcester, I made for Kim’s (and my) amusement, a three stage rocket. Three rockets, large, medium and small were fitted together. I won’t go into the details of construction, but it worked perfectly. The first stage roared manfully and managed to lift to a fair height before bursting into stars. After a pause, the second stage started its journey and burst into stars and then the third stage, a barely discernible red streak, fading into the darkness. Many attempts to recreate this success always ended in failure.

I applied for and obtained the post of Heat-treatment Superintendent at the main factory at Small Heath, BSA Motorcycles, where I had a surfeit of flames and heats. Kim spent ten minutes in my kingdom one day and vowed there and then that all his jobs would be in the open air!

  Now, mentioning previously ‘Elf and Safety’, one sees on television the panic attending the discovery of a ‘suspicious substance’ in, say, a shopping centre. Both at Small Heath and Redditch and in thousands of H/T shops around the world, a common method for light case-hardening was the suspension of the part in a pot of molten sodium cyanide. When in the Redditch lab, I regularly sucked samples of cyanide solutions up into a pipette, this being before the appearance of special hand vacuums to do the job. S/H hardening shop had a row of ten cyanide pots and lots of barrels of cyanide ‘eggs’ to feed them. There was cyanide dust everywhere and yet apart from a man who committed suicide and another who lost a portion of his ear through splash, I never in forty years heard of any illness or death associated with this substance. Of course we had antidote available but never needed to administer it. It makes one think.

    Just one small anecdote to finish these tales; We were heat-treating masonry nails in a ‘Shaker Hearth’ furnace. This consisted of a large heat resistant steel bed which shook back and forth at 850 ºC under a protective endothermic atmosphere. The nails strewn on the bed eventually falling off the end down a vertical pipe into a vat of molten salt. It was imperative to keep the level of the salt above the bottom of the pipe otherwise an updraught cooled the nails as they descended. The operator this day was a chap called Joginder Singh - a good worker. Passing the vat on my rounds and the level looking low I said, “Singh, have you put any salt in today?” and he answered “Yes, Sir! Yes, Sir! Three bags!” I had to walk away!

PS. I now live in a fully central heated house and one not even allowed bonfires! I’m glad I lived through a more innocent age when one could light fires in the woods and try to make fireworks without the possibility of being surrounded by armed police. I suppose the innocence was lost with the Birmingham pub bombings.

 

Tuesday, 26 January 2010

Updated: Monday, 8 February 2010