I remember our garden wall iron railings being taken for the war effort, if there were any model engineers around at that time I would think their workshop stock would have been requisitioned for the war effort, and they themselves signed up for the defence of the country. See here

Martin Cleeve [who has had several mentions on this forum recently] seems to have refined his screwcutting technique whilst doing 'war work' in his home workshop.

I don't have the magazines to hand at present, but I recall several comments being made in the course of his Model Engineer series about the ML7.

MichaelG.

Edgar Westbury wrote a series of articles in ME during the war about industrial practise so that home engineers would be able to do some useful manufacturing work. The Sten gun was designed to have parts that could be subbed out to small workshops.

Cheers,

Rod

I think you have to remember that ,at that time, we were well set up for manufacturing just about anything

anyone could 'conceptualise' as a war-winning item.

I remember reading in some old issues of the ME magazine that Model engineers were recruited to make parts of shell fuses during WW1.

Chris Gunn

Stuart Turner perhaps?

Me too! May have been done on a large scale in WW1. I've got a WW2 magazine suggesting it should be done again but it doesn't seem to have been taken up. Most likely reason is the rapid changes in technique that occurred in the twenties and thirties.

During WW1 industrial lathe work was similar to what goes on in my workshop – simple lathes and parts made to low tolerances with lots of fitting. It's expensive and unreliable – in WW1 about 30% of British shells failed to explode because of badly made fuses.

By WW2 industry had upped their game considerably in terms of precision, quality management and mass-production methods leaving less opportunity for home workers.

'Our' kind of equipment produces first-class results in the right conditions. At its best for making prototypes and low-volume runs. Requires skilled operators. But it's not good at rapid production of interchangeable parts to tight tolerances using semi-skilled labour. Might be fun to get a few dozen members to make different loco parts from a plan and then get Jason to assemble them into a running engine. I think Jason would be doing a lot of remedial work!

Likewise, if 500 of us each turned a mild steel rod to 6.00mm diameter over a length of 25.00mm ±0.01mm, how many finished rods would meet the specification?

Dave

Hall Caine’s propaganda book “our Girls” using War Dept publicity photos illustrates some of the many women employed – see http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/hcog1916/illus.htm – most photos were I think taken at the Royal Arsenal

Edited By Frances IoM on 02/01/2019 21:12:33

Bikepete, you raise an interesting question, I often wondered whether such activities were commandered for war work.
But pulling a copy of M.E. from the shelf for Jan 30th 1941, it would seem that model engineering was continuing as before – herewith the front page and note "In this issue":-

Further evidence (?) is shown by the back cover where lathes etc are being advertised. Yet inside in the Classifieds, Buck & Ryan state "Lathes can only be supplied for war work". Note the block advert "STEAM CARS IN WARTIME" !

Maybe of course that things changed after 1941 but my bound volume of 1943 M.E. suggests that the contents are pretty much similar to that above. ME Societies are having regular meetings, the letter pages are mainly concerned with model making and the "make do and mend" attitude in war time.

Edit for typo.

Edited By Fowlers Fury on 02/01/2019 21:54:23

LBSC was involved in the War effort during WW1, he acted as foreman/instructor for a group of young ladies operating machine tools. Of course that was probably more in a commercial setting.

John

One of my old books — can't remember which one, possibly Sparey — mentions that the dodge of setting the topslide at 6 degrees so the dial reads 10ths of a thou cut depth was used by a colleague doing piecework at home during the war and the authorities were amazed that such accuracy could be achieved when they received the first completed batch.

ET Westbury's name seems to come up in association with war work quite frequently. Not sure if it was his day job or at home at night etc. Maybe both?

When my father purchased our old M-type Drummond circa 1952 in the UK, he was told it had been used to make aircraft parts during WW2. No record of whether that was at home or in a factory though. Judging from the typical ME type upgrades and mods that had been done to it, my guess was that it was owned by a keen model engineer at some point in its history, so quite possibly used at home for piecework in the war.

Edited By Hopper on 03/01/2019 08:48:50

Very early on in WW2 was formed the Machine Tool Commission, tasked with listing all the machine tools in the Country, down to small commercial workshop/Garage level. It had the power to requisition any machines not being used and transfering these to places that needed them.It was quite common for Garages to be given contracts to make engine parts,etc. I started as an apprentice with Drummond Bros in 1947 and they were still proud of the fact that their senior design engineer had been on that Commission from the start. One of the decisions made by them was to move the production of the Drummond M to Myford, to free up production space at Drummonds for the large auto lathes and gear shapers that was their main products.

.Keith