Life at the Alloys

As an Apprentice at High Duty Alloys, I was expected to absorb a wide variety of working experience. This meant alternating spells between the office and the 'shop floor', each of these departments presenting their own problems. For me, the' shop floor' presented the biggest challenge, extremely hard manual labour in the Stamp shop or the Foundry, but for only one sixth of the money being earned by some of my former schoolmates who were not apprentices. In the stamp shop my function was to fetch the hot aluminium ingots from the furnace and lay them on the anvil, where the trip hammer operator would 'rough stamp' or shape them ready to be 'drop stamped'. In these two departments, there was a certain rough camaraderie and freedom that I could identify with. Whilst I was never comfortably 'one of them' I felt more relaxed there than in the planning and drawing offices which I found rather daunting and clinical. This may have been because of my lack of interest and competence and I felt rather exposed in this environment, perhaps a shade too near the microscope lens which always threatened to expose me.

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