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Your Story: File Cutting in Grenoside |
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Helping out
The lead blocks soon became uneven and tools blunt, so the workshop also contained a grindstone, vice, and small forge with bellows, which Walter sometimes operated. The forge was used to melt lead for moulding into new stocks and to heat tools for sharpening. Stone troughs about 2 feet square and of a similar depth held the water used in the process.
Before being cut, the blanks were rubbed lightly with a greased rag so that the white which was then lightly applied with another rag would adhere, showing the quality of the work more clearly. These tasks sometimes fell to Walter. The files were not hardened in the village, and needed careful handling to avoid damage. For transport, they were laid side by side on a long strip of thick sacking, which was then carefully rolled so that the files did not touch, tied into a pack and carried on the bus to the factory. Walter’s father collected “blanks” weekly from Charlie Peace, whose factory in Well Meadow Street (off Netherthorpe Road) seemed a frightening place with its large machines. His normal weekly quota was one gross, amounting to 156 files; there were 13 to a file-cutter’s dozen. At the end of his working life, his weekly wage varied between 15/3d and £ 1.0s.3d. Walter recalls helping to take the packs into Sheffield, and remembers an old file-cutter based in a shop where Norfolk Hill Croft now stands who specialised in fine-scale work and so could carry his whole week’s output in his waistcoat pocket! On one occasion a pack left on a water trough while purchases were being made in a nearby pork shop was stolen, but luckily contained only blanks, which were easily replaced, not the finished week’s work.
Though tedious and wearing by modern standards, Walter did not see the work as unduly difficult or unhealthy. He cannot recall problems with joints arising from the repetitive work, nor that file cutters were more prone to lung disease than others in an area where consumption was not uncommon. Families could work together – his aunt and her two daughters worked with his father – and there was little “industrial noise” as the lead partly deadened the sound of the hammers.
Words: Walter Ellison
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