Let's hear it for British manufacturing!

As far as i can see 90 % of all briggs motors are made in the USA , only the vangaurd horizontal 2 & 3 cyl water cooled engines are made outside of the U.S and they are assembled in japan using U.S made parts .

They now own the Australian icon of mowers - Victa and i believe they are assembled in Australia using imported and local parts . Victa used to owned by Sunbeam years ago .

I bought a small Hayter maybe 15 years ago. US B&S engine, mower was labelled "Made in Italy". Always very reliable, now rotting in my son's shed. Kids!

I eventually remembered seeing this; finally found Top Gear's tribute to the British automotive industry. **LINK**

Bet a lot of components originated in foreign climes, but then Britain seems to have made nearly a million more engines than cars. Those nice BMW people have an engine plant up the road from me.

Parker fountain pens when made at Newhaven. Gorgeous, juicy nibs on interesting pens. Then the quite remarkable Duofold Centennial, a pen both looking back to a great past and taking advantage of the best of modern manufacturing. The Parker 61 in spectacular finishes with the 'Cumulus', 'Stratus' and 'Cirrus' designs.

Cannot forget, either, the amazing 'Onoto' fountain pens made by De La Rue. Even 100 year old pens work beautifully with the minimum of restoration. One even was raised from a ship sunk by a sub in 1916, and worked beautifully after a rubber and cork seal was replaced. This was 2012, with the pen having spent 96 years at the bottom of the English Channel. The gold nibs are a joy to use, making the roughest of paper feel like silk and encouraging wildly expressive florishes in your writing as they flex under the lightest of pressures. Anyone making nibs of that quality these days could sell thousands.

Definitely the best of British manufacturing. I just don't want to think about Platignum or Osmoroid's output in the 1970's.

Regards

Richard.

Yes, that's right.

And now I'm going to have to repay your good-humoured pedantry and point out that I used the word "British" throughout my posts, and that the IOM is incontrovertibly part of the British Isles.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 06/08/2018 20:44:00

Cheers Bill,

Yes, geologically in the 'British Isles' archipelago, but not British. We are, give-or-take a little for scale, as much a part of Britain as Canada or Australia are. We have our own legislature; we have our own currency; we have a Manx passport and we're not entitled to a British one unless one parent/grandparent born in UK. Those from the IOM aren't even entitled to NHS assistance (other than A&E) if they fall ill in the UK.

Because of our situation as you say in the British Isles, we do have a number of convenience treaties with the adjacent islands such as what is now being described as a Customs Union in wider British context, so goods, services and people can pass without hindrance.

Dave, a proud Manxman! (not so much pedantry as pride in my homeland!)

Edited By Dave Martin on 06/08/2018 21:25:30

Westley Richards gunmakers in Birmingham, excellent products that are exported worldwide. They have a large toolmakers shop next door that i believe do superb work for the MOD and is hush-hush mostly. CCM motorcycles in Bolton, doing really nice big cylinder motorcycles. Triumph motorcycles make their frames in malaysia, and have a plant in India, but i believe they only make small capacity machines for the asian market. So they produce their engines and everything else in Hinkley.

The problem is Manufacturing was left to rot for so long, worse it was actively discouraged, as everyone was going to work in services according to the uk government.

Would they be Bock nibs by any chance if so they can be brought still From Beaufort inks

Derek,

The Beaufort Bock offerings are adequate, but Onoto used to make their own and they were in a totally different league. Bock do supply some of the current good quality manufacturers, like Visconti, Delta and Stipula. Few manufacturers still make their own. Parker do, as do (IIRC) Montblanc and Pelikan. Modern Onoto nibs are, I think, made by JoWo, and every one is smoothed by John Sorowka before being sent out, making them about as good as you can get these days.

I have never been a real fan of Bock nibs, they don't have that little spark for me that the JoWo's have, and they don't seem to polish up so well either. A smooth nib is good, but there is a limit to how far they should be polished. I once over polished a Jinhao nib, and ended up with one that felt like it was always writing on ice, with no feedback at all. It was surprisingly disappointing and I ended up having to roughen it up a bit to make it feel better. Never been able to get to that stage with a Bock Nib.

The Bock titanium flex nibs are an attempt to reproduce the verve of the old gold flex nibs, unfortunately the attempt is not successful and falls woefully short of the old Onoto nibs.

Regards

Richard

In another post I pointed out that the £Value of British Manufacturing is actually slightly higher today that it was back in the day. Value, not volume, automation not jobs, high-end rather than semi-skilled.

I'm also uneasy about service based economies, but it is working in terms of wealth. UK Income from services is about 6 times bigger than that of the manufacturing sector. Don't forget many services are sold abroad - it's not just hairdressers! Also, having ignited the industrial revolution, Britain also came up with a working post-industrial economy, warty though it is.

If my pension relied solely on manufacturing, I'd poo myself. On the other hand, I wish people today had access to the range of good jobs manufacturing used to offer. I'd support any realistic plan for achieving something similar, but it can't be done by winding the clock back.

Dave

I still use my father's Parker 61 Classic, although the capillary-filled reservoir make it slightly more difficult to start than a conventional fountain pen if it has been left a while.

Brian

I see the problem as the demise of the medium quality product.
It used to be that there was little choice and manufactured goods were fairly expensive but solid quality. there were some expensive high quality things for the rich too. Then 'made in Hong Kong' introduced the cheap low quality items that took so much of the market that the medium price and quality producers couldn't continue. So now you just have the cheap crap and the stuff I can't afford. I would like to pay a fair price for a fair quality but it often isn't available, just the plain crap and the hyped up advertised overpriced crap.

My favourite pen is the P61, The P51 was an incredible pen, but the P61 was better still - with one exception, the use of Polystyrene as the body material. I've not come across anything to equal the P61, and had one as my daily use pen for 25 years before it wore out. I used the cartridge version, and must admit I don't like the capillary one I have quite so much for the very reason you mention.

Regards,

Richard.

Maybe your definition of wealthy is different to mine but I'm struggling to see how Cowells machine tools can be claimed to be only available to a wealthy minority, given that the current price for a new ME90 lathe is £2700 +VAT & that locomotives & traction engines are featured in the For Sale section here at prices ranging up to £9000. You only need a decent quality lathe & mill (of whatever make) and you won't be far off of that £2700.

As for Brookes saddles, the most expensive saddle that I can find on their website is priced at £320. Expensive? Yes, but it's not a matter of how much money you have but one of deciding how you spend what you have.

Brian

Edited By Bodger Brian on 08/08/2018 13:13:54

Edited By Bodger Brian on 08/08/2018 13:14:09

Edited By Bodger Brian on 08/08/2018 13:17:11

Thanx for the link, interesting reading. Yes, they are doing well out here at the moment, comfortably outselling Ducati & HD, and on a par with BMW. Very very nice showrooms...

Where would we be without a defence industry, would it be best to just get rid of bae and hide?

Not having kids, I and my wife have paid, and are still paying for the needs of ourselves and others at home and around the world, wether or not we want to, I don’t think anything in this word is free, but I do think that it pays to have the best defence you can get.

At 74 I am glad we have and have had world class arms industries to defend me, and the people who are willing to go out and use there products if needed.

When I needed a miniature lathe I found I could've bought about 7 Sieg C0s for the price of a Cowells, with relatively little functional difference. Of course it's up to individuals how they spend their money, but price has to have a fairly low position in the priority stakes to justify such a purchase IMO.

What thread?

I have had quite some Allegros