Colchester Lathe Factory

We import iron ore and coal from the far reaches of the world to make iron, which we then have to convert to steel, whilst at the same time exporting steel scrap to China to be made into more steel. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

There is actually plenty of ironstone left in Northamptonshire, and they are about to open a coking coal mine in Cumbria, **LINK** but certainly the ironstone is more expensive than imported ore, but do we need to be involved in low tech industries like making iron, better concentrate on the more profitable occupations of making things out of steel.

According to a House of Commons briefing paper, in 2016 the UK produced 8 million tonnes of steel; China produced 808 million tonnes. UK is such a small producer it is almost off the graph. This represented something like 0.01 of the UK's economic output. Not many other similar sized industries get quite the attention that steel production does.

I'm sure I read somewhere recently that in the last two years China produced more steel than the UK has in the whole of history.

I would hope still though that the steel industry in the uk does not and is not allowed to die. Maybe if the industry concentrated on quality special steels rather than mass producing mild steel, it could survive that way.

Brief but interesting article on the trials and travails of our surprisingly improved (productivity-wise) steel industry.

**LINK**

Sorry, here's a better attempt at the link. I hope ....

Yes indeed, and I expect whatever coal and iron is left will be exploited again in the future.

At the moment, to make cheap steel you need 20 or so square kilometres of land preferably complete with a large deep water sea-port to minimise transport costs. Best if all the thousands of tons of coal, ore & scrap, limestone and fresh water used per day are local because it may be difficult to compete if any of it has to be shipped any distance.

Although I don't think there's much future in making cheap steel in the UK, speciality steels are a different story. An electric arc furnace doesn't take up much space and the raw materials it uses aren't massively bulky. Fewer jobs unfortunately, but profitable.

As an aside, British made 'cheap' steel isn't poor quality. Most British steel is rolled into strip form. Rolling steel into thin plates exposes quality problems like no other process, and any remaining flaws become obvious when the steel is pressed, for example when making car bodies. There's nothing wrong with 'cheap' British steel apart from the cost. If that problem can't be fixed it's time to do something else! Not an easy or nice process - our job to support redundant steel workers through difficult times ahead.

Dave

The Chinese are welcome to the mass steel industry, I reckon. The pollution in the industrial areas over there is just horrendous. I wouldn't want to live like that.

Thanks for the great link, Alan.

The well polished, impeccably articulated commentary complements the machinery. I particularly liked the neat advertising slogan "The world turns on Colchester lathes". Advertisers were clever with words at one time.

It occurs to me it might be helpful if there were a dedicated thread or subforum for vintage machining videos - assuming this would give them the extra exposure some of them deserve.

It would be nice to know how many of the machines depicted are still going strong 60 or so years later.

I'm smitten by the beautifully proportioned tailstock on your example, Alan.

I confess I have a thing about tailstocks (as Larry Grayson once remarked to Slack Alice).

Sounds like the dulcet tones of William Franklyn, the ubiquitous voice over sound of my youth.

Rod