Who/What is a BF? - Sepia Saturday

In these days of social media and texting you have to be careful interpreting abbreviations.

This week's image from Australia quickly reminded me of what BF once meant to me.

My first job in industry was at the Redbourn works of Richard Thomas & Baldwins integrated iron and steel plant in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. 

As a graduate trainee I was expected to spend time on projects in each of the different departments. The first of these, in the Blast Furnace Departmet was to prepare trial mixes for the sinter plant that was being constructed. Sinter was to be used as input to the company's blast furnaces to improve their performance.

Iron ore,coke and limestone batches were mixed by hand (shovel) and subjected to heat using a gas-fired box. The resulting sinter was then subjected to a shatter test to determine which mix would stand up best to loads encountered in the blast furnaces themselves.

You could say that my small group often thought they were BFs while carrying out this work for the BF Department. 

The prompt photo of the Newcastle Blast Furnace Department doesn't actually show a furnace. It's difficult to make them out in this also.

Two blast furnaces at Newcastle

(NSW State Records)

The tops of the furnaces may be seen in the top left centre of the image to the right of what looks like three cylindrical vessels.

Redbourn blast furnaces - 1979

A hundred years of ironmaking at Redbourn ended in October 1979 when  the No 2 blast furnace made its last batch of 194.8 tonnes, watched by former production men, engineers and managers from other areas of the Scunthorpe works complex, chiefly Appleby- Frodingham and Normanby Park.

The furnace was built in 1951/2 to replace two hand-charged ones which had stood on the site since 1875.

Two sister furnaces had already closed. No 4, built in 1919, made its last iron in 1977; while No 3, dating from 1909, finished in September 1979.

The British Steel closure of Redbourn blast furnaces  was part of a rationalisation plan which included capital investment in the much larger Queen Victoria and Queen Anne furnaces, blown in by the Appleby-Frodingham company in 1954.

Scunthorpe blast furnaces
The four Queens - Mary, Victoria, Bess and Anne
(6 March 2009 ex geograph.co.uk, by Richard Croft - CC BY-SA 2.0)

These days if I wish to see a blast furnace I don't have far to go to see the one at Redcar near our North-East home.

Teesside's blast furnace at Redcar
(6 August 2005, ex geograph.co.uk by George Ford - CC BY-SA 2.0)

I left Redbourn in 1969 so never saw the demise of the works.

Finally I have dug out a video on Scunthorpe's Iron and Steel Heritage that shows scenes from the three steel works that existed while I worked there.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Also don't forget to visit other Sepians at Sepia-Saturday-279.

Men in Suits - Sepia Saturday

This days wearing a suit makes me itch. Perhaps that's why I found myself at the local flea market earlier today and found some men in suits. Just don't ask who these four are/were.

However these two were named.

According to the back of the photo they were called Ben & Ern who had sent the photo to someone unknown in 1939, "With Best Wishes."

Our prompt for this week shows three men in suits. Well if you average the number of men in my two flea market photos you also come up with three.

However I can do better that that with this 'formal' shot.

Lord Nelson hands over the winner's cheque
Lincolnshire Iron & Steel Institute Dinner  1962

The man in the middle was C G Davies, President of The Lincolnshire Iron & Steel Institute and MD of Richard Thomas and Baldwins, Redbourn Works, Scunthorpe. My winning young members' paper that I had presented at a meeting earlier in the year was entitled "Experience with the Rotor Process at Redbourn Works, with special reference to lance control."

The plant at Redbourn was the only oxygen steelmaking Rotor process ever installed in the UK although there had been other plants in Germany, where the process was developed, and in South Africa.

Rotor Steelmaking Vessel

The vessel is in the blowing position with lance, which you can just see, on the right. The rotating vessel can be rotated through 360 degrees in the horizontal plane. It can also be be tilted; and tilted vertically when empty for the vessel to be removed for relining while another takes its place.

Rotor cross-section showing oxygen blowing in progress

Oxygen is blown through a lance (3) into the metal (1). The lance at Redbourn was different to this with the tip turned down. Impurities removed from the metal form a slag (2) with added lime.. Gases formed are extracted (5) to a gas cleaning plant..At the end of the process the metal can be decanted via a tap hole into a ladle (not shown) by tilting the vessel. The vessel produced about 100 tons of steel at a time.

Before I left Scunthorpe at the end of 1969 the steel industry had been nationalised. In 1971 I became Works Manager of a foundry and engineering shop in Billingham on Teesside and there were more men in suits.

Sir Monty Finniston visits APV Paramount

From right to left they are J F B Jackson, MD: Sir Monty Finniston - Chairman of British Steel, behind him Bill Cockburn, General Manager: Leslie Halling, Sales Director; A n other; and me complete with orange ear muffs..

The tubes that they were examining where intended for the British Steel Direct Reduction plant at Hunterston, Scotland. That plant never operated and was it was eventually moved to the USA.

So you can see that my early career was heavily involved with steel which brings me to men in suits in a drawing on my study wall.

Demonstration of an early steel rolling process

I must say one man is trying a hard sell; others look more sceptical.

For more suited gentry roll over to Sepia-Saturday-216.

Muted Colours - Thematic Photography

I'm not sure I have got the hang of this week's muted colours theme, but here's four shots that did not turn out as I expected.

Fowey Hall Hotel, Cornwall

The day was not as dull as it appears and the colours are not what I expected.

In my next shot the shade taking up half the shot gave a different look.

Nyhaven, Copenhagen

With a much older camera in the late 1950s there is a different look entirely.

St Rules Tower, St Andrews, Scotland

Shooting on a foggy day definitely mutes the colours.

Repairs to Teesside Flyover, Middlesbrough

For other muted contributions check the links at Carmi's /thematic-photographic-258.

Rectangles - Thematic Photography

Rectangles creep up on you unexpectedly. They appear in many photos and were the last thing you were thinking about when you took the shots like these.

Swallow on nesting box - Michigan

And maintaining the theme of birds and rectangles:-

Aviary - Preston Park, Teesside

Down in Cornwall I was frustrated by the column that blocks the shot of a terracotta frieze.

Terracotta frieze - Truro Cathedral

Whereas if I had been looking for rectangles I couldn't have found a better place. 

Back in Yorkshire's Wensleydale rectangles even appeared on a roof.

Bolton Castle roof.

I'm told by mathematicians that a rectangle is a closed planar quadrilateral with opposite sides of equal lengths and with four right angles. I just hope that I am not a square, as apparently a square is a degenerate rectangle. Now whom do I blame for that?

Certainly not the others that you can find over at Carmi's Rectangular Thematic Photographic-222

Up the Reds! - Thematic Photography

You are more likely to hear their fans shout, "Come on, Boro" than "Up the Reds" even thought the team play in red. "Red" is Carmi's theme this week so I thought I would share these photos taken during a tour of the football stadium in 2004.

Stand seats MFC

No spectators in the ground as the tour was in the closed season when no matches are played. However in the home dressing room evidence of the players was plain to see.

Players shirts

Just last week Juninho, regarded by many as Boro's greatest player, was back on Teesside for a final farewell match.

For more red letter events don't forget to visit Carmi at thematic photographic 156 Red

The Yorkshire Town of Yarm

A-Z Challenge – ‘Y’

When we moved to Yarm in 1970, the town was said to be in Teesside. Since then it has been in Cleveland (which is still the quoted postal address) and latterly in the unitary Borough of Stockton-on-Tees. Despite these administrative changes I have never forgotten what a resident said when we first arrived, “None of this Teesside nonsense, lad. We’re in Yorkshire! Don’t you forget it!”

I wrote about the bridge at Yarm under the letter B, and the  Valiant Dragoon,  Yarm Fair, 300th Anniversary of Yarm Town Hall and  Yarm Writers Group last year.

I ought to tell you about the Castle, but as you can see you will not need a guide to show you round.

The railway viaduct is on a different scale and can hardly be missed.

 The viaduct is nearly half a mile long; its 43 arches span the town and the River Tees, over seven and a half million bricks were used. Designed by Thomas Grainger and John Bourne of Edinburgh the viaduct was opened in 1852 to extend the Leeds and Thirsk Railway from Northallerton to Stockton and Hartlepool.

The cobbled areas on either side of the road are a feature of the Georgian High Street; the cobble areas are now used for disc controlled car parking. Even so through traffic still disrupts passage through the town. The High Street was voted best in Britain in a BBC poll in 2007.

The Dutch style Town Hall built in 1710 stands at the centre of the High Street which once boasted 16 inns. The Ketton Ox named after a famous shorthorn bull bred near Darlington was at one time noted for cockfighting. In 1820 the George and Dragon was the site of the meeting at which a decision was made to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway. The Cleveland Bay across the Tees in Eaglescliffe commemorates the well known breed of horse which originated in the hills east of Yarm.