Shearing and Bluing

As well as producing the new tack machines, the Lloyd brothers also commissioned a new shearing machine, purchased in 1934 from Rhodes of Birmingham. They also installed the tack bluing machine.


One of the two automatic shearing machines.

 In the Lloyd’s day the sheet steel was purchased in what were called “randoms”. Individual pieces of steel were of different shapes and sizes, inaccurate thicknesses and of spurious quality. The steel was delivered from the railway station by a three wheeled Scammell “Scarab” lorry. Every piece had to be unloaded by hand, placed onto a large hand truck and taken into the store. Each piece had to be hand trimmed to suitable sizes that would fit the shearing machine. For many years this was carried out by warehouseman, Arthur Johnson. 
He didn’t measure the sheets with a ruler for trimming he just used a 26 inch long piece of steel.

The metal was placed in one of the shearing machines and cut into the strips that were later fed into the tack and nail machines. The width of each strip was equal to the length of the tack or nail, plus the length of the material required to form the head. A half inch tack needs an extra one eighth of an inch for the head and so the strip would be five eighths of an inch wide.
When the steel was cut, the width of each strip was governed by a “rack”, a length of steel that had grooves cut into it. The grooves were separated by the width of the strip being cut. They were used as a guide to advance the steel sheet before each cut was made. 

The width of the strips varied from about three eighths of an inch to two inches, in increments of one sixteenth of an inch, as governed by the American Market.

The racks were clearly marked and stored in a holder that was mounted on the wall and could rapidly be changed. 
Steel sheets ready to be loaded onto the second shearing machine. On the left is the holder for the racks.
After cutting, the strips were loaded into kegs which weighed between 150 and 200 kilos. These would be loaded on a truck and taken to the operator as required.


Kevin Farrington operating the tack bluing machine.

 After the tacks were made they went to be blued.

Bluing of the tacks was necessary because when the head was cold formed in the machine, it would sometimes crystallise. When such a tack is knocked into wood the head will sometimes break off. To eliminate this the tacks were originally annealed in a furnace by heating to a dull red. When they came out they were blue in colour, hence the name. 
Today with modern materials crystallisation does not occur and so the bluing process is purely cosmetic, although it does help to prevent rust.

People expect to buy blued tacks and so that’s how they are provided. Because it is no longer necessary to anneal the tacks they are simply tipped into a rotating barrel and heated with a gas flame.

The bluing machine that was used until the end of production was designed by Cyril Haydon. Cyril was a good engineer and extremely devoted to the company. He often took work home with him in the evenings where he would work out new designs and solve problems.
Another view of the bluing machine. On the left is the elevator that carries pans of blued tacks to the warehouse to be cooled, weighed and packed. In the foreground are pans full of tacks ready to be blued.

After bluing, the tacks were put into pans to cool, after which they were weighed and packed. Today cardboard cartons and boxes are used, but originally they were put into hessian sacks, each one weighing 28lbs. These were extremely dangerous to handle because some of the tacks would inevitably stick out of the sides. As the tacks were extremely sharp, great care was needed when carrying them.

Until the second world war the canal was still used to transport tacks. Many were loaded onto barges and taken down to London. This practice was overtaken by road transport and the canal basin was eventually filled-in, around 1960.
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