Red, strangest task/job you enjoy?
Most normal everyday job/task you dispise?
Do you mean work or everyday chores?
Lets go for work, what would you most pull a face at/be inwardly excited if you turned up at a new job?
When I was young, I used to do what is known in the trade as "Cleaning Metals".
Let me explain.
Non ferrous metals, that is, metals that have no iron or steel content, are worth much more than ferrous metals.
Typical examples of common non ferrous metals would be things like lead, copper, brass, aluminium, bronze, pewter etc. (Ferrrous metals would include forged or cast iron, and any type of steel)
Now say you have something that is made of both ferrous & non ferrous metals. A car gearbox perhaps, which has an aluminium casing, but is filled with steel cogs and shafts. Cleaning the metal would be the process of removing all the steel cogs, shafts, nuts, bolts, bearings, and everything, so that what you were left with was pure, clean aluminium on one side, and a pile of scrap iron on the other. (In the case of a gearbox, you would also have another pile containing 4 or five brass selector rods)
So basically, cleaning metals is the act of separating valuable non ferrous metals from the less valuable ferrous metals to which they are attached.
When I was a boy, my dad used to rent an old barn from a farmer named Stafford Poyser. (What a character he was) Every day, my brother Tracy and I would be dropped off at this barn with a bottle of pop, a couple of sandwiches, and several tons of "Dirty metal".
It was soul destroying work. sitting on an upturned bucket or cross-legged on the bare earth, hunched over some cold, oily piece of machinery, trying to take it apart.
It was never ending. No sooner had we finished one load than my dad would roll up in his lorry to take it away and deposit another. Don't get me wrong, we were not forced to do it, we just knew it had to be done. Times were hard, and money was scarce.
Some loads were worse than others. gearboxes (Which we got a lot of) were a bastard. They were filled with thick, smelly gear oil which always found a way of spilling on to your trousers, and they had loads of press-fit bearings that you needed specialist tools to remove, except we didn't have the specialist tools, so we just had to beat the bearing with a big hammer until the aluminium shattered and the bearing fell out. (Usually just as you were on the point if collapse)
Electric motors of all kinds would produce about 2 cwt (100kg) of copper wire per ton, but getting that wire out was a herculean task. We cleaned millions of them, and we hated every one.
The usual method was to open the casing by chiselling the rusted bolts until the end sheared off. then you would be left with an outer case which contained either two or four little coils of insulated copper wire. These were called the "Pads" and, once exposed, they were relatively easy to remove. The inner part, the "Armature" was like a big spindle, it was laced with insulated copper wire which ran through hundreds of small grooves in the metal. At first clance, this was impossible to get out.
You could get it out though, what you had to do was cut every strand of wire with a hammer and a razor-sharp chisel. Then you had to build a big flat fire. Not too hot, or you would lose some of the copper, (Old pallets were ideal for this purpose) lay your cut armatures on top, and burn them just enough to allow the insulation to shrivel and release it's grip on the wire. Then, when everything had cooled down, (Clean another gearbox while you're waiting) you could tease the copper wire out with the aid of some stout pliers.
There was loads of different types of "Dirty metals" for us to clean. each one with it's own particular problems and solutions. We loathed them all, but as I say, it had to be done.
After a long day, my dad would come and pick us up in the truck and we would go home to a warm trailer and a huge bowl of whatever my mam had cooked that day. Then, if it was summer we would be off out with the dogs or messing about with the horses. If it was winter, we would sit by the fire and listen to the men talk, or watch our favourite TV programmes on a tiny portable 12 volt telly.
Did I hate cleaning metals? Yes, with a passion.
Would I go back? Yes, in a heartbeat.
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