My dad bought me a present for my seventeenth Birthday, which was unusual to say the least because in our family we didn’t do birthdays.
At that time I had been driving for a year. I had saved my money up and bought an ex electricity board Transit van. I lovingly chopped out all the rusty bits and then filled them all in again with “Holts Body Filler” Then I brush painted it a very striking shade of sky blue. I added some go-faster stripes and a set of chrome wheel trims from a Ford Zephyr. Then, the piece de resistance, a Motorola 8 track cartridge player.
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In those days, in car entertainment, i.e. a radio was quite a rarity. For commercial vehicles, it was non-existent unless you fitted it yourself. The Motorola 8 track cartridge player was too large to fit in the space provided for the radio (assuming there was one) so was designed to mount under the dash on a sturdy bracket.
Anyway, I got mine all wired up and working nicely and then my dad bought me this present; it was an 8-track cartridge of Elvis’s “Viva Las Vegas” album. I played it constantly, and I tried to imagine what it would really be like to go to Las Vegas, the flashest place I had been so far was the Crazy Daisy in Sheffield.
I was sitting in the van one lunchtime, eating an oven-bottom with roast pork and dripping and playing my Elvis cartridge loudly when someone banged on my window. I thought it was a complaint about the noise but it turned out to be some Elvis nut that just wanted to talk about his hero.
As he talked, I questioned him, as I did everybody. “Where do you live, have you got any scrap at home, no, where do you work, do they have any scrap?”
It turned out that he worked for a firm called “Rapid Precision Engineers” and he told me that they often had scrap iron lying about. We chatted a little more and I wangled an introduction to the boss of the engineering firm.
Engineering firms often make what are called “Turnings” in the course of their work. Turnings are little whorls and coils of metal waste produced when a larger piece of metal is worked on a lathe or a milling machine. Rapid Precision Engineering was no exception, and out the back was a pile of turning which weighed, I estimated, three quarters of a ton.
Scrap iron was about £20 a ton at the time, so if my guess at the weight was right (I was never far wrong) there was about £15 worth. One other detail caught my eye, Mild steel turnings rust very quickly, (within hours) these turnings were bright and shiny, perhaps they were stainless steel..
Stainless steel was a much better proposition, worth, at that time, about £120 per ton. The Elvis fan took me to the door of a little office on the workshop floor.
The boss was a real character and we hit it off immediately. After a cup of tea and a lot of small talk I asked if he would sell me the scrap. He asked how much I was prepared to pay, and I offered him a fiver.
“Now then” He said, “You know those turnings aren’t just mild steel?”
“No I didn’t” I lied. “What are they then, stainless?”
"They’re 652 high speed steel, worth about 6 times more than stainless, but if you were to pay me cash and say nothing to anyone, you could take them away for £100”
What a dilemma. £100 was just about my entire bankroll. I knew nothing about 652 high speed steel, I didn’t know what it was worth, and I didn’t know how to test if it was genuine. On the other hand, I believed him. After an agony of indecision, I paid him the money and loaded the turnings.
I took them straight to C F Booths in Rotherham. There were several other vehicles in front of me waiting to get on to the big weighbridge in the metal shed and I was almost beside myself with worry and anticipation.
When it was my turn, Ken Booth jnr (who was at that time in charge of non ferrous and precious metals) came out to ask what I had brought. “652 high speed steel” I told him, and he opened the van doors to have a look.
He picked a few pieces up and manipulated them, then he walked over to a workbench and touched one of them on to a spinning grindstone and looked carefully at the sparks. Still not satisfied he brought out his “Acid kit” and selected a small glass bottle with a dropper. From this he squeezed as spot of acid on to the steel at the point where it has touched the grindstone, A puff of dark yellow smoke came up, it was like sorcery.
“Well?” I said, unable to bear the suspense any longer.
“I don’t know” He replied, The bits I’ve tested definitely seem like 652, but I can’t test all those thousands of little bits individually, and it could be contaminated with all sorts of other metals for all I know”
“So” I asked, “What happens now?”
He told me that he would only buy it on “Acceptance” That meant that he would take it from me and only pay me when his buyer had accepted it from him.
My heart sank “How long will that take”
“Oh about 3 weeks” He replied, already moving toward the next truck.
Well it was a very long 3 weeks I can tell you. By the time I was due to go back for the verdict I had wished to god that I had never seen those turnings about a million times.
I walked into the metal shed and Ken waved me into the office. He opened the little wall safe and handed me a bundle of notes and a receipt which said, Fifteen hundredweight and 2 stones 652 High Speed Steel Turnings: £665. 00
I couldn’t believe it. I had never had so much money in my life.
As I drove home, I played my Elvis cartridge at full blast “At this rate” I thought, “It won’t be long until I get to see Las Vegas for myself”
That was 33 years ago. Just another 6 weeks and I’ve cracked it.
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