Something I know a Bit About

Peter Morris

November 12, 2024

Steel Making in the UK. 

I’ve spent much my working life (except the very early days) working with and dealing with steel. Cutting, shearing, press forming, piercing, turning, machining, precision measuring, right down to microns, drilling, melting, steel making from scratch, casting, burning, welding, fettling, heat treatment, plating.

Over the many years, I’ve done or been involved in all of these disciplines in one form or another. So it’s had a huge impact on my entire life.

Steel has been the backbone and the driver of industry in the UK since the industrial revolution and earlier if truth be told. Not only just the steel industry itself but all the things connected to it. Like the local sandwich shop; merchants that sell welding wire; people who manufacture bolts, rivets and screws. Companies that test analyse and x-ray materials and critical components; designers using drawing boards in the old days, computers today; inspection authorities that certify the integrity of steel and all sorts of fabricated goods. Our entire economy was based around making and processing steel in one way shape or form.

I started my working life not really knowing what I wanted to do, or which direction I wanted to travel. My very first job was a trainee shop-fitter (wood working), in the workshop that made the fittings. That job went awry when because they only had one ‘major’ customer, that customer decided to cut back on opening shops, and that was that – the job was gone.

I drifted from job to job. Builders yard, wood yard, fence panel maker, selling men’s suits in Hepworth’s.

I remember one job in particular; in a builder’s merchants. First morning, a low loader arrived with a forty-foot trailer full of breeze blocks. They had to be hand-balled one at a time off the trailer and neatly stacked. It was before the days when pallets of them could be lifted off with a fork-lift truck. It took ALL morning and was back breaking. I was very, very glad when lunch time came. I was exhausted. I came back from my lunch, only to find another one waiting to be unloaded; that was that…I went home. I didn’t even bother to go back for the half a day’s pay they owed me. I was just glad to see the back of the place.

There are inevitably all sorts of things I remember from back in those days of the 1970’s.

Fast forward a little. I had moved area and was out of work, for a short while. I applied for a job in ‘quality control’ in an aluminium casting foundry. It was very early in the infancy days of ‘quality control’. I got the job, even though I had no idea about aluminium casting (you could get away with that back then).

So, there I am in my nice, crisp brilliant white ‘inspectors’ cow-gown, on my first morning and ready to face the world. I remember the place was enormous and seemed to go on forever…Building after building, all interconnected, employing hundreds of people. I had my own little tin cage in the works as ‘my’ base…Somewhere to hang my coat and a couple of drawers on a tiny desk. I felt really important. At last, I had ‘some’ responsibility!

My job was to go from casting machine to casting machine, pick up the hot components just formed (with tongs) and ‘visually’ check them. Things ‘do’ break on a die-cast moulding tool. The very first machine I went to, I was greeted with “Who the f*** are you…F*** off!”

Not entirely Mr Friendly. The general gist from all of those who then worked there was “we’ve been doing this for 30 years and you’re coming to tell us how to do our job?” Which I suppose was a valid criticism back then. I was a snotty nosed kid who knew nothing.

Anyway, I persevered and got to know and be, quite friendly with a good few of them. Sometimes I would go on what I called a walkabout, and just wander from building to building, just to kill some time. Nobody batted an eyelid or cared who I was. It was all quite fascinating to a young lad back then.

Eventually I left that job and got another in a factory who manufactured bicycle parts for Raleigh Industries – it paid more. It was another huge factory. We made the parts that were then sent to Nottingham for assembly (remember the Raleigh Chopper?).  I worked in pretty much every department from the press shop, machine shop, plating shop, assembly, pretty much everywhere. That’s where the steel making connection I worked in was spawned. There are many stories I could tell about that place and many others. But I won’t bore you with those just now.

I spent a lot of the early part of my working life job-hopping (as I call it)…chasing the money. I never seemed to be able to reach the Utopia of even earning the ‘average’ wage according to the Government statistics. It took many years. All this commentary, for me at least, just proves that steel permeates through the whole of society in the UK, in one way or another.

My last job, before I retired was working as the Quality Manger in a steel foundry in Sheffield (the capitol of steelmaking worldwide). It was a small company, family owned, with about 20 or so employees. The company bought scrap metal from scrap companies (obviously), but that scrap was usually, and pretty much always, contaminated with oil, grease, swarf and all sorts of things. Once loaded (by hand) into the furnaces, it was melted to something like 18000C. All the contaminants would float to the top and be scooped off as ‘slag’. But you could never hope to get it all. Various material was added to the melt, depending upon the grade of steel you were looking for and wanted. Stuff like magnesium, sulphur, chrome, nickel, molybdenum or whatever in specific quantities.

Once at the right temperature it was then poured into ‘sand casted’ moulds and left to set. The sand casted moulds were a one-off make. Broken open eventually to reveal the part finished component. It then needed ‘burning’ (cutting off the channels where the steel ran into the mould to form the component), heat treating (stress relief), fettling (grinding off the crud), shot-blasting, machining, and even x-raying.

As most of the components they made were not of a ‘critical’ nature, they were fine for run of the mill stuff - but nothing critical. We regularly supplied Port Talbot and other big steel makers with components for their machinery. See how the interconnection works?

Blast furnaces on the other hand, make ‘true’ steel - quality steel and steel with no impurities, or at least very, very little. Thoroughly monitored and checked throughout the production process and of a guaranteed integrity. The best of the best British Steel - not made from scrap metal.

Now, of course Ed Miliband comes along, and never had a proper job in his entire life and knows nothing about steel making or anything to do with it whatsoever (hence my preamble above). Perhaps he was even advised by a civil servant who also had no idea.

They (he) have accelerated the closure of Port Talbot for the sake of being green. Now they’re going to introduce electric arc furnaces there. Which uses ‘scrap’ steel to manufacture supposed ‘quality’ steel. It won’t. Trust me, it won’t. It’ll be substandard honeycomb steel.

The scrap value of steel is extremely volatile. I’m not exaggerating. It can rocket daily from £200 a ton to £600 a ton in the blink of an eye. Imagine how many tons they will require for just one furnace load. They’re going to have to import it and from who knows where. China, India, America, Germany, South America - very green…

But of course, our ‘wise’ ones in Government know best.

This brings me on to the electricity required to power these ‘green’ furnaces.

Where I worked the cost of electricity to the company came mostly from powering the furnaces. They only had two - one 1000kg, and one 600kg so not very big. They cost around £16,000 a month, and that was melting four, sometimes five days a week. Now, the cost is in the region of £45,000 a month, and only melting 3 days a week (because of the cost).  Just imagine how much that would cost in Port Talbot? Not to mention the power grid being able to supply that user level - especially if ‘only’ powered by wind and solar power.

Did anyone think of this? Nope, it hasn’t occurred to the likes of Miliband or his cohorts. How the bloody hell would they know? I on the other hand, do know.

I’ve worked for companies that made high precision and critical components for missile and submarine mechanisms, which made the difference between them firing and those weapons ‘arming’ or not, once fired (they only arm once in flight). The steel they were made from ‘had’ to be top notch; the best to achieve the exacting tolerance. It was a very small window. You may not agree with arms manufacture, but it’s the way of the world.

We even made components for land mines, which still today I find abhorrent. We deliberately made them out of specification, in such a manner that they wouldn’t explode. (I shouldn’t say that really, but I’m too old to care…That’s why I’ve not gone into precise detail).

It’s very well known throughout the engineering and steel industry (in the UK) that Chinese steel is significantly substandard to anything we make. Or should that be the past tense…made? Would you want to be on a ship or vessel with steel made from substandard steel? You might never know of course. How would you know?

How about being in a skyscraper with steel girders made from substandard steel? The implications are really frightening, at least for me. But that’s only because I understand it all. Joe-Soap would never know. That’s frightening in itself.

The green agenda is putting us all at risk. You might never be aware of it. Ignorance is bliss and all that. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. But it can if you’re unlucky.

Are you still supporting the ‘green agenda’ in the UK?

© Peter Morris, 2024.

Image via The Chemical Engineer

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