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The British Heat Resisting Glass Company"Phoenix"
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ALF CROOK'S ACCOUNT OF HIS TIME AT PHOENIX
Joining the company
I started work at Phoenix in 1949. I had been working for Boulton Paul when I saw an advertisement for a management trainee at Phoenix. I applied for the job and got it. That meant that I still had two jobs because I was also a part time professional with Wolverhampton Wanderers. I had played for the first team on many occasions in the war time league but my debut for Wolves after the war came in the replay of the cup semi-final against Manchester United. For that game the manager, Stan Cullis, wanted me for full time training for the whole week before the match. So he had to ring the company secretary, Norman Howell, and clear it with him. He was glad enough to give his approval and was very supportive. (We won the match and Wolves went on to win the Cup, beating Leicester City, 3- 1. I left Wolves in 1950 but continued to play as a part-time professional for Wellington for many years after).
When I joined Phoenix, Colonel Gell was the top man and his son, Tony, worked in management. They were both ex-Guards officers. Colonel Gell was the Lord of the Manor of the village of Wirksworth in Derbyshire and in the summer the upper echelons of the work force would go over there in a coach for a day out at the Manor, with strawberries and cream on the lawn. Then we would wander down to the village green where the works team would be playing cricket against the village team.
Colonel Gell was previously with Chance Bros. and while there, as a Director, proposed, as a diversification from technical glass, that they should manufacture ovenware. This was started but subsequently closed down. He left Chance to set up Phoenix (British Heat Resisting Glass). It seems it rose from the ashes.
The main works in my time were in Bilston, with a subsidiary in Handsworth, near Winson Green. I started on the drawing board as an exercise of recording the tool side of the products. This was also an opportunity for me to get familiar with the products. From there I moved to the automatic presses and then on to Shop Superintendent of all production, which included, besides the automatic line, hand presswork and blownware. This all worked on a shift system. The main production offices were on stilts in the middle of the production area.
What we produced
I was at the company until 1960. During the time I was there they were producing domestic/pressware items in clear, oven proof glass, things such as casseroles and plates, with occasional special items such as a tea pot stand produced in 1951 with the Festival of Britain logo on it and for other special occasions such as the Coronation.
Mentioning the special pressware brings back the memory of Ralph Brown, an ex-member of Pyrex, who was brought to Phoenix as Works Manager, I believe at the inception of the company. He had retired before I started but came regularly to the works and was often seen in the Development Area working at a bench on special moulds, mainly those celebrating some event such as the Coronation or the Festival of Britain, which were needed as sales items. With hammer and chisel, he would cut out the most intricate of designs in the base of the mould - a mould which would produce a tea pot stand or an ash tray. All the moulds used for glassware were made of cast iron specially produced to give a good working surface for machining and while being used at the furnace in an operating temperature of 1500 degrees. His son Arthur was involved in Development.
I always felt that the glassware made by our rivals, Pyrex, had a greenish tinge to it whilst ours was perfectly clear. The opaque white "opalware" was not produced while I was there (so it must have started after 1960). But we did produce some coloured wares, in blue, red, yellow and even white. These were the only colour produced when I was there: other colours, such as the pink, must have been introduced after 1960. These coloured wares were not made from coloured glass but were made by spraying the clear glass items with a mixture of coloured glass and paint and then passing them through the Lehrs (which I mention later on). This colouring process started while I was with the firm, in about 1954/55.
We not only produced our own range of oven glass but also blown domestic glasswares for others, such as the glass chimneys for Aladdin lamps and the glass components of Cona coffee percolators. A basic selection of our own ovenware was also made for Woolworths. This did not carry the Phoenix mark but was marked "Oven Queen". It sold for about half the price of Phoenix's own brand.
The other side of the business was in technical glass – that is, all the glass products which were not for domestic use and the retail market. This included quite a wide range of things. Examples include the tubes used on radar (of which the back was blown and the face was moulded). Lenses and flats (which were just like lenses but flat on both surfaces); we pressed the blanks for these and did the initial polishing only. Insulators in a range of sizes, which were made in a split mould. We also made glass rings, of about 6 inches in diameter. We made hundreds of them for Harwell. I do not know what they were used for – Harwell was a top secret installation at the time – but glass is a very good insulator. We also made glass tubes, for laboratory use, of all diameters in large quantities. From such tubes 15 inches long Phoenix themselves produced a tube, flared at one end and with a reduced internal diameter at a number of points along its length, with the same reduced diameter hole at the other end. These were for machines used in nylon production at Courtaulds.
Moulded into each piece, in addition to the Phoenix logo, you will find a set of numbers and letters, such as PL520. The letters identify the type of article and the numbers the style and size of that article. So PL520 shows that this is a plate of the 520 size and style. 505 would be a small plate and 520 would be a large plate. These numbers were not measurements. The letters were straightforward descriptions, so that B indicated a base, RC a round casserole; OPD an oval pie dish; RPD a round pie dish; and so on.
How we produced it
While I was at the company they had a production unit at Lodge Road, Birmingham, near Winson Green prison. There was one furnace there and I think all the work there was blown work, no moulding. That factory was closed whilst I was with Phoenix and the machinery moved to Bilston. The workforce fortunately came to Bilston too.
But our main production, and in time our only production, was at Bilston on the site bounded by Loxdale Road and the canal but not reaching as far as Oxford Street in those days. The warehouse that fronted Oxford Street was built after my time with the company.
The layout of the factory can be used to show something of our production methods and systems. The diagram below left shows the layout of the premises as I remember them when I was there. The offices faced Loxdale Road; and the side of the building nearest Oxford Street was used for warehousing and dispatch. The main factory had a work flow which was mainly from the canal end towards the warehouse end (with, it will be remembered, the factory management offices on stilts above the centre part). The diagram shows the works layout. This is a sketch from memory and is not to scale - it only gives an idea of how things were arranged. The numbers below refer to the numbers on the diagram.
 |  Furnaces |
At the canal side end were the furnaces in which the glass was made. Originally they were all oil fired but were gradually all replaced (probably) by electric furnaces.
Furnaces are like tanks made of fireclay blocks and roofed over, oil fired by burners placed at various points around the upper part of the walls. Each furnace had a melting end and a working end, divided by a wall with a connecting passage at the base of the tank. Glass was made by feeding into the melting end sand and cullet. (Cullet is rejected glass articles crushed up and used to help in the melting process). As the sand and cullet is fed into the melting end, it melts and sinks to pass through the connecting passage to the working end.
At the working end there are exit holes through which the gathering iron is dipped into the molten glass to gather up sufficient glass for the job in hand. The gathering iron was dipped into a ring of fireclay which floated on top of the molten glass. At the start of a shift, and at intervals, the surface of the molten glass is cleaned off to remove any ash etc which had blown over the internal wall from the meting end. This is done with the gathering iron.
The furnace at the top of the diagram [1] was an electric furnace in my time there and was used for automatic tubing manufacture. The glass was drawn off from the furnace and then drawn up vertically to form the tube, being cut into lengths by a man standing on an upper level.
Below that furnace was the tube run [2] where the hand blown tube was made. In my time this was done by Harry Round, who could produce tubing to the finest tolerances and tiniest sizes. The glass is gathered from furnace [3]. In the first instance it is pear shaped but, by blowing, swinging and then rolling, a heavy walled tube is formed. At the tube run the assistant joins his bulb of glass to the other end of the heavy walled tube and walks backwards along the tube run. At this point the glass is stretching and, of course, reducing in diameter both externally and internally. As it cools off it is lowered to a track, which is a ladder-like construction, lined with a heat resistant material.
Below that was the furnace [3] which fed the automatic machines, the machines which moulded glass. Below that again was the furnace [4] which was used for the hand moulded glass and blown glass. This was mainly used for shorter runs whilst the automatic machines did the longer runs. You would, for instance, need many fewer large casseroles than you would small plates, so the casseroles would be produced by hand while the automatic machines produced the plates. And the hand moulding was used for much of the technical glass and rectangular and other shaped dishes.
For hand moulded glass the operator collected glass from the furnace on a gathering iron. Gathering irons had ends of various diameters to give the amount of glass required for a particular article. The operator would then pass this amount of glass down to the moulds on a lower level, where another worker, equipped with a pair of shears, would cut off the glass so that it dropped into the mould. The table would then revolve, taking each mould under the press where a plunger would come down to press the glass into the mould, the plunger being operated by a lever pulled down by the operator. After a number of rotations of the table the glass would be sufficiently air cooled for it to be extracted from the mould by a kick up system operating on the bottom of the central section of the mould. A worker could then pick the piece up with tongs for transfer to a Lehr.
In automatic moulding, as the glass flowed through a controlled aperture from the furnace, a set of shears would cut off the required weight of glass. The sheared glass would travel down a chute into the mould body. The main table would then turn through 90 degrees while the mould table turned through 180 degrees. This brought the filled moulded into the press position. The mould ring would drop into place and down would come the plunger. As the plunger withdrew the main table revolved a further 90 degrees. This was a continuing operation. By the time the main table had completed a 360 degree turn, air directed into the moulds had cooled off the pressed article sufficiently for it to be taken from the mould. This was done by a kick up system.
For hand blown glass glass was gathered from the furnace on tubular irons manually. The glass was gathered from a position on the surface of the molten glass determined by a fire clay ring floating on the surface. At the start of the shift and at intervals during the shift, the operator would "skim off" the surface within the ring to clear it of any scum or ash from the burners. As the operator carries the glass to the blowing position, by swinging and rolling on a steel plate, he attains an appropriate shape while maintaining the air bubble he has formed in the glass. Meanwhile the assistant has opened the mould and he closes it as the glass is lowered into it. The blowing completed, the glass is "cracked" off, clear of the top of the mould. The surplus is removed at a later operation.
In the case of hand moulded and automatic moulded glass, the moulded glass would revolve out of the other side on the equipment and would be taken off and moved to one of a row of Lehrs [5]. In the case of blown glass the item was moved to the Lehrs as soon as the mould was opened. The Lehrs were chambers, many yards long, with conveyors inside, into which the newly moulded glass would be placed and first heated back up to 600 degree centigrade. It would then be allowed to cool gradually - annealed - as it passed through the Lehr. Items usually took about 2 hours to pass through the Lehrs.
In the corner was the maintenance shop [6].
Items which were to have a coloured surface finish applied to them would be taken to the paint application area [7] where they would be sprayed with the paint and glass mixture and then returned to one of the Lehrs, where the temperature of 600 degrees was sufficient to melt the coating and fuse it with the glass piece.
To one side of the Lehrs was the processing area [8]. In this area any further work that was required on any pieces was carried out. This would include, for example, cutting off any surplus from blown objects using an oxy/gas burner.
Beyond the Lehrs was the inspection area [9] where each finished piece was inspected. The people here would also check the progress of the glass through the Lehrs.
To the other side of the inspection area, and extending between the Lehrs and the paint application area, were the mould machining room [10] and the tool room [11]. The moulds were made for us by an outside company who supplied them as rough castings. These casting had been manufactured bearing in mind the importance of those surfaces of the casting that were to be machined and polished (the moulding faces) in the ring, plunger and main body. They were then machined in house and polished to a high finish. This high polish was essential to the smooth finish of the end product. The moulds would have to be checked frequently during the production process and replaced where necessary. The used moulds would be taken to the tool shop for re-polishing.
The moulds would be made in several parts so that, for example, a mould for the outside of a casserole would have three parts: a ring, a main body and a centre; and there would be another mould, the shape of the interior, which came down with the plunger. The glass was forced into the gap between the upper and lower moulds to form the casserole shape. If you examine such an item closely you can feel the slight ridge where the parts of the mould met – in the case of our casserole you will find them inside and outside the rim and on the base at the edge of the flat surface.
This production process was running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Moving on
The company was very much a family owned firm and there was a limit to how far up the ladder one could get. So I left and on the 1st April 1960 I started work with Hopes of Smethwick (near the WBA football ground!). In due course they became Crittall Hope and I worked there, altogether, for 28 years.
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