How Scythes are made| traditional crafts | Finding out | 1980

Down there is a coke fire that's hot enough to melt iron and charcoal to make steel. This is the puller-out. His job is to pull out the liquid metal in its pot. Can you see that the men have sacking tied round them? This was soaked with water to protect them from the heat. You can see the metal still bubbling away. Now the metal is poured into a mould. The men really need protection against the heat now. When the metal is cool it will be rolled or hammered into thin strips. And to do this, water power was used. The water wheel turns all the machinery inside the workshops. Here it is working a bellows which keeps the forge or fire very hot. You can see the metal strip is red hot. Now it's going to be hammered into shape. When the scythe blade had been hammered into shape, it was sharpened in the grinding shop. This was a very dangerous job as sometimes the grinding wheel would break and kill the grinder. Next, the blade was riveted to its backing. Each scythe was made individually. Finally, the scythe was covered with a special paint to protect it from rust. I came to work here when I was 12 years of age. I was brought here by my brother. Without someone working here, you couldn't get a job here. Trade was so bad. And the pay was bad. But I got 3 shillings and 9 pence a week for a 60 pound a week. There was 22 men employed here when I came and the wage bill was 22 pound per week. And in that time we produced 140 dozen scythes a week. And in your spare time you made hooks, sickles, hay knives, saw knives, steak knives, river knives, beet knives, carrot knives, turnip knives. That was in your spare time. So one can imagine that your life was rather full. You must get very busy. I used to light 17 fires on this factory every morning before 6 o'clock. And I walked 5 miles to work before I got here. And I gathered the firewood under the trees every night to light the following morning's fires. Winter time, when you did work for the winter, when it went dark, you had to buy a candle. You worked with a candle in a bottle. You could either buy a candle or go home. But if you went home, your money stopped. So naturally you bought a candle and you worked on it as long as you could. This was one of the original slave labour camps. Before Hitler was born, this was a slave labour camp.