Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral Now and Then Stone Manganese Marine (SMM PROPELLERS) Ltd

Finally starting to get around to scanning some negs from the 80's.I'm having trouble uploading the images so have made a set in one of my flickr accounts. Sadly, the foundry is now long gone, another British Industry lost to the far east.If I have got any names wrong then I'm sorry as it's been nearly 30 years. Got loads more to scan (Yours will be in the next batch Phil ). Hope they bring back some memories. Just follow the link below
http://www.flickr.com/photos/birkenhead339/sets/72157626825840187/

Good pics Mike - & a good memory for names !
Looking forward to the next batch .
You in touch with anyone from back then ?

I'll checkout the pics later, love to see what it used to be like.

One thing I will say though is it's still here, I'm here right now as this is where I work
They're knocking one of the buildings down as I write this, the site has changed a lot over the 4 years I've been here.
They still refurbish the proppelers.

Fantastic - thanks for sharing

No mate, I bumped into Georgie Weeks jnr, Jackie Hill and Wagger at my Auntie Jackie's funeral a couple of years ago.All the SMM directors turned up as well. What made me laugh was that Stone Marine, as they are called now, have a web site and have been using one of my photographs for the past few years without my permission. I still have the negatives so I think I will drop them a line with regards breach of copyright haha . The photographs so far are from the book I had printed about SMM that won the Runner up prize in the Short article competition at the British Foundry Industry awards in the early 80's.
Used to see Jackie Hill a lot when he was on the Taxi's and I used to see Frankie Proctor in the Wallasey RNA club when I used to pop in for a drink on Monday nights but that was a few years ago

When I was a young'n, must have been aroung 81-82 I worked on the S.M.M. site. It was for the building firm that did the work to expand the pit to fit the prop in the last picture on the flikr page. While working on it we were told it was to create the largest prop in the world. Glad to see it came to fruition, even if it has been beaten since. It facinated me at the time to see how the props were made.

Added a few more to the original

I used to work on the furnaces in there as a sub contractor.
Always fascinated at the guys hand making the moulds and casting the props.
I also worked on the demolition machines when they pulled the place down. spent a fair bit of time on that site.
I remember one of the guys showing me the `mix` for the furnaces. It was to produce an alloy, not brass as some people think. There were copper water tanks and various different metals mixed in. Once, just after the first Iraq War, they had tea chests FULL of silver coloured coins about the size of a 10p. They were all mint and never issued....WITH SADDAMS FACE ON THEM!!!
I grabbed a handful, still got them somewhere. Wonder if worth anything?

Cameraman, great photo's. My great aunt worked at SMM in the late 40's as a metallurgist (spelling) and after she died a few years ago I called in and spoke with a Dr. Patience who is currently looking fo any old records of her working there and ther exact dates.
Cheers Chris.

I remember my parents (Dad I think) telling me that SMM was one of the loudest places in the world to work, somethng to do with hammering on castings (propellers)? Does that sound right?

I remember when the 1/2 pence went out of circulation. We got millions of pounds worth in and melted them down.The Iraq money was typical at SMM. Everytime a country had a political coup the coins ( That are made in the UK ) used to come in to be melted down. I remember when the CEDI pieces came in to be melted down. They were the same size, shape and weight as a 50p. Shed loads went missing and ended up in the fruit machines and ciggy machines of New Brighton. I remember the Police got involved in that one.

my grandad worked there for years, untill he passed away around 1981, was only 56.

Thats about right, the props used to ring like bells when the machine shop trimmed them with the chipping hammers. There were a hell of a lot of claims for vibratory white finger due to this as well. I used to stick my fingers in my ears when I walked past the sheds.Imagine hitting a bell about 6 times a second non stop. This only happened on the Manganese bronze and nickalium props. The secret stuff such as the submarine props we used to call clunk metal. When you hit them they used to sound like hitting lead. No ring at all. The alloy was a special blend that reduced cavitation and noise.

Amazing, yes somewhere in the photo gallery on here I put photos up of one of the pneumatic hammers used, the warning signs outside the building it was in (hearing protection should be worn) and the building being knocked down.

The hammer was the last thing to be removed as the building around it was demolished the huge machines they used couldn't pull it out the ground, they had to cut it up with oxy acetylene then dig 6 feet into the ground to remove the very heavy base.

I'll put some photos up of how it looks now for you.

Oh, they used to use a really old red truck to transport the propellers around the site but I haven't seen it for a while, do you remember that? I'll have to dig my photos out.

All such skilled stuff and so sad that we let it that skill come to nothing and all kinds of manufacturing go abroad. I cannot fathom how UK has lost so many industries - from Motors to this. All gone. And I see the USA doing the self-same thing. Pretty soon we won't be able to make anything at all for ourselves. What will happen when the nouveau-riche Asians need to find somewhere cheaper to manafacture stuff? They'll probably eventually come back to us because by then, we will probably be happy to work for peanuts!