J. Sloper and Co by Peter Lewin
See J. Sloper and Co.
Peter Lewin was an engineer at J. Sloper and Co during the 1960s and 70s. He has recorded his memories in this essay below detailing the time he worked for the company. With Peter's kind permission, we have been allowed to publish the following on Grace's Guide.
J. Sloper and Co
Works address:
Blackburn Road
West Hampstead
London
NW6
I was fifteen and a half straight from school when I joined J Sloper & Co in late 1961 as a fitter improver. I have never forgotten that my first week pay packet contained £3 3/9d for a forty two hour week.
People
Names I have personal memory of include:
E Laver: director (called everybody by their surname, very much an old-school director)
E Slater: engineering director (nickname Ernie - as deaf as a post with a large hearing aid on his chest that he was constantly twiddling with. Called everyone “son” whether they old enough to be his father or not)
J McColl: staff draftsman (nickname Mac - was constantly in the company of E Slater during development of a new project)
A (Annie) Sussems: works office secretary (a truly outstanding looking women, a good secretary too)
J Hookway: workshop foreman (nickname Jim - was highly looked upon by the workshop engineers)
R (Dick) Wheeler: machine shop foreman.
S (Sid) Clinch: senior fitter/occasional toolmaker (from an engineering point of view my hero, if it was a lump of metal Sid could work miracles with it)
R (Ron) Flewin: senior fitter (we became great friends after I left J Slopers. Was related by marriage to Annie Sussems, and would hold jolly conversations with her in the workshop)
It should be remembered in those days for a lad at a tender and naive 15 ½ it was very much a speak when spoken to regime (times were very different then for the youth of the time), so most of the above for a very long time were only names to me rather than personalities, this of course did nothing for my engineering advancement until after a number of years I was offered the position of trainee toolmaker.
Products
The majority of the smaller hand operated machines were similar in layout to an obtainable today embossing press, although this is not a Sloper machine.
Many older people will be familiar with general banking procedures during the turn of the 20th century up to the introduction of electronic banking whereby a bank would return your used cheques with the word: Paid, Unpaid or Cancelled perforated though them, more rarely Uncancelled. If your bank was National Provincial, Westminster (later to become NatWest) Lloyds, Midland, Barclays or Coutts and Co then the machine used to achieve this would almost certainly have been produced by J Sloper & Co.
A small mass produced hand perforator was known as the “Ballot Press” these were used in polling booths during general and local elections, the die-sets in these used a removable set with easily changed pins to form a code that was perforated through ballot papers. The earliest types looked very like the picture above, the die-set was held in place by a wing-nut on the front. Much later types used a much cheaper to produce pressed steel body. A number of other companies produced Ballot presses.
No 5: was the smallest of the hand lever machines with a base size of approximately 6 inch by 3 inch and would have been supplied to small bank branches to perforate Paid or Unpaid through a small number of cheques.
No 2: was the next size up of similar layout approximately 8x4 inch base, the perforating die would have been correspondingly larger than the No 5 machine, with more scope for the size and complexity of the wording in the die set, indeed some examples had circular company logo’s.
One particularly interesting one-off I made was a No 2 machine that involved the construction of a die set that contained 250 gramophone needles that only pierced a sheet of foil leaving a surface rather like a cheese grater, who the customer was or what its purpose was is not known.
Model 40: it is necessary here to include a brief description of a perforating die-set, the general layout was the same principle in any model of perforator: The perforating was done by vee-headed hardened pins that were fitted into a brass plate called the “undertop” a steel plate known as the “top” was screwed to the undertop thereby holding the pins in place, the top was thick enough to have a lever operated spring-loaded plunger screwed into it. Continuing down the die-set the next plate was the “clearing plate” the perforating pins would slide up and down through the clearing plate so that the paper was not picked up by the pins, next down was a separator of a thickness specified by the customer depending on how many sheets of paper (cheques) were to be perforated in one operation. Last was the “steel” this was drilled very closely to the size of the pins so as to achieve a fine burr free cut, the other parts, clearing plate and undertop were drilled a “looser” fit to the pins to allow them to slide easily but not slack. The steel, clearing plate and separator were screwed together to form one unit. The undertop and top were also screwed together to form the rising and falling part of the unit.
The No 5 and No 2 die-sets could be arranged what today would be called landscape or portrait direction of word layout, the separator providing a “distance on” or how far in from the edge of the paper specified by the customer.
The Model 40 was a much larger machine of similar layout, but had a different principle, it still used the general assembly of the die-set, but the square U shaped clearing plate was not screwed to the steel, but was attached to “ears” on the main body casting, there was no fixed separator, this allowed the perforating freely anywhere on a sheet of typically A4 paper or stack of papers, typically machines of this type being larger provided more operator leverage to allow thicker amounts to be perforated in one operation.
Very complex styles of script, logo’s and ciphers could be included on a Model 40 die-set.
The above products would best be described as fixed-die perforators meaning that they had only one purpose; to perforate a single word or a larger more complex design or cipher.
There was though one other fixed-die machine:
Hand Clip: the majority of customers for these were hospitals (although they were mainly supplied through an agent) used to perforate L or R through X-ray films.
The machine itself was self explanatory; a pliers like device with a gardening secateurs spring, but arranged to have parallel closing jaws, fully chrome plated. Some special one-off die-sets were made.
The following products can also be arranged with a single word but with the addition of a variable date. These machines were fitted with a die-block that not only included any required word but had blocks of punch pins arranged in customer specified blocks (5x4, 6x4 and 7x3 were the most common, but any custom configuration would be made).
The punch pin in a die-block differed from the punches in a fixed die-set as they had a shoulder on them typically ½ inch from the top end, but could vary in total length depending on requirements. The top end of the punches would either be pushed down through paper while the unwanted punches would go up holes drilled into brass rings that formed the date number required, these rings were held by mechanisms above the punches and moved downwards by a number of different means.
Some customers preferred the date configuration all numerical e.g 30 06 15, others preferred lettered months e.g 30 JUN 15. Slopers would accommodate any customer requirements.
The die-block principle remained similar for all variable date machines, the only difference being whether the customer wanted landscape (along the bed) or portrait view (across the bed) to the finished perforation.
On the under shoulder side of the punches was a loose fit plate (the lifter) which pulled the punches up and out of the paper, lifting lugs of various configurations achieved this.
Model 35: was hand or treadle operated machine and the only along the bed variable date machine Slopers made, and the only machine to have chromed pegs to locate the date rings in place rather than spring loaded keys.
Date rings were made from high-quality brass tubing approximately 4 inches in diameter with an inside bore of approximately 2 ½ inch.
In the case of the Model 35 machine the steel ring boss was slotted 1/8 inch along its length, the rings were drilled for pegs to line up with the slot, this located the rings for punch drilling and variable user date change. The die-set was built into the castings of the machine and was not removable. The most basic of the variable date perforators.
The other and most widely used ring type had slots milled across the set of rings approximately 1/16th inch wide by 1/8th inch deep, spring-loaded keys located the rings for punch drilling and user variable date change.
The number of pegs or slots would depend on customer preference but would be at least 11 <1 to 10 plus nil to provide a blank space> 12 for 12 month words. Other peg/slot configurations were made to customer requests.
Treadle operated machines were mounted on a painted angle iron frame with a wooden desk top fitted. And foot operated treadle.
Model 49: one of the most widely produced hand or treadle operated machines. An across the bed variable date die-block which was removable to allow different worded dies to be used in one machine. The date rings were sprung key location type. A parallelogram mechanism in the machine provided for the ring assembly to rise and fall straight rather than in a slight arc (see later products)
The following products were fitted with carbon-brush universal electric motors to drive the fall and rise of the ring assembly above the die-block punches.
PE 60: For many years the motor was a cylinder vacuum cleaner motor supplied by Hoover Ltd of Perivale, West London. These motors were much admired for their reliability and when fitted with a capacitor gave almost instant full revolutions and power.
During the 1970’s Hoover Ltd ceased production of these motors and a new motor was sought. After some tests a motor from Parvalux of Bournemouth was selected. It was a much more modern looking motor that needed to be fitted in to the perforators in a completely new way. The Parvalux motor was never as successful or reliable as the Hoover motor, the line up of the new motor was critical to its success, the motor mounting made this very difficult to achieve.
A variation of the PE60 was the PE 70 (more of this later) supplied to Kodak for use in darkrooms, the Parvalux motor created a much more obvious brighter spark that made its use in darkroom a problem, this was resolved in time with shielding, but this could bring overheating when in continuous use as the PE70 was designed to be.
The PE 60 was in essence a powered version of the model 49 with, similar sized die-block fitted with a micro-switch trip switch to activate the perforation with the insertion of papers set to give the customer specified distance on.
The PE 60 however had a ring assembly mounted on the forward end of side arms approximately 12 inches long pivoted within the main frame aluminium casting, therefore the whole ring assembly described a small arc unlike the Model 49’s parallelogram mounted ring assembly. The arc of the PE 60 had few disadvantages unless the customer specified over-large lettering on the rings.
The PE 60 had a direct American competitor from the Cummings company. Very rarely, Slopers were asked to service a Cummings machine.
The PE 60 drive was through a worm and worm-wheel contained in an aluminium gearbox attached directly to the motor via a rubber star block linkage to reduce noise (the Parvalux didn’t use the rubber insert but used a direct steel connection, as a result the Parvalux machine was regarded as noisier than the Hoover motor powered PE 60) The rubber star block was less sensitive to motor misalignment than the steel Parvalux connector which could be temperamental to get the alignment the necessary spot-on. Final drive to the ring assembly was by spring loaded sliding dog held in neutral by a solenoid switch until activated by the paper trip switch.
This description applies to all other PE prefixed machines.
PE 70: This variation on the PE 60 which, had the same mechanics and electrical operation, but was supplied only to Kodak for use on 35mm film stock.
The rings and die-block were however quite different to the PE 60 variable date operation.
The rings were case hardened steel and used for sequential numbering rather than dates, the rings were turned by a spring loaded case hardened pawl cut to fit in various cut-outs in the rings to give continuous numbering from 00000 to 99999. The inside diameter of the rings were cut for spring-loaded hardened locators to hold the rings in position. A stylo was supplied with each machine so the rings could be manually reset with holes drilled in the rings for this purpose.
The variations did not end there. Various three letter words such as PAN could also be perforated. Also two different types of cutting knife could be specified. One was just a straight-forward straight cut across the film, the other cut a feed tongue on the end of the film to allow easier feed onto developing cassettes.
PE 90: The PE 90 was designed for the De La Rue Company right at the beginning of ATM cash machine technology. While a number of these machines were built, tested and delivered, the technology was over-taken by computer and electronics.
The PE 90 itself shared many of it parts design with the PE 60/70 but was a much wider machine to accommodate the De La Rue die-block requirement.
The PE 90 was fitted with an up-rated Parvalux motor and was very noisy in operation as a consequence.
Other Products:
The majority of other products were much larger angle-iron frame mounted machines often driven by ¼ or ½ Hp motors via belt driven 18 to 24 inch heavy weight flywheels. These machines were at the heavy-duty end of perforators, one of the most common types was fitted with a die-block containing block type lettering based on 5/8 or ¾ inch square solid tool-steel letters usually PAID being the most common, designed to perforate through ¼ inch of paper, thicknesses of paper of this sort brought numerous problems as the paper could take on a steel like quality needing considerable power to complete each operation, careful attention had to be paid to a varying length of punch with each letter given a rake (angle) on the cutting face so that no letter was being punched at the same time as another, this required a considerable depth of stroke to the operating ram compared to the thickness of the paper.
I have personal knowledge of these machines as towards the end of my time with Slopers I built most of them.
The frames were usually fitted with a polished wood table top around 5’ x 4’
Other machines built on the same principle were those made for The Land Registry in (at the time) Swansea which had an embossing die that was used to emboss the Royal Cipher on the red seal at the end of registry documents, five such machines were built and I built all of them.
Stamp perforators were also produced, in the case of those that I personally built were 10 Over or 12 Over, that were fitted with removable dies that perforated codes on sheet stacks of ten or twelve stamps at time. Whilst at the manufacturing end of the operation we were not actually told what type of stamps were being perforated, nor were we given test samples, I understood that National Insurance stamps were the most likely types.
Other machines of this type had die holders for individual numbering and month dies, the machines being built by the senior engineers and the many hundreds of dies by the new-starters, being made to fit through plug and female gauges to fit in sliding trays in the machine die-blocks.
The principle of individual dies was the same other perforating arrangements except they had deeper space at the separator to allow thicker amounts of paper to be perforated at one pass, which required the greater power of the fly-wheel belt driven machine.
I built several machines for the GPO that were unique in the machine layout being on angled worktops much wider than the standard layout and painted bright blue.
The GPO supplied their own visiting inspector, principally to check the fit of the thousands of dies (all different codes) that were made, and when the machines were completed these were inspected as well.
These many very different types of machines did not have model numbers but were known in the workshop by the customers name.
A number of other machines included:
Railway: Pendulum action railway ticket date perforators, those produced by Slopers were mostly supplied to the Sudan Railway. Other manufacturers made very similar machines for use in the UK.
Hatband: Bespoke hat makers would perforate the name of the customer on the inner hatband. These machines used a cast iron drum around 6 inches in diameter with a full set of numbers and letters punch die around the edge, this worked on the same principle as the date perforators with the unwanted punches having their holes drilled right through the drum edge, those used to form the letter were left just a small dimple to push the punch down through the integral die block, only one set of punches was provided as the operation was one letter at a time, the machine being hand operated.
The last group of machines were known as Line Machines which as the name implies perforated lines of holes to form tear-off portions quite often of newsprint width, most of these machines were exported often to the Sudan. They could be power operated of manual treadle.
The largest machines made were those supplied to the paper-pattern (clothing) industry, because the size of patterns needed a physically large amount of room under the perforating head to move patterns around.
Contract operations:
A number of operations were carried out on a regular basis:
Automobile oil filter inserts were perforated for the GuD company using a single power press. Many different sizes for the myriad of filter canisters were perforated. The press tools were constructed in-house (some by myself) and designed to perforate a number of different size of filter by altering the number of punches and distance stops in the die-set at any time. Hundreds of different size of filter could be accommodated in a relatively small number of press tools.
Insulation non-adhesive tape was perforated for the Michanite company. LV (low voltage) was perforated through the ¾ inch wide tape at approximately 12 inch intervals, the tape itself was used in many applications including underground and undersea telephone cables. Many thousands of miles of the tape were worked on an almost continuous operation.
The LV machines (4), dies and feed spool mechanisms to re-roll the tape after perforation was entirely built in-house. The tape in 10 inch diameter reels was very fragile and very prone to breakage. The tensioning of the (10 to a machine) re-roll spools was very difficult to maintain needing constant monitoring, oiling to let the tension slip or physically slowing the spools by hand to maintain a constant tension. During my time at Slopers this was carried out by one woman (Netta Clark) who brought this operation to nothing less than an art form, no other staff member could get anywhere near her skill with this very tedious job.
The manufacturing ethos of J Sloper & Co was of a Victorian built to last a lifetime <or several lifetimes actually> most products were over-engineered to a considerable extent, a view that would not be tolerated in this throw-away atmosphere today.
Personal experiences
During my time at J Sloper & Co I built every single type of machine in the range, with the exception of PE, 90, Line machines and the in-house LV machines which were constructed many years before my time, although I made many hundreds of replacement dies for these machines.
As an engineering exercise, every product was built by one staff engineer from the raw machined castings to the finished product, this allowed a small amount of individual attention to detail, for instance; the PE 60 and 70 machines I built looked very slightly different on the finished product from anybody else’s. Most builders of these machines specified the standard hammerite-green paintwork, I always (and usually got) silver hammerite, this resulted in customers asking for silver which eventually became the standard colour.
The first jobs though as a new fitter improver were the production of railway machine dies, these were very small, two of the parts being riveted together using 3/32 brass rivets, the overriding memory was of sore and bleeding fingers that were constantly being hit with a hammer, little sympathy was found though for a very young learner. These days no doubt the parts would be fitted with pop-rivets, but they were practically unheard of during the early 1960’s.
Walking into the Sloper works today would be like stepping back 100 years. An overhead belt driven by a single electric motor machine shop dominated one end of the main workshop, alongside was a more “modern” machine tool shop with several self powered lathes and milling machines, these included a “Little John” lathe and a “Ward” capstan lathe, most of these tools were second-hand, one of the exceptions was a new surface grinder.
Mostly, the use of the grinding machines and similar sorts by today’s standards would be a health and safety representative’s nightmare. I well remember that somehow Slopers used to get a short advance warning of a visit from the factory inspector. The inspector would be plied with tea and biscuits in the office whilst in the workshops all was a mad flurry of activity fitting (if they could be found) the guards and safety covers for many of the machine tools. Quite why the inspector did seem to notice that the covers and guards were quite fresh and clean always escaped me, we usually had a clean bill of health though. A decent while was left to ensure the inspector left the premises before removing the covers again.
During World War Two, Slopers was involved in the production of parts for Rolls Royce Merlin aero engines, including crank-shafts, in the casting stores a number of blank un-machined crank-shafts could be found gathering dust and unwanted.
The main fitting workshop had space for fifteen work-benches, a side workshop had a further four. The side workshop also accommodated the aforementioned LV machines and the works canteen and kitchen which turned out very good daily fresh cooked lunches for those that ordered them. The cook though was on a very short fuse, very few days passed without finding her in floods of tears over some minor criticism of her cooking. I believe she threatened to leave at least once a week, but in fact never did.
Around the workshops were many very old drilling machines, fly-presses and a power saw, also a bench mounted lathe chuck that was used for polishing ring assemblies for those machines that had them.
On a higher level was a small forge and gas oven used for heating tool-steel parts that needed hardening or case hardening any parts that needed it. All of the fitters would make most of their own hand tools (screwdrivers, scrapers etc.) hardening and tempering them in the forge. Most of the fitters were quite adept as blacksmiths; alongside the forge was a large anvil and quenching oil drum. It was always a time of some humour when a part was accidentally dropped into the four foot deep quenching oil drum, I have many times gone fishing up to my armpit feeling for an often small part in the sludge in the bottom of the drum.
Alongside the forge was the steel and brass store, and the general store looked after by Mr Bownford (nickname Colonel) who treated every last screw and nut as his own personal property relinquishing any item only with a countersigned requisition form. A replacement broken drill or worn file would only be issued if the broken drill was returned, if in his opinion the file was not worn enough he would refuse to replace it without a senior staff members counter signature, and then it would only be dispensed grudgingly. I had been with the company for ten years before I was allowed to sign for my own requisitions.
A flight of worn wooden stairs led up to Mac’s drawing office, and the adjacent paint shop dominated by a paint turntable and a large oven.
Also upstairs, was probably the most important workshop in the company, the drilling room where half a dozen elderly women carried out the delicate task of drilling all the parts for dies, die blocks and brass rings. Most of these operations were carried out with great precision with a lightness of touch using drills as small as .025” in diameter, most of the men could do this for a short time, but not for the concentrated length of time these highly trained ladies could do.
The drilling room was over-seen by Alf Gilder, who checked (and rejected many) every single part submitted for drilling. His skill at removing tiny broken drills from difficult to drill tool-steel parts was second to none. Alf was the bane of the life of many lesser skilled fitters, resubmitting parts many times before he would allow “his” ladies to begin their work on them.
The main workshop was an incredibly noisy place with the constant rumbling of the belt driven machinery, sheet metal “bashing” and general noises going on all the time. For those of us that did it, Saturday overtime was looked forward to as the machinery was left off, making the workshop unusually quiet.
Alongside Mr Gilder’s (as we younger fitter reverently called him) domain was the paint shop with its large proving oven and spray booth.
Alongside the paint shop was the drawing office occupied by “Mac” and very often “Ernie” Slater pawing over blueprints of up-coming projects.
Also on the upper landing was a double opening doorway that was used for loading larger products onto a vehicle below, using an ancient hand operated chain winch that took several strong men to turn the capstan like mechanism.
This has at least one unusual (almost) funny story that goes with it. A very large line perforator had been constructed. An elderly 1930’s truck arrived to transport it to the docks for shipment to the Sudan (again!) with considerable effort the crated machine was manhandled on to the low-loader using the winch crane and a lot of pushing and shoving. The truck left the works belching copious amounts of evil smelling black smoke. Evidentially the transport to the Sudan was otherwise uneventful until it came to the removal of the crate from the truck used to get it to its destination. No lifting device could be found to remove the crate from the truck, so the simple expedient of chaining it between two palm trees and driving the truck away was used, a couple of months later the new unused machine was delivered back to Slopers to have the six foot long die bed casting weighing better part of two hundred pounds replaced as it had been cracked apart during the removal operation.
One other job that came to me was the sole on-site service engineer. A call would come in for a request to repair a perforator (it could be any in the range of products, but were mostly the PE electric models) the vast majority of the calls were to the major clearing banks in the city of London, sometimes several calls were done on one day, but could be months before another call was requested.
I would travel to the city using the London Underground carrying a small brown attaché case containing the essential hand tools and a variety of pins and punches, carbon brushes for the PE motors and wiring diagrams etc. The case also contained a clean white coat type overall.
Work would normally take place in an unforgotten corner of the bank with few comforts or facilities, but very occasionally I was positioned in the vault to complete my work.
I broke my employment with J Sloper & Co three times returning twice after other jobs proved to be not to my liking including as a full time toolmaker, and managing a pub for a short while, were I met my first wife. I finally left for good after applying for and getting a staff engineers post with the then Hoover Ltd.
See Also
Sources of Information
- Personal account by P. Lewin