Fel Electric

[THYLACINE]

I don't really know if it's gone, I'm just assuming it has. It's been over 40 years since I worked there, you always remember your first job. It was supposed to be a stop-gap until I was old enough to join the navy - another dream scuppered! I can't even remember where Fel Electric was, just an old industrial area in the heart of Sheffield. I remember the buffer girls from the cutlery works standing in the street, grabbing their last cigarette before the start of their shift, laughing and giggling as I walked past. Fel Electric made transformers and my job was a core assembler (and a floor sweeper). A transformer core - the big lump of metal that becomes magntised - is made up of hundreds of thin metal plates which interlock and the assembler's job which required a huge amount of skill and manual dexterity was to place these plates in perfect order - one right, one left, one right, one left, one right . . etc etc After you had built the core up to the required height, the foreman would cast his trained eye over your work and if you had gone out of sequence, he would put a white dot where the error appeared. Then . . . you guessed it . . . you had to unassemble the core down to the white dot and start afresh. What a character-building occupation!

I would love to know where Fel Electric was ( I have the Geographia Plan of the City of Sheffield for reference) and anything you can find about it . I remember some of the men that worked there and some amusing anecdotes which I'll keep for another time.

[RichardB]

JohnsonFel Crack Detector

Garden Street maybe ?

[RichardB]

or Sidney Street maybe ?

Sidney Street ?? :blink:

[RichardB]

731 pages ! I should cocoa

[SteveHB]

Number 41 Sidney Street is now a car park.

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[vox]

731 pages ! I should cocoa

Lazy - page 349

[THYLACINE]

Thanks everyone, the place I worked at was definitely Sidney Street, I can remember walking from the bus terminus at the bottom of Snig Hill past Kennings as if I were heading for Bramall Lane. And I remember the crack detectors they made, the factory was a small 2 storey building the crack detectors were made downstairs, I worked in the transformer workshop upstairs. I noticed the Garden Street address was from 1940, I wonder if they were bombed out and forced to find new premises? I'd love to know what happened to Fel Electric. The forman in the transformer workshop was a man called Earnest ( I only remember the name because of Oscar Wilde's play) He gave me my first electric shock. He told me to hold these two wires coming from a large black box called a Megger, then he quickly turned a handle on the side and I jumped into the air. He had rotten teeth which looked very painful and he sucked Polo mints all day, every day. He was a chain-sucker. Thanks again for your help, any more information on the fate of Fel Electric would be greatly appreciated.

[hilldweller]

I don't really know if it's gone, I'm just assuming it has. It's been over 40 years since I worked there, you always remember your first job. It was supposed to be a stop-gap until I was old enough to join the navy - another dream scuppered! I can't even remember where Fel Electric was, just an old industrial area in the heart of Sheffield. I remember the buffer girls from the cutlery works standing in the street, grabbing their last cigarette before the start of their shift, laughing and giggling as I walked past. Fel Electric made transformers and my job was a core assembler (and a floor sweeper). A transformer core - the big lump of metal that becomes magntised - is made up of hundreds of thin metal plates which interlock and the assembler's job which required a huge amount of skill and manual dexterity was to place these plates in perfect order - one right, one left, one right, one left, one right . . etc etc After you had built the core up to the required height, the foreman would cast his trained eye over your work and if you had gone out of sequence, he would put a white dot where the error appeared. Then . . . you guessed it . . . you had to unassemble the core down to the white dot and start afresh. What a character-building occupation!

I would love to know where Fel Electric was ( I have the Geographia Plan of the City of Sheffield for reference) and anything you can find about it . I remember some of the men that worked there and some amusing anecdotes which I'll keep for another time.

A job I remember well Thylacine, although in my case it was making up transformers for my own hobby use. I's & E's or sometimes T's & U's and having to make sure that the laminations were all the right way around as they were only varnished on one face. The varnish of course was to insulate them, one from another, to prevent the circulation of eddy currents. Many modern transformers seem to have a run of TIG weld along each face, possibly to reduce hum but I would have thought this negates the use of laminations to an extent. When I needed a professionally made transformer I used the services of a firm called VSS who were in a dingy workshop on Portabello. I don't know what happened to FEL Electric but there's a lot of second hand stuff of their manufacture advertised on the t'internet.

Perhaps they were taken over by someone trading under another name. As I remember it their products were quite unsophisticated and capable of repair by any good rewind shop.

HD

[THYLACINE]

Thanks HD. You're one of a kind. People who make up transformers as a hobby are a dying breed :)

[Guest lazarus]

Thanks HD. You're one of a kind. People who make up transformers as a hobby are a dying breed

FEL-ELECTRIC was on Sidney St and it was between Leppingtons Cutlery Firm and Smith & Hills manufacturing chemist, in the early eighties they had a bad fire which gutted the building.The shell of the building was then bought by George Butlers (they were initially Leppingtons) and converted into more shops for making Cutlery, the upper floor which had two large sliding doors that opened onto Sidney St was one of the shops that I was supervisor of but I never liked it the roof was over twenty feet high.

[Markbaby]

JohnsonFel Crack Detector

Garden Street maybe ?

The Johnson part of JohnsonFel is now Johnson & Allen who still manufacture Magnetic Crack Detectors in Sheffield!

have a look at :

http://www.johnsonandallen.co.uk

click on the "60 years" link

[THYLACINE]

FEL-ELECTRIC was on Sidney St and it was between Leppingtons Cutlery Firm and Smith & Hills manufacturing chemist, in the early eighties they had a bad fire which gutted the building.The shell of the building was then bought by George Butlers (they were initially Leppingtons) and converted into more shops for making Cutlery, the upper floor which had two large sliding doors that opened onto Sidney St was one of the shops that I was supervisor of but I never liked it the roof was over twenty feet high.

Thanks Lazarus for ressurecting this thread and providing details. I guess the FE building was a bit of a tinderbox. According to Steve's earlier post that entire block has gone. Just history now.

[THYLACINE]

The Johnson part of JohnsonFel is now Johnson & Allen who still manufacture Magnetic Crack Detectors in Sheffield!

have a look at :

http://www.johnsonandallen.co.uk

click on the "60 years" link

Thanks Markbaby for the link. See, if I'd stuck with the transformer assembly job I could have been Chief Electromagnetic Particle and Die Penetrant Engineer now - in both MPI and DPI systems!

Another career scuppered.

[Guest Secretary]

I worked as Secretary to Mr.Fell and then David Tasker until 1971, when I left to go to college. David was Managing Director and brother to John Tasker of Tasker's Engineering Mr.Tomlinson was Company Secretary. Emily looked after the accounts and Norman Gill was the draughtsman. At least part of the firm moved to the premises of Clement Garrett in Leyburn Road, Abbeydale soon after. Clement Garrett made the metal casings for the transformers and crack detectors and I think that Fel-Electric actually bought out Clement Garrett.

The telephone number for Fel-Electric is forever in my memory -Sheffield 27357.

[THYLACINE]

I worked as Secretary to Mr.Fell and then David Tasker until 1971, when I left to go to college. David was Managing Director and brother to John Tasker of Tasker's Engineering Mr.Tomlinson was Company Secretary. Emily looked after the accounts and Norman Gill was the draughtsman. At least part of the firm moved to the premises of Clement Garrett in Leyburn Road, Abbeydale soon after. Clement Garrett made the metal casings for the transformers and crack detectors and I think that Fel-Electric actually bought out Clement Garrett.

The telephone number for Fel-Electric is forever in my memory -Sheffield 27357.

I just rang it but there's no answer. Is it your day off?

Thank you for the information, I was there in 1967-8 so we were probably co-workers.