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Introduction
Long slow journey
Traditional skills
How it's done
Link to the past
Other vehicles
At the start of the first programme in the Salvage Squad series, Hercules consists of 2,000 rusty pieces of metal scattered around a Somerset farm. It is unrecognisable as a steamroller but the Squad's task is to piece this huge machine back together, restore it to full working order and have the finished product certified by a government-approved inspector – all in just 10 days, so it's ready for the world's biggest steam event, the Great Dorset Steam Fair.
Hercules was one of the steamrollers that shaped the roads of Britain from the 1920s to the late 1950s. After its retirement it was sold into private hands and then covered hundreds of miles at a steady 5mph, becoming a regular fixture at steam fairs across the country. But when it became unsafe 10 years ago, its owner, 56-year-old Colin Hembury, dismantled it. Ill health and the high cost of rebuilding the vehicle has prevented him from restoring it, and for the last 10 years Hercules has been out of action.
The Squad soon discover that the restoration work requires many skills that died out with the age of steam.
Hercules's tender (where the driver stands and where the spare coal and water are kept) was fit only for scrap so the Squad have to build a new one from scratch.
The tender is made from inch-thick steel plates that need to be fastened together. Today they would be welded but in the 1920s they were riveted together.
When Hercules was built by Aveling and Porter in 1923, the steel plates were heated in huge forges and then pressed into shape using massive hydraulic presses. After that, the plates were riveted together. But the Aveling and Porter factory with its specialised tender-bay has long since been demolished, so to create the new tender the Squad has to use a much older – and extremely dangerous – technique called 'flanging'.
To join two metal plates at 90°, a corner needs to be created so the faces of the two plates can be riveted together. Using techniques perfected by blacksmiths, the members of the Squad learn to beat the metal plates into shape by hand. This is called 'flanging'.
First a metal 'former' is manufactured with the same shape and curves as the side of the tender. The metal plate is then beaten into shape on the former, like a horseshoe on a blacksmith's anvil. The metal plate has to be bent around the curves on the former without any creases while remaining uniform in thickness.
To achieve this, the metal first has to be heated to over 1000°C. Unlike their 19th-century counterparts who used coal, a forge and bellows, our restorers use modern oxypropane torches, which makes the task a little easier.
When the metal has been heated to a bright cherry red, Axel Cleghorn used a 28-lb sledge hammer both to create the corner of the tender and to spread the metal to each side of the corner and prevent bumps and creases developing. If the metal plate is bent unevenly it is at risk of structural failure.This process takes six hours of heavy and hazardous work.
Flanging is an ancient blacksmithing process from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, which, before welding, was used to join the corners of every type of metal from tin plate to the iron plates on a warship. Today it is used by only a handful of people in the world.
Gipsy Moth
Thames sailing barge
Racing car
Stolly
Fire engine
Steamboat
Gyroplane
Bristol car
Tank
Steamroller
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