Yeovil's Virtual Museum

The Gloving WEB

A die cutter used to stamp out glove blanks

 

The following description of the gloving web, is courtesy of David Shore.

"I served my apprenticeship at W H Hallett & Son, Hallson Works, Sherborne Road, in the mid 1950s.

The Web, as we called it, was constructed on a 1/4" thick steel back-plate. There was a wood spacer topped with a No 14 gauge thick face plate. The cutters were made from "high carbon knife steel" forged into shape in a blacksmith's forge and shaped using zinc templates. They were then heated red hot in the forge and quenched in whale oil. The hardened blades were then slowly reheated until the whale oil on the blade caught alight in the flame - this indicated the temperature for tempering was reached and then the blade was finally quenched.

Once all the knives were assembled in the 'Web', the cutting face of the knives were levelled on a large sanding disk. The whole assembly was then dismantled and each knife was brought up to edge on grinding wheels running up and away from you. The grinding wheels were made from wood with a strip of leather stuck around it with animal glue and little oak pegs. The leather was then painted with more hot animal glue and rolled in Emery grit. The grinder was quite noisy so we learnt to lip read. I remember the leather once coming unstuck and a knife blade was flung through Mr Hallett's overhead office wall.

Once the blades were brought up to edge they were finally honed with oiled Arkansas stone. There was also a Bolton opening for the thumb which was adjustable. The back plate was radiused all round and then draw filed and polished and buffed to look like chrome and the face plate was screwed to the back plate with 3BA countersunk screws and their heads were polished and buffed to look like chrome. We also made Thumb punches that were formed from the same knife steel."