Geoff Blore is a retired engineer of the old school. He’s travelled, innovated and most recently become a local personality. For him, engineering has been a rewarding part of a very varied career. At the age of 76 he is starting to calm things down a little. He’s walked the length of Britain for charity and only became an author long after he’d put away his drawing board. People of Geoff’s generation seem to have a ‘can do’ attitude. A practical and pragmatic mind-set which has always been highly regarded by engineers who understand that however revolutionary and world-beating a concept, there will always be the need for someone to either make it, make it happen or most importantly, make it work properly.
Geoff Blore -"For me, the never ending
change in engineering has always been
the technology and innovation of the
projects that I’ve worked on"
These days we would call the way Geoff’s engineering career started a modern apprenticeship, but just after the war it was a regular apprenticeship, the usual way that young men learned their trade. At the age of 16 Geoff Blore became an apprentice toolmaker with BSA, the Birmingham Small Arms company, one of the most outstanding British manufacturing companies of the age. BSA made a huge variety of products, perhaps the most fondly remembered is motorcycles, but they have made far more than that. During the war, they obviously made guns and rifles and just like most other engineering manufacturers, they were involved in munitions, but because of the skills and capability of the workforce they also made cycles, motorcycles and even tank parts.
‘pure innovation’
BSA came out of the war with a strength and ability to pursue a programme of innovative design that would be highly regarded, even today. This diversity embraced steel works, drop forging and press shops, metal components, engineering products, machine tools, central heating equipment, a gun division, and even Daimler motorcars! Geoff describes the projects they worked on as ‘pure innovation’ and “the best way to learn solid engineering principles.”
For anyone with a fondness for things mechanical, the prospect of becoming a mechanic in the Royal Air Force was a delight for Geoff, when his stint in the armed forces came around in 1950. “As well as the things that you’d expect a RAF mechanic to get involved in, with the repair and maintenance of aircraft and equipment, I also found that I was required to have talents as a locksmith and a safebreaker. One of the most unexpected roles was as coffin plate engraver. Yes, I think that you could describe that as an all round application of engineering skills. More than two years of my RAF time was spent in Egypt, near the Suez Canal, and then it was back to England.
In those post-war years, as young lads we were having a great time, but I began to realise that even with ten years experience, I still didn’t have any qualifications, and for the jobs that looked most attractive to me, qualifications seemed increasingly important.
At the age of 26 I came out of the RAF, came home and settled down with my new wife and a new job as a trainee draughtsman with Hymatic Engineering in Redditch. Remarkably the company is still there and still working in aerospace, although now they’re working on cryogenic and stored energy technologies too. Back then, everything was moving on very quickly, it was a combination of developing the new technologies that had come out of the war, along with a renewed feel good factor which meant that everyone was looking to the future.
‘My skills as a draughtsman didn’t take long to develop’
My skills as a draughtsman didn’t take long to develop. Of course that was way before any computer assistance – everything was designed, calculated and drawn by hand. I think my particular talent was being able to easily imagine and understand the movement of complex moving parts. I specialised in electro-pneumatic development and I think that the most interesting and exciting project I have been involved in is the creation of the control device for a military aircraft ejector seat.
It was a complex but robust multi-function valve that once activated had to blow the canopy, release the pilots’ controls then detonate the ejector mechanism. Finally it had to deploy the parachute. I’m happy to say that although I’ve seen one activated, I’ve never used one, although I did do my first parachute jump when I was 70!
Looking back at another project, I suppose it looked very unwieldy, but at the time it worked remarkably well – a piece of process machinery that put together automotive wheel components – if you’ve every watched people fitting tyres, you’ll have an idea of the process; it put a valve in a rim (the trade term for a wheel), rolled a tyre on to the rim and then inflated it. At the time it was state of the art!
"I’ve never used one, although I did do my first parachute jump when I was 70!"
Geoff Blore
Involved in the creation of part of an ejector seat.
After that very promising opportunity came up with Joseph Lucas at their Special Purpose Machinery Division. Unfortunately it was such an innovative project, that it never got off the ground which, still with no qualifications left me with a forced career change.
After a few years in the licensed trade, I returned to engineering as a freelance draughtsman. My experience of tolerances and specialist knowledge of the little known SI system stood me in good stead and I found plenty of work. I think the most complex project during that time was working with the design engineers on a revolutionary rotary (RCE) motorcycle engine, which came to fruition with some 1960’s Norton Police and Civilian motorcycles. I think those were the most complex set of drawings I ever made too.
For me, the never ending change in engineering has always been the technology and innovation of the projects that I’ve worked on. The way of communicating has always remained constant with traditional engineering drawings – all drawn by hand through a time when blue prints were really blue! We worked in imperial measurements too – metric is so much easier. I retired from engineering about 20 years ago, around the time that CAD started and I didn’t believe that computerised systems would cope with the complexity of drawings – I thought it would never catch on – imagine that! I am constantly amazed by technology.
‘an apprenticeship with BSA couldn’t have been a better start’
What would I say about being a Career Engineer? If you’re going down the apprenticeship route, stick with it at least until you get qualified, because without qualifications, especially these days, you don’t stand a chance. I think that if I had a qualification, I would have had far more options, although I think for me that an apprenticeship with BSA couldn’t have been a better start.
Since leaving engineering, Geoff Blore has written an acclaimed book on his childhood war time experience as an evacuee, and in retirement he has also undertaken charity work which he continues to do with much gusto.
