"The Monday" (28 pound sledge used in British Mine

[reinhard]

Shovelglove was (loosely) inspired by history, so I was very excited to get the following email last week:

The reason I’m writing, is a story my father told me about a sledgehammer the young blacksmiths used at the coal mine where he worked as a coal miner in South Wales, Britain.

On a Monday after their weekend they’d use a sledgehammer called “The Mondayâ€. This was used to loosen up and to carry out a specific maintenance job that was only performed on a Monday.

The “Monday†was a 28 pound sledge and the trainee blacksmiths used this sledge hammer between them for most of the afternoon.

Being brought up in a mining village I never really knew how fit and strong some of the local men actually were. The coal mines have now closed in South Wales for twenty years and most of these men are now in their sixties, but in their day they must have been very fit men.

My correspondent did some further research:

I saw my father last night with more info. on the “Mondayâ€.

As I previously said, the Monday was a 28 pound sledge hammer. The “Monday†was used on a Monday to get most of the heavy work performed by the beginning of the week and to repair anything left over from the weekend. It would be used the rest of the week, depending on the work schedule but mostly on a Monday.

The “Monday†was used by a man called a striker. He worked with the smith (blacksmith). It was used for swaging the ends of 12 inch diameter pipes so that they could be joined to other pipes. These pipes were used to convey compressed air around the mine which was used to power tools such as pneumatic drills. Electricity or petrol/diesel engines were not allowed down mines as there was a chance of causing explosions, because of the presence of methane gas. The heavy duty tools were powered by air. My father seems to think that American mines had a different grade of coal with larger coal seams but not as much methane, so were able to use electricity. I don’t know whether this is correct.

The strikers worked in pairs with a pair of smiths. The smiths and strikers would manually load the pipe into the forge where the end of the pipe was heated. It was then removed from the fire when hot and the two strikers would swage the end of the pipe striking alternatively with the smiths manipulating the pipe and making the shaping blows with hammers. When the pipe cooled it was put back into the fire and the process repeated.

Not only did these miners use monster 28 pound sledgehammers, but they also put in considerably more time than 14 minutes a day:

The coal mine my father and grandfather worked in was called Markham
colliery in South Wales. My other grandfather worked in Bargoed colliery
also in South Wales.

Both my grandfathers were colliers. These are men who shoveled coal
twelve hours a day, filling coal trucks, so you can imagine they were
very fit men even when sixty years of age.

Reinhard

[SurfingBuddha]

these guys had to be harder than a coffin nail...thanks for passing this one along.

[fungus]

George Orwell wrote a lot about British coal miners in "The Road To Wigan Pier". Coal miners were very, very tough men. Maybe the toughest men who ever lived.

There's some extracts online, eg.: http://www.george-orwell.org/Down_The_Mine/0.html

[reinhard]

Thanks for the Orwell link, fungus. Wow, that guy can write.

Just a few choice quotes here (the whole thing -- it's not very long -- is well worth reading):

Our civilization, pace Chesterton, is founded on coal, more completely
than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The machines that
keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or
indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world
the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the
soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything
that is not grimy is supported.

More than
anyone else, perhaps, the miner can stand as the type of the manual
worker, not only because his work is so exaggeratedly awful, but also
because it is so vitally necessary and yet so remote from our experience,
so invisible, as it were, that we are capable of forgetting it as we
forget the blood in our veins. In a way it is even humiliating to watch
coal-miners working. It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own
status as an 'intellectual' and a superior person generally. For it is
brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only
because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain
superior. You and I and the editor of the Times Lit. Supp., and the poets
and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for
Infants--all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to
poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full
of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles
of steel.

Reinhard

[fungus]

Thanks for the Orwell link, fungus. Wow, that guy can write.

If you like that you should definitely read the book. It's written by Orwell when he was living in a pit villiage and goes into all aspects of a coal miners life.

Another good one is "Down and Out In Paris And London" which is the story of the time when Orwell was destitute and living in the streets of Paris and later, London, doing the lowliest of jobs to earn money for food and sleeping in the worst of doss-houses with all sorts of terrible people.

I just found all his books online here: http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/books.htm

[david]

Score!

--david

[reinhard]

More on the Monday, dug up by my original correspondent:

From:

http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/ ... day_hammer

Monday hammer

n. jocularly, a (heavy) sledge or hammer (said to be appropriate for use on a Monday). Subjects: English

Citations: [1938-39 Lexicon of Trade Jargon “The Machine Shop†(in Wisc.) p. 4: “Monday†hammer. Light sledge.] *1938-39 Workers at 3rd Ave. and 65th St., carbarn @ New York City Lexicon of Trade Jargon “[pencil] Motormen and Conductorsâ€: Monday hammer. A 32 pound sledge hammer; means worker must have day of rest before being able to wield heavy hammer. 1965 Colin Clark Economic Journal (U.K.) (Mar.) “Review: Economics and Sociology of Industry. A Realistic Analysis of Development.†vol. 75, no. 297, p. 190: Professor Sargant Florence still seems surprised that absenteeism should be at its highest on Mondays.…From its relatively greater incidence among unskilled men, he asks whether it is due to boredom, and does not discuss the possiblity that it may be due to sheer physical incapacity (on Clydeside a hammer with a very thick head is known as a “Monday hammer"). 2004 [Learner Turner] Ask The Trades (U.K.) (May 19) “Re: Hire or Beg Steal or Borrow…â€: If they couldn’t get it undone with that, we used a flogging spanner and a “Monday†hammer. This was so called because it weighed 28lbs, and if you used it on a Monday, you were on the sick for the rest of the week! *2005 Lutheran Hour Ministries (St. Louis, Mo.) (Jan. 27) “Daily Devotions: Monday Hammerâ€: Workers at construction sites use a very heavy hammer to break rocks and concrete. They call it a “Monday hammer.†Why “Monday hammer?†Because, they say, on Mondays they come to work fresh and strong, having rested over the weekend and therefore are able to wield this heavy hammer.