CAREER OF WARTIME SAUCEPAN

Evening Star, Issue 23717, 26 October 1940, Page 17

CAREER OF WARTIME SAUCEPAN

HOW IT WILL BECOME PART OF A FIGHTING PLANE This article is a biography of Mrs Smith’s saucepan, writes C. A. Lyon m the ‘ Express.’ Until recently Mrs Smith’s saucepan had a very ordinary existence. But it happened to be made of aluminium, and Mrs Smith, responding to Lord Beaverbrook’s appeal, gave it to the nation to make an aeroplane. Mrs Smith gave it gladly, because she read that her country needed aiunii nium, but she will be interested to know what is going to happen to it. Mrs Smith has really given the nation one four-thousandth part of an aeroplane. Roughly speaking, 4,400 pots equal one Hurricane. However, that is anticipating. At the moment the saucepan is on one of the many dumps which the Women’s Voluntary Service has established all over the country. Soon manufacturers’ lorries will arrive from all over the country. At these factories are the people who are going to melt down Mrs Smith’s saucepan and those given by all the other housewives. It is very interesting to note that these housewives would not have been asked to give their saucepans in the last war. At that time melters would not have been able to get rid of the oxide which forms on the surface of all aluminium vessels. Only the recent march of science has made it possible to change saucepans into aeroplanes. Manufacturers will sort the pots apd pans carefully. They will rip out any iron rivets and tear off the hakelite knobs. Then all the saucepans will be pressed into compact bales. The firms are equipped with furnaces, electrical, gas, and oil. The smallest of them holds half a ton of aluminium, and one or two very big ones hold 20 tons. The little furnaces will melt 4,000

pots at a time. The big furnaces will melt 80,000. At 657 deg Centigrade the pots will cease to be pots and become a liquid. The liquid will be covered with a flux that will absorb the oxide or “ aluminium rust.” The furnace men will send bubbles of gas bubbling through to stir the liquid up and make sure that all the oxide is got out. When the pot is thoroughly boiling 'they will turn the aluminium into duralumin, or one of the other 16 alloys used in aircraft. like tea from a teapot. Little bits of copper silicon or manganese are put into the furnace. They quickly melt and mix in with the lique- ! pots and pans. 'hen the men tilt the furnace up. fiiu aluminium pours out like tea from a teapot. It goes into moulds, and in a few minutes is hard. And now. lo and behold, wo see instead of a kitchen pot a solid slab of aluminium 2ft square and 4fti thick. It weighs 501 b, and perhaps • 120 pots have gone to make it The slab of aluminium is shaved. The bottom is taken off because it usually contains impurities. The top is taken off because it is spongy. Then the ingot of aluminium is shipped off to the rolling mill. There are two kinds of rolling for aluminium. One is called hot rolling and the other cold rolling. First, the ingot is heated to 450 deg Centigrade. It goes between giant rollers. They press it a little. The machine-minder sets the rollers anew. The ingot goes through again. It is pressed a little more. The ingot goes backwards and forwards between the rollers 20 times, and by that time, instead of being 4in thick, it is only a-quarter. But to reduce it finally to the thickness in which it will be used in -an aeroplane it is rolled in another press when it is cold.

The aluminium plates which your pots and pans are finally turned into are unbelievably thin and unbelievably accurate.

The covering of an aeroplane is made of aluminium .028 of an inch thick. Tlio thickness of a razor blade is .007, or l-140th of an inch. So the aluminium plates which you see on an aeroplane are l-3Gth of an inch thick. The thickness of four,razor blades. This measurement must be preserved in rolling to within l-250th of an inch. If it were not, either the piano would be heavier than expected, or, alternatively, it would be too weak.

And so, in the fullness of time, the housewives’ pots and pans will arrive in big sheets at the aircraft factory. A ton of them, or 440 pots, will make a tighter. Fourteen tons of thorn, or 61,000 pots, will make a bomber. Not all of this metal will actually fly through the air. Probably half goes in machinings, fillings, and odd pieces cut away. It is only the other half which really forms part of the plane. But all the scrap is used up in the end. How long will it be before Mrs Smith’s saucepan is flying through the air? That depends on circumstances. But from the time the pot enters the factory to the time it goes to the aircraft works need only be one week. And from that time until it becomes an aeroplane will he from 12 weeks up.