The cube and plate is a very challenging - some would say notorious - training exercise used in the
engineering industry. The two parts have to be made predominantly by hand filing, without the aid of
machinery, and must fit perfectly together. Another internationally famous firm has used it as a
"passing out" test, but at RSAF it was, for many years, the introductory exercise used to teach
apprentices the art of filing, handwork and basic metrology (the science of precision engineering
measurement). A high degree of hand/eye co-ordination is essential and the skills are much the same as
those required by "Gun Lock Filers" prior to the introduction of the "interchangeable" methods of
production in 1857.
The cube starts as a rough lump, sawn off a piece of `black' steel bar, that is, just as it comes
from the rolling mill.
The first stage is to file one face perfectly flat and test it against a "surface plate", a high
precision flat surface. Then the second face has to be filed both flat and accurately square with the
first. The complexity and difficulty of the task increases as each face of the cube is produced in turn
and all six must eventually be perfectly flat, precisely square with all the adjacent ones and exactly
the same size to within a few ten thousandths of an inch in all three directions, all over each pair of
faces. If you did not achieve the very exacting standard demanded, you were made to start again!
The plate started likewise, rough cut from a piece of `black' steel plate. A surface grinder (for
some the first introduction to machine tools) was used to grind the two faces perfectly flat - then it
was handwork again. The outside edges were filed similarly to the cube. The central hole was marked out
using precision instruments, cut out roughly by drilling four rows of holes and chiseling, then
finished by hand filing to the same high standards of accuracy as the cube. The cube had to fit exactly
in the hole every possible way round.
The "gold standard" was that only blue light should be visible between the plate and cube,
indicative of a fit closer than "half a thou" (0.0005" or 0.012mm.). In practice that was almost
impossible to achieve in every orientation, but some would achieve it in some of the many ways the cube
and plate can be assembled together and most would get it to within about "a thou" - one thousandth of
an inch (0.025mm.) all round.
We do not have one of the originals but, in 2006, former RSAF apprentice Ken Dee has made the cube
and plate now displayed in the Interpretation Centre on the former RSAF site, using the authentic
methods. In fact, not having a surface grinder in his garden shed workshop, he had to do the plate as
well as the cube entirely by hand filing That he can still do it, 57 years after he made his first one,
in 1949, is a clear demonstration of how very well engineering skills were taught and learned at
RSAF!
Edward Sills - who in 1843 was indentured to John Wilks as an
apprentice Gun Lock Filer. A copy of his indenture has survived but legibility is poor.
It offers a fascinating insight into conditions then by comparison with today.
Jacob Grieb - who unusually for those days was recruited from
Germany, started as an apprentice Gun Lock Filer in 1851. Many of Jacob's personal tools
have survived and some of them, together with his toolbox, were kindly donated in 2005 by
his great grandson Christopher Grieb and the Jacob Grieb descendants. The toolbox with
this inscription plate and tools are now displayed in the RSA Interpretation Centre.
Apprentices were trained at RSAF throughout its 172 years. A high proportion of RSAF's skilled craftsmen
had served their apprenticeships in the factory but many other former apprentices went on to jobs
elsewhere, mostly in engineering though by no means always. The structure of the training arrangements
changed over the years, but certainly within living memory, the training was always of outstanding
quality. Apprenticeships at RSAF had a very high and well deserved reputation. They were highly prized
and there was strong competition for places.
In the earlier part of the 19th century apprentices were indentured to individual apprentice
masters. They were expected to help the master craftsman with his work and in return he, rather than the
factory, was personally responsible for paying the apprentice. The earliest known records of individual
apprentices at RSAF are shown below.
Some time between 1856 and 1886, the practice changed and from then on apprentices were indentured to the
factory, in the name of the Superintendent, instead of individual apprentice masters.
For most of the 20th century there were two principal streams of apprentices:
Trade or Craft apprentices were recruited locally and their practical and academic training was
directed principally towards becoming skilled craftsmen, but with the opportunity to progress to
Foremen and technical management posts. They would typically be required to take City and Guilds
courses at local colleges as part of their training.
Engineering or Student apprentices whose training was more broadly based and directed towards
qualifying them for membership of one of the learned Engineering Institutions, usually the Mechanicals,
and careers as Professional Engineers. They were typically directed into college or university courses
leading to Higher National Certificates/Diplomas or Degrees.
It was possible to move between the two streams and that did sometimes happen when appropriate.
Recruitment of Engineering apprentices was originally via the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich in a joint
exercise for the three original Royal Ordnance Factories at Woolwich, Enfield and Waltham Abbey. In 1947,
a national recruitment and apprentice training scheme was introduced covering all the greatly expanded
chain of over 100 Royal Ordnance Factories and other Defence establishments and based largely on the
scheme pioneered so successfully at Enfield and Woolwich.
RSAF's senior management had the great foresight to recognise the long-term importance of a scheme for
training apprentices to the very highest standards to ensure that the next generation of craftsmen would
be at least the equals of and surpass their talented forebears. So it was that in 1938 a full time
Apprentice Supervisor was appointed to manage and develop the training scheme and to set up an Apprentice
Training Centre. That enlightened attitude was to survive for the next 50 years until closure of the
factory in 1988 and the individuals chosen to be the Apprentice Supervisor and Training Centre
Instructors were selected from amongst the factorys most talented and dedicated staff.
Prior to World War II, new apprentices were placed directly with apprentice masters in the workshops,
usually at first in the Toolroom, but one of the early tasks of the first Apprentice Supervisor, was to
plan and create a Training Centre dedicated to initial training. Wartime priorities intervened and Bert
Hart, the Apprentice Supervisor, had to double up as smithy and heat treatment Shop Manager. Nevertheless
the new Training Centre did eventually open in 1942, and thereafter all new apprentices spent their
initial period, usually their first year, learning the basics of engineering practice in the Centre. In
subsequent years apprentices were accorded wide ranging experience in all the important engineering
crafts and disciplines by placements in the various departments, eg tool and gauge rooms (for turning,
milling, fitting etc), production workshops, heat treatment, inspection, development, laboratory,
millwrights, electricians, tinsmiths, planning and drawing offices and a local foundry etc.
The success of the first Training Centre lead to the opening of a new, upgraded Centre in 1947, in a
building repaired after being badly damaged by a wartime parachute mine. In 1967 the Training Centre
moved again to its final location in a large building including a lecture room and gymnasium as well as
comprehensive workshops. In the early 1980s, the Centre was re-vamped to keep pace with the latest
thinking and practice in apprentice training and to enable apprentices to return to the Centre for more
advanced training in their third years.
The advent of the national recruitment scheme in 1947 brought with it the opening of an apprentices
hostel in Ordnance Road, near the factory, which had many of the attributes of university halls of
residence. Taken together with the high standards of both practical and academic training of RSAF
apprentices, the training scheme at RSAF could ,with some justification, have been described as a
university of industry.
Cube and Plate Exercise - An exercise to teach 'ab initio' apprentices how to
use hand tools to create a perfect cube from a lump of rough steel bar by hand filing.
RSAF apprentices were given some challenging projects as training exercises. For many years all
apprentices had to complete the invaluable Cube and Plate exercise as an initiation to
benchwork. It entails creating a perfect cube from a lump of rough steel bar by hand filing and then
making a plate with a square hole into which the cube will fit perfectly in any direction. It is not
easy, but if it was not completed to the Foreman Instructors exacting standards and any significant
amount of light was visible between the cube and plate, one would have to start again! On completion one
certainly knew how to use a file and the basics of metrology (the science of precise engineering
measurement)! It was with some quiet pride and satisfaction that we learned in recent years that the
exercise used as the starting point of an RSAF apprenticeship was also used as a passing out test by
another major international engineering company (a household name).
One of the most notable exercises was the construction in the years after World War II up to the middle
1950s of four ¼ scale, fully working model machine tools:
They were taken to many exhibitions where they were demonstrated by apprentices and created great
interest. They were a spectacular advert for the quality of RSAF training. After being lost for some
years following RSAF's closure they have now all been traced and displayed at apprentice reunions. The
press and the perspex miller are now displayed in the RSA Interpretation Centre.
Other projects, amongst many others, included the construction of a Gas Engine in 1967 and in the 1980s during the
refurbishment of HMS Victory, a set of fully working replica flintlocks for firing her 32pounder cannon.
It was not only RSAF's own apprentices who were trained in the Training Centre. A number of other
establishments without equivalent facilities sent apprentices to RSAF to do their basic training,
including those from the adjoining Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey who regularly undertook their
first year in the RSAF Training Centre.
RSAF managements committed support for apprentice training and the supreme talents, enthusiasm and
dedication of the staff they appointed to deliver it lead to the RSAF apprentice training scheme earning
a well deserved reputation as one of the finest in British Industry and second to none. RSAF apprentices
went on to hold positions at all levels throughout the Royal Ordnance Factory organisation right up to
Director General and also in industry at large, both in the UK and worldwide. Some became captains of
British industry and many formed their own companies. An RSAF apprenticeship was virtually a passport to
a job anywhere!
The story of apprentice training at RSAF including the recollections of former apprentices is accurately
told in a book titled "The Lads of Enfield Lock" compiled by former
apprentices Graham Birchmore and Roy Burges on behalf of the RSAF Apprentices Association. The 1st
Edition was published in April 2005 and its undoubted success led to an expanded and more comprehensive
2nd Edition being published.
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