Plastering (the good old days)

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Tunna

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Do any of you out there remember mixing plaster by hand and not using a paddle mixer like now days. I've just been looking in the mirror and what did i see, not the man i was 25 years ago. Muscles on my arms, a 6 pack, pecks the lot. I once looked like a watered down version of Arnold Shwarts, Arnold Shwaz, Arnold Sch, Err ! The Terminator chap !. Every mix was by first using a stick and then using a metal bar with a push bike peddle cog welded to the end of it, at the end of the day you were tired but it kept you fit. But now its all paddle mixers and my muscles sag, my 6 pack is a pot belly and as for my pecks they look like socks with marbles on the ends for nipples. Arrrr the good old days. Ohhh ! Schwarzenegger thats how you spell it, him anyway.
:RpS_laugh:
 
It's called old age Tunna. The art of heavy lifting at the pub keeps me fit :RpS_biggrin:
 
Tunna said:
Do any of you out there remember mixing plaster by hand and not using a paddle mixer like now days. I've just been looking in the mirror and what did i see, not the man i was 25 years ago. Muscles on my arms, a 6 pack, pecks the lot. I once looked like a watered down version of Arnold Shwarts, Arnold Shwaz, Arnold Sch, Err ! The Terminator chap !. Every mix was by first using a stick and then using a metal bar with a push bike peddle cog welded to the end of it, at the end of the day you were tired but it kept you fit. But now its all paddle mixers and my muscles sag, my 6 pack is a pot belly and as for my pecks they look like socks with marbles on the ends for nipples. Arrrr the good old days. Ohhh ! Schwarzenegger thats how you spell it, him anyway.
:RpS_laugh:
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Did you ever mix on a board with a drag?.:RpS_crying:
 
Knocked up tons of render by hand hard graft I was strong as an ox. I dont know about happy days back then did no know any different.
 
There was never anything good about mixing by hand ,just bad backs and ruined joints in later life .
 
What I like about hessen scrim you could make
Head bands and look like rambo
make a belt, shoe laces. tie your feather edges to your cross bar of your bike fasten down ladders to roof rack and best of all tieing cheeky you kids up and let them dangle from the joist .
 
Tunna said:
Do any of you out there remember mixing plaster by hand and not using a paddle mixer like now days. I've just been looking in the mirror and what did i see, not the man i was 25 years ago. Muscles on my arms, a 6 pack, pecks the lot. I once looked like a watered down version of Arnold Shwarts, Arnold Shwaz, Arnold Sch, Err ! The Terminator chap !. Every mix was by first using a stick and then using a metal bar with a push bike peddle cog welded to the end of it, at the end of the day you were tired but it kept you fit. But now its all paddle mixers and my muscles sag, my 6 pack is a pot belly and as for my pecks they look like socks with marbles on the ends for nipples. Arrrr the good old days. Ohhh ! Schwarzenegger thats how you spell it, him anyway.
:RpS_laugh:
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Ahhh the good old days not!! two bags off browning in a bath with a rake n shovel and i don't mean those half bags we have nowadays
 
warriorupnorth said:
Ahhh the good old days not!! two bags off browning in a bath with a rake n shovel and i don't mean those half bags we have nowadays
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Our bath was a tin one and was always split on the bottom on one end,so if i was mixing outside on the road outside a terraced house i had to make sure the split in the bath was facing uphill to stop the water leaking out before i put the browning in.Happy days.
 
Ah the old tin bath,one knock off to clean your shovel and you had a hole in it,knocking up finish with a bit of 2x1 and give it a quick whizz with a bit of off cut angle bead, cutting the jute scrim hoping you don't overlap at the junction with the other joint knowing how much you got to put on just to cover it,those were the days:RpS_crying:
 
i dont know about mixing in a metal bath thats what we used to get a bath in front of a coal fire:RpS_thumbsup:
 
we would make them hod screed up to the 3rd floor on a block of flats.
when we where screeding tower blocks we would leave the labourers knocking up by hand, each on a seperate heap, then barrow it to the hoist, up to the floor that we where laying.
we would sit the van for a hour until they had plenty up there. then give them some abuse, and then start screeding.
 
The good old days for me is when I was fully fit, could and wanted six days a week, plenty of work, great price rates,great daywork rates... those are the good days not shovels and tonnes of sand...
 
johniosaif said:
The good old days for m my first e type was $e is when I was fully fit, could and wanted six days a week, plenty of work, great price rates,great daywork rates... those are the good days not shovels and tonnes of sand...
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you are correct john!, the best times that i have had in the 1960s, self employed, earning hundereds of pounds per week, estates with hundereds of housing, you could purchase a house with 18 months worth of savings, my wife only purchased clothes from fashion houses. my e type was £1300
 
malc said:
you are correct john!, the best times that i have had in the 1960s, self employed, earning hundereds of pounds per week, estates with hundereds of housing, you could purchase a house with 18 months worth of savings, my wife only purchased clothes from fashion houses. my e type was £1300
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It is what it is all about a decent wedge for a decent days work....
 
I'm a young'un 26, but the spreads I started with made me mix by hand for 3 of them!! For 3 months before they let me use the drill!! Stick and podger and not even a proper podger a fck whisk lol
 
SpankySouthport said:
I'm a young'un 26, but the spreads I started with made me mix by hand for 3 of them!! For 3 months before they let me use the drill!! Stick and podger and not even a proper podger a fck whisk lol
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funny enough it takes a labourer longer to mix by whisk than we used to by hand in the old days, I bet my labourer a few years back a weeks wages as a challenge to see who could mix a bucket fastest, him by whisk, me by plunger.. he bottled out, luckily for me and my heart...
 
johniosaif said:
It is what it is all about a decent wedge for a decent days work....
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my son and my self was talking about this today. the worst thing that you can do now when working for a contractor is earn a days wage! as all they will do is to try to cut the price.
i would not return to site work. but my son who receives phone calls every day about some site that needs plasterers , somewhere in southern england, that you will make money if you get stuck in!
 
jamesthefirst said:
Rigsby!!
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I'm here. Yes it's all been said below. I could knock up a bucket of skim faster with a bike cog than a whisk but it would not be as creamy. Labourers back then knew no better so they just got on with it. There was an easy way of mixing browning and that was in a box. About 6' x 4' by 6" high. 4 buckets of water and then 50 kg of browning mixed with a drag.

The box was only suitable for sites as it weighed so much. Then there was Billy Green. 64 years old, done labouring all his life and an ex boxer. He would mix a whole gable ends worth of gobbo with a shovel in one go faster than you could do it today with 6 -8 mixes in a Belle mixer. Same with screed. He was getting wound up by a 20 something spread once and with one punch he knocked the young spread out for 6. That was a laugh!

The good old days? Well yes if you knew no better which back then you didn't. Plastering with a trowel is just as hard today though than it was then. Labourers have it easier.
 
If I could wind back the clock to my 20's again I would. I would work at least a 6 day week. Go home knackered, have a kip after tea, be in bed for 10.45pm, get up next morning and graft all day without realising it.

Try and do that today and I would be in A+E by 11am!
 
Capital spread said:
Used to know a floor layer who could knock up 10 ton of screed by hand and lay it in a day
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My old man was a floor layer, used to take me and me bros to work with him usually on evenings to watch him and his gang trowelling up huge floors (can't remember if they were too wet or the cold weather or what) watched them sometimes with concrete lorries 2/3at a time and running with barrows if shutes weren't long enough orcould't get inside places. But watching him knocking small mixers up and barrowin it on his own then laying it was something else, you may ask whynot of us could do it, we weren't fast enough for the old get! Now when we get together all i hear is 'when i was on site i could run circles round the kids and the muscle men etc etc, no pride, no work in em he'd say right up to when he retired, the co. he subbied to dind'nt want him to retire even give him an excellent paypacket and send off, he did try to do work for them but as you know once you stop for a bot esp at 68 its hard to get back going, they still ring to this day because of problems but he 's finished. I did used to (and me bros) this young uns will still be going and not worn out and on the same money,so who's the fool? Times have changed!
 
N8rbos said:
My old man was a floor layer, used to take me and me bros to work with him usually on evenings to watch him and his gang trowelling up huge floors (can't remember if they were too wet or the cold weather or what) watched them sometimes with concrete lorries 2/3at a time and running with barrows if shutes weren't long enough orcould't get inside places. But watching him knocking small mixers up and barrowin it on his own then laying it was something else, you may ask whynot of us could do it, we weren't fast enough for the old get! Now when we get together all i hear is 'when i was on site i could run circles round the kids and the muscle men etc etc, no pride, no work in em he'd say right up to when he retired, the co. he subbied to dind'nt want him to retire even give him an excellent paypacket and send off, he did try to do work for them but as you know once you stop for a bot esp at 68 its hard to get back going, they still ring to this day because of problems but he 's finished. I did used to (and me bros) this young uns will still be going and not worn out and on the same money,so who's the fool? Times have changed!
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well put.. respect to the old man too
 
I respect anybody who has or does graft for a living , i'm from a family of builders through a few generations , our dad wunt let we become floor layers, i went into foundries ( bloody hard graft) but trained to become a plumber.... The rest you know, oone brodad put through college bricklaying, got a building biz, another the same and another trained has an architectural bricklayer but decided block paving, slabbing etc was for him, he works or a brill company who looks after him. All in all grafters, it does pxxs me off when iread of Prices dropping but you lot working harder, its tough times out there for all trades without having prices dropping. I've always found diversifying keeps me busy, now has an handyman i can pick up say 3/4 little jobs that'll pay a good days money, just glad i don't rely on sites or one type of work.
 
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