A c.1961 photo (with colourised version) of the main machine shop at Penarth. In the rear are two planing machines. The one on the right was the larger of the two with dual independent tool boxes. The clapper box lifts on the return stroke of the machine then slams shut for the cutting stroke. It's best not to put your finger in the space behind the tools as one apprentice named Kenneth Byrnes found out; the hard way! The machine in the foreground is a horizontal boring machine. [114]

Within Hodges Engineering, Barry works, (a member of the Penarth Dock Engineering Group) there was a Kearnes (No. 2 or 3?) horizontal boring machine which apparently was one of the largest ever made. The photograph above was published within The Engineer [015]  [016] during 1922 by H. W. Kearns of Atlantic Street, Broadheath, Altrincham, Manchester. The machine is described as a large surfacing and boring machine and seems to me identical to that installed at Hodges.

The operator stood on a platform which went down into a pit to enable working at the low level worktable height; the problem was that you often got your feet wet at high tide! Peter Cox from Dinas Powis often operated this monster machine and he once explained how one day he inadvertently caught his overall in the rotating machine and was dragged underneath, and then over the top of, the face plate which was only about 12 feet in diameter! He counted himself as a somewhat lucky man to have survived the experience! I worked the machine under Peter's supervision for a few weeks but always stayed well clear of the face plate for some reason!!