teddington_lock
Well-Known Member
As many of you know , the job of a lock keeper encompasses many and varied things. Other than managing the water levels and providing assisted passage for boats , we maintain our lock sites , look after the gardens and do the painting amongst other things.
I thought you might be interested to see one of the projects the staff at Tedders has been undertaking this winter. As those of you who have visited may know , we have two benches on the head end of the lock island that are popular with people to sit on and watch the boats go by. One of the benches in fact , used to be 'Bennys Bench' where the late great Benny Hill ( a Teddington Resident ) used to sit to wait for the Turks boat to come through and take him upstream to the pub.
Anyway , the benches had begun to look a bit tatty of late , and no amount of painting could sort them out , the wooden slats were rotten and needed replacing. So , we decided this winter to sort them out. This is what they looked like before.
We duly stripped them down , and sent the cast iron frames away to be acid dipped to remove the 100 years of paint on them ( they are Victorian era ) and as far as we know , have never been stripped back to bare metal. When we spoke with the dippers , they told us that there were a lot of different colours of paint on them ( presumably representing each navigation authority that the Thames has had - TC , TW , NRA and EA ). The paint that came off was literally 1/4 inch thick !
Ops Delivery kindly took care of sourcing the new timber and machining it to size for us , and this was then coated with 6 coats of Sadolin Mahogany wood protector. The cast iron uprights duly arrived back , and looked as good as the day they were made , you could even see the file marks where the casting was filed off in the days before angle grinders. The wonderful lettering that was cast into the frame was also looking good , previously it had been an indistinguishable lump.
Now that the makers name could be seen clearly , it seemed a shame to cover it up , the frames were duly painted in black hammerite , and then I picked the lettering out in gold hammerite. I also picked out the raised metal ridges in places. I think you will agree how fantastic it looks. New bolts, washers, nuts and screws completed the benches.
I thought you might be interested to see one of the projects the staff at Tedders has been undertaking this winter. As those of you who have visited may know , we have two benches on the head end of the lock island that are popular with people to sit on and watch the boats go by. One of the benches in fact , used to be 'Bennys Bench' where the late great Benny Hill ( a Teddington Resident ) used to sit to wait for the Turks boat to come through and take him upstream to the pub.
Anyway , the benches had begun to look a bit tatty of late , and no amount of painting could sort them out , the wooden slats were rotten and needed replacing. So , we decided this winter to sort them out. This is what they looked like before.
We duly stripped them down , and sent the cast iron frames away to be acid dipped to remove the 100 years of paint on them ( they are Victorian era ) and as far as we know , have never been stripped back to bare metal. When we spoke with the dippers , they told us that there were a lot of different colours of paint on them ( presumably representing each navigation authority that the Thames has had - TC , TW , NRA and EA ). The paint that came off was literally 1/4 inch thick !
Ops Delivery kindly took care of sourcing the new timber and machining it to size for us , and this was then coated with 6 coats of Sadolin Mahogany wood protector. The cast iron uprights duly arrived back , and looked as good as the day they were made , you could even see the file marks where the casting was filed off in the days before angle grinders. The wonderful lettering that was cast into the frame was also looking good , previously it had been an indistinguishable lump.
Now that the makers name could be seen clearly , it seemed a shame to cover it up , the frames were duly painted in black hammerite , and then I picked the lettering out in gold hammerite. I also picked out the raised metal ridges in places. I think you will agree how fantastic it looks. New bolts, washers, nuts and screws completed the benches.
